Aussie mum nearly died after drinking ‘too much’ water

Nina Munro was given an array of different medications and told to drink more water. Photo / 123rf
An Australian woman said she was ‘slowly drowning herself’ after being told to drink more water.
A Queensland mum has revealed she nearly died after she drank four litres of water a day to “flush out” a cold.
Nina Munro, 41, was told to drink more water to help get rid of her persistent cough and sore throat.
But the excessive amounts of water, combined with medications she was taking to help beat the winter “bugs”, flooded her system and left her with life-threateningly low sodium levels in her blood.
“All the doctors said they didn’t know how I survived it,” the government officer said. “I was slowing drowning myself and I didn’t even know it. My husband said I wouldn’t do anything without a glass of water by my side.”
Munro, who described herself as “a super-healthy person”, said her health issues began six weeks before she was admitted to hospital.
Her symptoms initially seemed minor. She felt slightly under the weather, putting it down to catching a bug from her daughter who is in kindergarten.
But from there her problems snowballed to the point where she had a seizure and was rushed to hospital spending five days in intensive care as doctors battled to stabilise her sodium levels.
After her daughter came down with pneumonia in May, Munro’s sickness ramped up a notch, and she developed laryngitis and lost her voice.
She also unknowingly caught a mycoplasma, a bacterium that causes infections in different parts of the body, including the respiratory tract.
“I also had a cold, ear ache and a sore throat which I kept going to doctors for,” she said.
“I never felt like I had time to rest with the constant demands of parenting and work.”
Munro saw five doctors during the six-week period and was given an array of different medications while being told to drink more water.
“I had three lots of steroids, three lots of antibiotics, nasal sprays and Nurofen, which also lowers your sodium – it was a perfect storm,” she explained.
But rather than feeling better, she said she began to feel worse, prompting her to visit a hospital after a workout left her feeling light-headed.
“I left a gym class as I felt I wasn’t moving right,” she said.
“I went to a hospital and they said ‘drink lots of water’ as they thought I was having withdrawals from the steroids.”
The next day she developed a “haze” in front of her eyes and experts again told her to drink more, she claimed.
By June 15, she had been vomiting for three days and had “drank around four litres that day and [had] no food”.
“I just kept thinking I needed to drink all this water to flush it out,” Munro said.
“I’ve always tried to drink at least two litres a day, if not more.”
Her husband called an ambulance, and she was rushed to hospital..
Munro’s sodium level was 100 milliequivalents per litre (mEq/L) – far below what’s considered normal, which tend to be between 135 and 145.
She said she was told by doctors the cause of her low sodium level was from drinking too much water combined with medications she had been on.
Her memory of her time in the ICU is a bit patchy, but Munro counts herself lucky to be alive.
After a brief monitoring period, she made a full recovery, and is now back to full health – although she is unable to drive for six months because of her seizure.
She also said that her condition may have been caught earlier if she’d been given a blood test during her visits to doctors, as “the blood test would have shown the sodium level as being very low”.
“I think it will take a while to trust that things will be okay. It was like my body had a hard reset and had to start up again.”
Now Munro only drinks when she is thirsty and restricts herself to a maximum of around 1.5 litres of water a day.
Australian guidelines recommend adults drink 2.6 litres of water a day, which is roughly about eight cups.
“The first few days in ICU I couldn’t drink anything and when I left hospital I was on a restricted diet and naturally now drink less.
“They told me to drink for thirst only.”