Whirly,
I missed of the part that would have made sense of my post, so sorry, but yes you are right , you must trust your instruments, for they dont know that you have flown into the grey stuff, but there are pilots who will ignore the instruments, because they feel that up, is down, and right is level and so on, could this possibly be caused by the medical/physical situation that I refer to, do their inner body feelings and sense's overcome the picture being shown on the dial's.
By the way, regarding the 45 seconds of life on the heli, the Cfi was referring to R22!
Had a go in a Squirral Sim not long ago, I found inst sim flying wrecked my confidence completly!