A mother of two from Indiana died from water toxicity during a family vacation, a rare complication of drinking too much water too quickly.
She had complained to her family that she couldn’t drink enough to feel satisfied.
Ashley Summers, 35, was severely dehydrated when, according to the New York Post, she started feeling extremely thirsty while spending the Fourth of July weekend at Lake Freeman with her husband and two young daughters.
Her brother Devon Miller told WRTV that “someone claimed she drank four bottles of water in 20 minutes.”.
“I mean, an average water bottle is like 16 ounces, so that was 64 ounces that she drank in 20 minutes. That’s half a gallon. That’s what you’re supposed to drink in a whole day.”
On the last day of the family vacation, the mother started to feel dehydrated. According to her family, she frequently complained about feeling dizzy and having a dull headache.
“My sister, Holly, called me, and she was just an absolute wreck. She was like ‘Ashley is in the hospital. She has brain swelling, they don’t know what’s causing it, they don’t know what they can do to get it to go down, and it’s not looking good,’” said Miller.
Summers passed out in her garage after the trip and was taken to IU Health Arnett Hospital. She lost consciousness and never recovered, and doctors informed her family that she had died from water toxicity.
“It was a shock to all of us. When they first started talking about water toxicity It was like this is a thing?” Miller recalled.
