The best way to describe my wife's behaviour would be the way demonic possession is portrayed in a horror movie.

I have never seen anyone in this state and it was incredibly disturbing for our four children to witness. On the morning of February 6^th, 2009, I had to call friends to assist me in taking her to the hospital. They too were shocked at her mental state. She was admitted to the emergency ward of Carlos Haya hospital. In her psychotic state she was reliving the births of our five children over and over again and later said that she thought days were passing in minutes. For me it brought back terrible memories of our first child's death in the emergency ward of a hospital. Eventually she was sedated. When I visited her later she refused to open her eyes to avoid the pain of giving birth. She was attended by various young doctors who assessed her mental state by asking what day it was, if she knew where she was and what was wrong with her, and her relationship to me and my eldest daughter. After two days she was moved into a ward and underwent a number of diagnostic tests including a lumbar puncture and MRI scan. After the fourth or fifth day a doctor told me that they had decided her condition was a reaction to the steroid and administered an antidote. She recovered in a matter of hours and was discharged on the sixth day.

I do not know why it took them so long to decide the psychosis was steroid-induced or why Dr. Angel didn’t show more concern at the time for that matter. The clinical classification of psychological response to steroids is as follows:
 

1        Mild euphoria, lessened fatigue, improved sensation, increased sense of intellectual capacity.

2        Heightened euphoria. Patients are effusive, expansive, volatile, hypomanic, exhibit flight of ideas, impaired judgment, refractory insomnia.

3        Difference responses to reflecting the ego characteristics of the patient, such as anxiety, phobia, rumination, obsessional preoccupation, hypomania, or depression.

4        Grossly psychotic reaction with hallucinations, delusions, extreme variations in mood.

(Data from Rome H, Braceland F. The psychological response to ACTH, cortisone, hydrocortisone, and related steroid substances. American Journal of Psychiatry. 1952;108(9):641-651)

From what I had observed Sherna was between grade 3 and 4 when we visited Dr. Angel. She had only been taking prednisone for a few days so there would have been no danger in stopping it immediately and evaluating her for possible steroid side effects.