Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon spill had been controlled, I met and began treating a gentleman who had significant medical problems related to his working at the spill site for several months.
One day he related the following story to me: While sitting on his porch and staring out at his truck he developed a rather bizarre problem. The door of the truck was open and the engine was running. He could neither move nor talk at the time. His son was home and walked past him, never noticing that his father was unable to move.
This state of “stupor” lasted for about 2 hours and ended when the patient was able to get up, move about and talk once again. As I mentioned previously, the patient remembered the situation vividly.
A few weeks later he experienced a similar problem inside of his home and remained in a “stupor” for several hours. The semi-conscious state stopped when he fell asleep.
While this patient was an extremely honest and conscientious individual, his experience could have been consider an aberration had it not been for the fact that several other individuals described similar situations.
John Gooding’s situation is a perfect example. John’s wife often came home and found him lying on the floor, being unable to talk or move for considerable lengths of time. He remembered everything that was going on around him and he had no significant ill effects when these stupors cleared. John later developed what he described as Seizures.
After encouraging him to film one of his “seizures,” John was able to make a video recording of one of these events.
Another gentleman, this one having severe medical problems related to working on the Deepwater Horizon cleanup, entered into our Detox program in Raceland. He and his wife vividly described how she would find him staring into space, unresponsive to her questioning and unable to speak.
During his detox treatment in our program we were discussing some of his recent experiences and he and his wife acknowledged that he had recently experienced some of these episodes. He described his mental state as being “Stuck Stupid.”
Several other patients have described similar situations.