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Dealing With Medical Trauma
I’m going to be really honest about something…
I am feeling vaguely traumatized from last week.
Even though it ended up being an infection + presumed pancreatitis, the process of being violently ill for 10 days and not knowing why the pain was so severe was… severely damaging to my psyche. I feel like I “barely crawled through” the experience in one piece, and have spent much of this week running and gunning and working (and trying to catch up from being off for a few days), while also feeling completely detached from it all together.
I haven’t said this “out loud” to anyone, really. You forum friends are the first.
Do you ever feel completely shaken by a medical experience?
What was it and how long did it take to fade?
Did you do anything to deal with the trauma, so too speak?
Did you label it that at all?
I feel weird labeling that and saying it “out loud” but… I also am going through my insane busy week- all smiles and hard work ethic- feeling completely severed in two between the side of me that’s still scared and worried it will come back, and the side of me that wants to pretend it never happened.
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1 Reply
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I can understand this so well, Bailey. Oftentimes, I don’t even realize how traumatizing something was until I’m lying awake in the quiet moments after the storm has passed. I was always hesitant to label this, thinking “we all go through hard things” and also believing that terms like PTSD were reserved for veterans of war or severe assault.
Then, I came across an article online about medical PTSD in survivors of open heart surgery. I’ve since read about it in the context of many other diseases, conditions, and injuries, but that was the first I read about so it has always stuck with me.
Medical PTSD is very real and I no longer feel like my experiences aren’t worthy of the label. From something as seemingly simple as blood draws gone awry to the things we “barely crawl through,” our feelings about them are valid. Trauma is not relative, it doesn’t need to be compared or measured against anyone else’s.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a hard time and I sincerely hope that you’re doing better both mentally and physically at this point. Sending love.
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