Lithium toxicity

My partner of 26 years who is now 40 years old (14 when we met) has been on lithium along with many other antipsychotics and antidepressants for well over 15 years for those 15 years her lithium blood levels have been very stable sitting between 0.7-0.9 so very stable and with bloods being done every 3 months we were in full control of everything we all know the scary stories about lithium levels being too high and what could happen. Well those scary stories came true this past year back last year my partner who suffers with complex ptsd, deep rooted depression, social anxiety, borderline personality disorder and addictive personality disorder decided she wanted to lose weight, and the only way she knew how to do it was go to extreme and cut down her food and drink i told her it was a bad idea but as you can imagine she decided so she was going to do no matter what.

well this was over a period of 8 months her last lithium level was normal in sept, in oct last year she was unresponsive when I woke I called the ambulance and they came and first thing they thought was overdose but that was impossible as I give all her medication to her and they are locked away downstairs well 10 weeks of intensive care later here’s what happened, due to no eating or drinking enough her kidneys packed in resulting in her kidneys not filtering anything out her lithium levels rose unintentionally to 6.4 causing lithium toxicity, while she was being on dialysis one of her other medication”propranolol” a beta blocker for anxiety also caused toxicity this Caused her to go in to cardiac arrest for 7 minutes she had 3 sepsis and went in to septic shock 2 times and was ventilated for 4 weeks and a tracheostomy for another 4 weeks, and fist thing she said when she woke up crying apologising saying “I was starting to feel confident”, out of all that and what happened she was the lucky one she came home and she’s home now and I’m making sure she eats and drinks but I just want to get this across lithium is a good mood stabiliser drug and yeah it works but the risks are real, so keep hydrated keep your body healthy as you can and keep to those blood tests they are there for a reason