HELP! urgent!

Hey, I'm new to the forum... but what bought me here is that my long distance girlfriend... recently lost all her memories.. lost her identity.. didn't recognise her brother when she looked at him square in the eyes.. I don't know if this is amnesia caused by hypothermia or by dissociative fugue.

I'll tell a lil story.

Basically, my girlfriend is bipolar - she used to be in the army and has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from it, although I'm fairly certain that has been cured. 2 weeks ago she started getting a fever.. a swollen neck and all the lymph nodes had swollen too. I thought this must be just some kind of tonsilitis or pharyngitis or something. A week later, she started getting better.. I speak to her on the phone every night and we fall asleep listening to each other... we've done that for some time now.

Last week she started acting extremely strange.. on wednesday night I hardly spoke to her... the following day I spoke to her a bit, but she seemed extremely angry and down... she told me she hadn't gone to school that day... which worried me.

I found out later on that she infact been kicked out her house in the freezing cold in unsuitable clothing for about 5 hours during the night (thats why she couldnt contact me) .. and I know when she gets really stressed.. she looks to the attention of drugs to take her mind of things (even though I don't like her doing that).

The following day, on a Thursday I think, she acted calmer.. and I got to talk to her well, and I was feeling chirpy.. she had booked tickets to come see me this weekend just gone..

Although something was on her mind, she said she had to go to a party - she had loyalties to attend to... she started talking about doing things for her brother (which when i spoke to her brother later.. he said he'd never make her do the things she claimed to have done (those activities are irrelevent)). I had begged her not to go out to the party... but she kept saying she had to get ready etc etc... I felt it were best to leave her alone, so I switched off my laptop.. got off skype etc and went to sleep.

The following morning I find out she had come home immediately... just as I switched my laptop off.. she had waited for me for 4-5hours.. and she told me it had really shaken her up.. she then went to a party for a couple of hours before coming home at 4am.

Now it's a Friday... I can't remember the exact details about early on in the day.. but I'm fairly certain she wasn't in school, because she was fever'ish.. her fever was getting worse.. she was throwing up, unable to hold food down, had a temperature of 103 fahrenheit... this was in the evening.. my gf doesn't express her feelings much as she is afraid to scare people.

Her brother finds her in the bathroom.. just 10mins after I got off the phone with her, throwing up... semi conscious and unable to hold herself up. He texts me off her phone going "what the hell is wrong with her??" ..i reply saying "i dont know.. thought he had a fever" .. he tells me what she's doing and carries her to his car and rushes her to hospital despite my girlfriend not wanting to go.

When she gets to the hospital... she gets an oxygen mask, IV's attached to her and all sorts... I manage to contact her via txt.. she starts to go dellusional and says she has to go home and pack for the journey the next day... she starts ignoring what people says and just focus's on getting ready to get on the plane. She rips out the IV's and tries to move.. but she lacks a lot of energy.. doctors restrain her and sedate her... The following day.. she tries to do the same thing, although she just falls out of her bed..

3 hours before the plane departs... she signs out of the hospital...she takes her brothers car keys which for some reason she has... takes her car (she's lost a lot of blood by the way).. drives it to the airport... getting a dent on it somehow. Messages me from the airport asking me not to tell her brother where she is... naturally I told her brother where she is, coz at the moment I thought she was dying.

Stupidly, I told her that I told her brother... she signs off AIM. Her brother rushes to the airport with a friend and finds that there is already an ambulance there... with my girlfriend on a stretcher..

Continueing that day... later on, her brother decides she is stable enough to take home... soon to realise it was a bad idea as I speak to her.. she starts having crazy dellusions about getting on the plane and saying "i can make it, i can make it" ...her brothers asks me what to do as I then tell him to take her back to hospital...

Sunday... she seems to have rested well... I talk to her later in the day at about 4pm, speak to her for an hour or 2... everythings seems good, sweets comments are shared and everything seems fine... I lull her to sleep slowly...

A couple of hours later, whilst I am talking to her brother and his girlfriend... she wakes up, starts crying uncontrollably... won't stop crying, Her brother grabs her gently and holds her... as he see's her sobbing eyes look at his... she says "who are you?" ...about an hour later the doctors urge the brother and his gf out of the room..

This is when things got REALLY weird... It's Tuesday now I beleive, I spoke to her today... she still remembers nothing.. doesn't remember who she is, who her brother is, who I am..

I talk to her though, she seems to say similar things to what she said last time I showed her certain pictures. She says the words "i feel im missing something.." .. and I knew when she was in hospital.. she was murmuring my name while she was semi-conscious.

She also says that she has weird pains in her head. She says she is confused... and that she gets panicked.. and she said she wishes she was herself again.

She's forgotten brief moments in the past.. but that may be because of alcohol or stress or something, but nothing like loss of identity.


So my question is... how is this related to each other? Is she in a Fugue State? Is she suffering from hypothermia and amnesia is a sympton? ...how long will this last? ...what should I say to her when I next speak to her? ..how can this be cured quickly?

I'm missing her immensly.. it feels great to have spoken to her today, but I want the person who loves me back... even though I still managed to relax her within 20mins of conversation...

I'm only getting around to reading this in its entirety now. I don't have a clue what could be wrong with her, and can only guess (which I won't). You said that she was kicked out of her house though - was that just for that one night or is she now somewhere else? Anyway, I will be quite frank about this: It seems to me that she needs a hell of a lot of help, and thinking about a relationship might just add that extra bit of pressure for her. She surely must focus on repairing her own life before she can even think about being with someone. I don't know how long 'long distance' is in your terms, and i'm now actually sure if you have met her in the flesh yet - Have you?; or is this an Internet thing?

Be supportive (which you are already doing) and don't focus too much on the relationship part right now. i hope that what I've said makes sense to you dude.

Kevin

it's just an online thing... but I've spoken to her on the phone for numerous hours. She lives in USA - I live in UK

She isn't actually kicked out of her house completely.. just a temporary thing, she got kicked out of her house twice in the cold.

and yeah... I could tell she was panicking partially because she was thinking about not disappointing me.

What you're saying makes complete sense Although she doesn't seem to care much about her own well-being... hense that she wouldn't go to the hospital till she was literally carried to the car and taken there when she could no longer move.

What she needs is people around her who care for her and who watch out for her I think, I just hope her brother can supply her with the comfort she needs for the time being.

Oh right - much clearer now. I am in the UK too as you can see (Leicester). I just moved here from Ireland 8 months ago. I knew a guy back home who met an American onlin, however, and he's now over there with her (and they're married). Hopefully that will lift your hopes about your future together; and hopefully she'll get the help she needs. From your position (geographically), it must feel near-to-impossible to help her as much as you'd like to.

Kevin

yeah it's true.. I do feel kinda useless...

although tonight.. infact not more than 2-3 hours ago...

I just got home from seeing my grandparents... not long after I got home, I decided to give the girl a text (I was quite certain she was sleeping) ...she was currently in her house on her own...she was starting to get scared.. she had a throbbing headache (she's hypoglucemic also) ...she was hearing yelling sounds and her arm was bleeding quite profusely. She said she wanted 'big guy' (who's her brother) ..coz she doesn't know names very well. I was spamming her brothers phone for ages coz he wasn't picking up. By the time he picked up, my girl was on the floor in the bathroom, she was bleeding out of her head coz she fell over out of dizziness... I mean, she was terrified.. fortunately her brother got my messages and took her to the hospital IMMEDIATELY.

He thought she was doing ok at home so he decided to go out... but it's hard to know how this girl is gonna be when she's in the mental state that she's in :-/ I think her hypoglucemicia had something to do with intense headaches and dizziness and passing out.
Her brother didn't even know she suffered from it.

But yeah.. she got to the hospital in the end.

I dunno if I said the story accurately... but basically... I'm just scared coz I dunno wtf woulda happened if i weren't there...

she didn't cut herself btw.. she woke up and her arm was bleeding heavily

her brother seems to have my trust 100% now though, so... i dunno.. was a stressful hour or 2

Hypoglycaemia can indeed cause many terrible problems, including things related to memory. Can it be that her hypoglycaemia is the main perpetrator in her problems? It could have been the source, from which many other new problems sprouted. Anyway, your post just now is eerily similar to stuff that I am dealing with both now and have dealt wit in the past. For example, when you mentioned that you had contacted her brother, it reminded me of when an ex girlfriend of mine telephoned me to say that she had overdosed on both her own and her mother's medicines. I hung up immediately, phoned her sister, and she got the ambulance. She had to have her stomach pumped full of charcoal to neutralise the medication at the hospital, otherwise, she would have died. there is another similarity in what you wrote to something i'm dealing with right now, but for privacy issues I won't be mentioning it.

I was actually thinking about you today dude. i was in the library at my university and I just remembered how easily smitten I was for girls when I was your age. So, I understand how hard it is for you to just forget about her. I mean forgetting about her in a relationship sense and just focussing on her as a mere distance acquaintance.

Kevin

krikey, aye.. i never imagine things like this happening to tohers >.<

I've informed her brother about her hypoglucemia possibly being related his sisters memory.

I'm not even that easily smitten for girls Infact when I first started chatting to this girl, I was quite insistent that I wouldn't get myself into another long distance relationship or anything similar... but yeah... one thing leads to another etc etc.

Unfortunately the only 2 people who I've had proper emotions for were for people I had originally met online... the rest of my girlfriends I had more locally just weren't as interesting in terms of personality and such.

It sucks that I'm too weird to like normal people who are in front of me hehe

but yeah my girl is still in hospital at the moment... apparently the doctors are too afraid to let her leave the hospital, so I dunno how long she'll be in there for... I know for certain she feels a lot safer in hospital with the 'white coats' ...she even calls it home