A few months after I became ill, my 85 yo mother divulged a piece of dark family history. This was known only to her, divulged by her grandmother as she was the oldest (and only female) grandchild.
My maternal-paternal great-grandfather died in the early 1930s, which would have been at my age. He had been a fit and healthy coal miner, but became very disabled in his last years, and was given the diagnosis of "neurasthenia".
The family wheeled him around in a wheelchair. My great-grandmother described how he hated the dark and asked for a candle at night, but this was too expensive. Despite being in a wheelchair, he was clearly not paralysed and one day (through I can only imagine enormous strength of will) wheeled himself through the town to the lakeside and folded his clothes to lie neatly beside the wheelchair...
I expect he had the sort of visual disturbances that caused distressing hallucinations in darkness. My sister and I wanted to go back in time and hug the poor dear man, left in that terrible darkness.
My mother had been understandably reluctant to tell me this story. However, it's helpful to know the genetic predisposition must be there, so at the very least other family members can know to be careful with recuperation from viral illnesses.
