The theme describes how individuals grasp of what is happening
to them is altered during critical illness. It includes
the inability to distinguish reality from hallucination and
dreams. Here the issue of the accuracy of recall of actual
events versus the altered perception and personal meaning
is first evident. This might be thought of as an over-arching
theme since all the other findings described below are as a
result of what informants have described. If these memories
and interpretations are affected by an altered sense of
reality they have to be understood as being viewed through
a lens of altered perception.