{"id":377851,"date":"2026-04-06T12:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/377851\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T12:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:39:11","slug":"i-had-electric-shocking-therapy-but-it-was-a-deadly-brain-bug-not-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/377851\/","title":{"rendered":"I had electric shocking therapy – but it was a deadly brain bug, not depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\tLucy was sectioned for over three months after suffering from headaches and hallucinations (Picture: Samuel Binstead)<\/p>\n

It was never Lucy May Dawson\u2019s plan to become a model. <\/p>\n

She was 20 and\u00a0studying criminology at the University of Leicester<\/a> with the aim of getting a job in victim support, when she was struck down in 20216 with a blinding headache that lasted for months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Lucy began hallucinating<\/a> and her behaviour became increasingly erratic, her parents rush her to hospital. There, doctors insisted her symptoms were due to a mental breakdown and had Lucy sectioned <\/a>for three and a half months to a psychiatric ward under the mental health act. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Something had taken over and left this version of me that was so childlike, but also hallucinating and confused, 30-year-old Lucy tells Metro from her Lincoln home. <\/p>\n

\u2018If something is really traumatising<\/a>, your brain can block it out. But my brain was so diseased, it didn\u2019t really know what was happening. I had no control, no capacity whatsoever. I was really, really ill.\u2019<\/p>\n

While Lucy was in the hospital she was given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which caused a seizure that propelled her from her bed onto a radiator pipe that burned through her sciatic nerve. <\/p>\n

The damage was so bad that her left leg was paralysed <\/a>below the knee. <\/p>\n

When Lucy was finally discharged from hospital she was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis \u2013 an acute and sometimes deadly inflammation of the brain that can cause permanent damage. <\/p>\n

It turned out that she never needed ECT or to be sectioned, after all. <\/p>\n

However, the damage had already been done and Lucy now had to learn to live with an acquired brain injury and an orthotic leg. <\/p>\n

\t\t\"\"
\n\t\tLucy was later diagnosed with a deadline brain bug (Picture: Supplied)<\/p>\n

\u2018When I came out of hospital, I was so ill. I could barely stay awake. I had no idea who I was or who my family were. I couldn\u2019t speak, couldn\u2019t walk, couldn\u2019t read, couldn\u2019t write anything,\u2019 Lucy recalls.<\/p>\n

For months after her release from hospital, while learning how to live again and abandoning her studies, she had to process all she had been through.<\/p>\n

\u2018I completely lost everything. I had no direction and I had to grieve an entire life. As I recovered, I discovered all the barriers that disabled<\/a> people face, and I was navigating them all whilst also dealing with a brain injury.\u2019<\/p>\n

While the hosptial trust later apologised, the experience left Lucy deeply depressed and wishing she had never woken up, while struggling to find employment and independence.<\/p>\n

\u2018I was trying to get a job and was on Personal Independence Payments<\/a>, navigating disability benefits \u2013 and it was all just dehumanising, demoralising,\u2019 she remembers.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tLucy soon discovered the barriers disabled people face (Picture: Samuel Binstead)<\/p>\n

The idea of finishing her degree was also impossible at the time \u2013 \u2018I couldn\u2019t even finish a sentence, let alone write a dissertation\u2019, so Lucy got a job at a perfume counter at a department store where she was forbidden from sitting at a stool during shifts and was told to put away her crutches \u2018because they looked untidy on the shop floor\u2019.<\/p>\n

After experiencing discrimination while out in public, such as being berated on a bus for using the priority seat and criticised for parking in a blue badge zone, Lucy\u2019s sister Hannah suggested she blog <\/a>about what she was going through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Calling her website Lucy in the Sky with Encephalitis, she set about raising awareness about the condition that she hadn\u2019t even heard about when she was diagnosed, and all the discrimination she faced as a disabled woman.<\/p>\n

\u2018The amount of people that stop you and say they will pray for you, or that you have sinned and that is why you have this disability. What a cruel thing to say,\u2019 says Lucy, who has recently been diagnosed with complex post traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tLucy decided to blog about her experiences of being a disabled woman (Picture: Samuel Binstead)<\/p>\n

Opening up her Instagram <\/a>too, she posted online about all the remedies people have suggested for her permanent disability, including yoga, crystals, turmeric and exorcism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lucy says that not only does she have people asking personal health<\/a> questions in public, but she also has to deal with unwanted sexual advances, both in person and online.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s frequently bombarded with crude messages online, with men fetishising her disability and making deeply offensive remarks.<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tSCOPE AWARDS 2026\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\"Scope
\n\t\tDisability charity Scope is celebrating people for their work on tackling injustice and changing attitudes<\/p>\n

Metro<\/a>\u00a0is proud to be the official media partner of\u00a02026\u00a0Scope Awards<\/a>, taking place on 30 April 2026.<\/p>\n

The ceremony at London’s Kia Oval will be hosted by wheelchair basketball athlete and broadcaster Ade Adepitan and celebrate the\u00a0work\u00a0disabled people and organisations are doing to bring about important change.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"Full
\n\t\tThe full list of nominees features famous faces and unsung heros (Picture: Supplied)<\/p>\n

There are 38 nominees for the nine Scope Awards, where unsung heroes, amazing achievements and the incredible accolades of the disabled community are being honoured.<\/p>\n

The shortlist includes: Celebrity Role Model, Colleague Network, Community Group, Customer Inclusion, Local Service, Media Moment, Purple Pioneer, Social Media Influencer and Workplace Champion.<\/p>\n

\u2018So many think it\u2019s appropriate to open a conversation with \u2013\u00a0 \u201cDoes the stick come into the bedroom?\u201d Or, \u201cOh, you\u2019re the perfect girl. You can\u2019t run away,\u201d\u2019 says Lucy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Lucy has sworn off dating<\/a>, focussing instead on the things that make her happy; fashion<\/a> and her three cats Penny, Terrence and Kenneth.<\/p>\n

Since launching herself on social media, she has amassed nearly a million followers across Instagram and TikTok<\/a> where, modelling corsets, vintage dresses, and, at the latest count, 27 different walking sticks to match her wardrobe, she posts about living with disability \u2013 and people\u2019s response to it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of her mission to \u2018live joyfully\u2019 after being struck down by the rare and devastating brain disease that changed her life ten years ago.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tLucy\u2019s mission is to \u2018live joyfully\u2019 after being struck down by the rare and devastating brain disease (Picture: Supplied)<\/p>\n

\u2018I know I look like a bit of a Barbie doll and not everybody is able to take me seriously. The comments I get online can be absolutely atrocious because of the way that I look,\u2019 says Lucy.<\/p>\n

\u2018But it\u2019s important for people to see someone who loves pink and cats and being silly whilst being, boldly and proudly disabled. That matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Someone once sent me a shot of a group chat where a boy was saying that he was trying to sleep with me so he could tick off having a disabled woman. That is not just something that happens to me, it is very common.<\/p>\n

\u2018Experiences like that can be really inhuman. Disabled people are generally portrayed as either a burden or object of pity or the flip side is that we\u2019re\u00a0 portrayed as inspiration porn to give non-disabled people warm, fuzzy feelings,\u2019 she adds.<\/p>\n

\u2018Very rarely is the content out there in the world actually accurate. Disabled people are some of the most creative and funny \u2013 because dark humour can be a coping mechanism, yet we\u2019re all shown the same way.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tLucy says she receives a lot of misogynistic abuse (Picture: Supplied)<\/p>\n

While Lucy did later complete her degree, she now works as a model,influencer and disability advocate, and has been nominated for Social Media<\/a> Influencer of the year award in the Scope 2026 Awards, which Metro is proud to partner.<\/p>\n

She says the nomination is a welcome nod to representation and admits that her disability, which changed the course of her life, has now opened doors she never knew existed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What most fulfills Lucy is that she gets messages from followers telling her that she has literally saved lives after they learned to spot the symptoms of encephalitis \u2013 that her own doctors missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018I am one of the most lucky, unlucky people out there. Because who knows what my life would have become if I hadn\u2019t got ill,\u2019 she explains. \u2018If my posts affect just one person\u2019s life, if something I\u2019ve said could help one person get the correct diagnosis, then that\u2019s more than I could ever have dreamed of or wished for.<\/p>\n

\u2018It gives me a reason why I had to go through everything I did, because I was given a second chance at life when so many people with this illness are not.\u2019<\/p>\n

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