Altered States - Part 1: The Day Everything Changed/The Day Reality Shifted

This is the first instalment of a 9-part blog series written by Rob.

Trigger Warning: series contains references to: medical issues; surgery; stress; anxiety; depression; and trauma.

I felt exhausted after another bad night’s sleep, so stayed cocooned under my duvet and tried to go back to sleep for precious extra minutes. I was laying on my left side drifting in and out of sleep. My head and left cheek resting on my left shoulder and arm outstretched, keeping warm under my pillow.

Somewhere between waking and sleep, I was dreaming about a person sat at a desk opposite me, when in the dream I heard a pop or loud click sound, everything went grey. Not black and white like an old movie, just the dream image in my head went to a flat blank grey. I then woke up straight away and thought ‘that was pretty weird’, as was the sudden headache that immediately hit. It was a very strange sensation and not like any dream I’d ever had. I generally have pretty vivid dreams and often crazy dreams, but this just felt odd.

Due to some recent, lets call them ‘medical challenges’, I immediately imagined the worst and thought I’d had some kind of stroke, as pretty much instantly something didn’t feel physically quite right.