Ya my exes son had them about twice a month for like 2.5 years or so, starting at age 3, and it was the absolute worst thing I have ever experienced. There is literally no way someone can even come close to understanding unless they have seen them first hand but I have and I feel so badly for you.

The experience we had was exactly like you described. Screaming and pointing at things that weren't there, saying things that made no sense while having while being the most terrified you could ever imagine someone being, kicking and fighting if he tried to hold him etc and then BAM in an instant he would be 100% normal and he would be all sweet and wonder why we were in his room. Like a demon had just left him and an angel had took over.

I can tell you already the doctor won't be able to do anything and just tell you don't let your child get too exhausted before sleep. I do have some possible good news for you because we did find something that worked, if we could get him to take a drink of anything with sugar he would snap out of it within a minute so we came up with a method for handling them that actually worked.

You know how when you wake up to one you are out of the bed and running to your kids room before you even realize what is going on? Well we would be moving within .02 seconds of that first scream and she would go to his room and I would run to the kitchen and grab a capri sun and then run to his room, I liked those because if he threw it then it didn't go everywhere so I could just pick it up and try again and also it seemed easier to get him to sip from a straw than a cup. She would sit near him and try to calm him down, you can touch them to comfort them but if you try to physically hold them down you are going to get your arse kicked and it is not going to help....only restrain them if they are going to hurt themselves. While she did that I would try to get him to take a sip, if I could it would be over. It usually took 2-5 minutes but when you are going through that the difference between 2-5 minutes compared to 10-20 is such a long amount of time that it cannot be fathomed by anyone who hasn't experienced it. Once he took a sip or two he would snap right out of it and we would just sit there with him until he was finished with the entire thing and it was over for the night. You are not supposed to let the child now what happened so we would just put him back to bed and then go talk about the crazy shite we just went through.

I hope that helps. Having capri suns and a plan of how you are going to react will make it a lot better, other than that you will just have to deal with them until she stops having them. Good luck, I really do feel for you. Its the worst feeling seeing your child like that but it does stop with age.