Sleepwalking has gotten dangerous over the past few years. Especially when it comes to sleepwalking medication—it can make people do crazy things. But this woman, 55-year-old-Gill Vickers, doesn’t need to take anything to get her to act up while she’s sleeping.
She’s had 500 sleepwalking episodes, during which she has crashed her car, wielded the sharpest knives in her home, consumed an entire bottle of vodka, and attempted to jump from her bedroom window.
These episodes are caused by horrible, excruciating pains in her head, And the worst part? She doesn’t remember in the morning.
“I have no memory in the morning,” she said. “I wake up every day thinking, ‘Have I done something?’”
Her head pain began two years ago. She experienced it twenty-four hours a day, while she was awake and asleep.
When she went to the doctor, it was caused by a blood vessel in her brain that was putting pressure on one of her nerves.
After a year or so, they operated on her, fixing this obstruction and providing her with strong sedatives.
But this didn’t fix everything completely. She still has about six to eight episodes per month, which her husband of 36 years, Mark, calls “a holiday.”
Her husband has experienced all of her episodes and has documented a lot of them on his phone. This includes a photo of multiple knives sticking out of a cutting board, and a video of her husband trying to take the car keys from her, during which time Gill tells her husband, “I don’t know who you are.”
Mark says he has footage he’ll never show her, because it’s too upsetting.
They went on the British TV show This Morning in order to appeal to any experts who may know what’s going on with her.
Mark says that he’s given his wife pain medication, and she sleeps soundly. But they’re looking for a long-term solution.
“There’s an up side,” says Mark. “After 36 years of marriage I never know what’s going to go on.”
