Mother of two dies from drinking too much water while on a family vacation

An Indiana mother of two who told her family it felt like she couldn’t drink enough water to feel satiated collapsed and died from water toxicity which is a rare consequence of drinking too much water too quickly.

According to New York Post, Ashley Summers, 35, was out at Lake Freeman with her husband and two young daughters over the Fourth of July weekend when she began feeling severely dehydrated.

Someone said she drank four bottles of water in 20 minutes,” her brother Devon Miller told WRTV. “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’s trip, the mom began feeling like she couldn’t drink enough water. She complained about feeling lightheaded and having a stubborn headache, her family said.

“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.

After returning from the trip, Summers passed out in her garage before being taken to IU Health Arnett Hospital. She never regained consciousness, and doctors told her family 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.

Summers was an organ donor and was able to donate her heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and some of her long bone tissue, ultimately saving five other lives, her family said.

📸: New York Times