What Made a Medical Resident Act 'Loco?'

Aug. 17, 2006 — -- A medical resident at a Delaware hospital had no idea what caused her one evening to suddenly see and describe things that weren't actually happening, and it was a medical mystery to doctors, too.

It had been a typical day for Hayley Queller.

She went to work at the neonatal intensive care unit and came home.

Her husband had prepared dinner -- turkey burgers and a salad.

After dinner, she read as usual, and then got ready to go to sleep.

That's when things changed.

"I was sitting in my bed, feeling a little bit lightheaded is the best way I could describe it. I felt very thirsty and like maybe I wasn't seeing clearly," Queller said.

"My arms were heavy. My legs were heavy. I couldn't even sit up if I wanted to. I started to maybe panic a little bit, because I felt like something was wrong."

Queller's husband, Sean Queller, remembers that she didn't look well.

He said she called out to him, "You have to take me to the hospital. I don't know what's wrong."

Dr. Jonathan McGhee of Christiana Care Health System, who knew Queller from their work at the hospital together, was surprised to see her in the emergency room that night.

Queller remembers how horrible she felt when McGhee greeted her.

"I felt like I was on fire," she said. "My heart was racing, and I was so thirsty."

"Her heart rate was in the 150s," McGhee said. "A normal heart rate is, you know, probably for her somewhere between 50 and 70."

In the emergency room, Queller's husband noticed her change drastically.

"She started getting kinda weird," he said. "She had no clue that she was saying things that didn't make sense."

"There were times where she was pretty lucid," McGhee said, "and then there were times where she was totally off the wall, speaking about things that weren't actually happening, speaking about things that weren't in the room. It made for quite a conversation."

Queller remembers people telling her that she didn't make any sense.

Although she had extensive medical knowledge, she still didn't know what was happening to her.

She was beginning to worry she was having a stroke or something that would cause irreversible damage.