My fairy tale 💙

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In 2014, just a few days after I was admitted into the hospital to have my Bonebridge Implant, my life changed all because of the untrusted ENT team at St Thomas' hospital.

Jiang, Dan - 

face, his team, his theatre gown haunts me to this day... I have flashbacks of his clogs and colourful operating top.

The emotional trauma of the hospitalization lingered long after I got the all-clear from the doctors who cared for me not... whilst I was in the hospital.

It took some time, but I learned that the depression and anxiety, along with other symptoms I experienced upon, were symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and were related to my near-death experience between 2014-2015.

The set of health issues that arise after both surgeries, wasn't something I’d heard about until two years into my battle with it.

Symptoms include:

muscle weakness and balance issues

cognitive issues and memory loss

anxiety

depression

nightmares

And more... I won't bore you guys 🤐

I experienced every symptom on this list in the months to follow and still do to this day... I live in the painless fake bubble that protects me now.

And yet, while my hospital discharge papers included a list of nothing...my aftercare which was a five-minute chat in a fancy office being told, I look good 🤥 not even any discussion of my mental health.

Not one of them ever told me I had more than a 1-in-3 chance of experiencing PTSD symptoms once I left the hospital.

Though I was physically well according to the hospital enough to be discharged, I wasn’t well... My bed was needed for the next victim.

At home, I obsessively researched, trying to pinpoint for myself what I could’ve done differently to prevent my illness. I felt lethargic and depressed.

Though physical weakness could be attributed to having been so sick, the morbid thoughts of death and the nightmares that left me feeling anxious for hours after I woke up didn’t make any sense to me.

I had survived a near-death experience! I was supposed to feel lucky, happy, like a superwoman! Instead, I felt scared and grim.

Immediately after I was discharged from the hospital, it was easy to dismiss my PTSD symptoms as the side effects of my illness.

I was mentally foggy and forgetful, as if I was sleep-deprived, even when I had slept for 8 to 10 hours thanks to sleeping pills. I had balance issues in the shower, everywhere becoming dizzy and feeling panicked as a result.

I was anxious and quick to anger. A light-hearted joke meant to make me feel better would result in feelings of rage. I chalked it up to the fact that I don’t like feeling helpless and weak.

Hearing “It takes time to recover" from one medical professional only to be told by another “You recovered so quickly! You’re lucky!” was confusing and disorienting. Was I better or not?

Some days, I was convinced I’d gotten through unscathed. Other days, I felt like I’d never been well again.

WHAT IS PTSD?

Many traumatic situations, aside from military conflict, can cause great psychological distress which may result in lasting mental health problems. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common of these and in the most recent years, there has been a lot of work to develop effective ways to prevent and treat it.

People with PTSD experience heightened arousal (such as sleep disturbances and being easily startled) and intense fear, reliving the trauma they’ve been through, and avoiding reminders of it.

In the UK, the diagnostic threshold for PTSD is high. You have to be seriously unwell to cross it. PTSD is a state of being where your threat response is turned up to maximum sensitivity for most, or all of the time. You regress from the civilised, educated and compassionate individual that you want to be, to a cowering creature in the jungle, convinced that everything is out to kill you. This state can be accurately described as hyper-vigilance.

In hyper-vigilance, your fight or flight response is permanently switched on. Your emotional response becomes anxiety, depression or anger and perhaps a dynamic and debilitating combination. This affects your behaviour, your relationships and your performance. That’s bad for your home life and your professional life. Remain in that state long enough, and despair creeps in. Despair reduces your view of your options and you want to get away from it. But where are you going to flee to? When you feel you have no place to flee to, then suicide becomes the solution for many sufferers. My response was isolation. Away from everything and everyone... My flight or fight response is tuned very much to fight.

had not been sleeping more than a couple of hours a night for many months, I was not eating, I had intrusive thoughts and nightmares.  I say that I only come out of the corner fighting, but that’s a lie.  I know despair.   Can you imagine how long it has taken me to both admit and to share that?

I had PTSD then. I have PTSD now, though I am not currently in a hyper-vigilant state due to many months of intensive self-help and some significant life choices.

In PTSD, your cup of capacity to cope drains away one drop at a time, until you can no longer manage.  You become hyper-vigilant, your stress hormone levels soar and you are on the trigger edge.  You may respond with anxiety, depression or anger and maybe a combination of them.  You will be fatigued, your relationships will be under significant strain and you will become a version of you that you do not want to be.  You will not be coping.

You will, however, do a magnificent job of convincing yourself that everything is ok and you just need to keep calm and carry on.

Where to from here? Next, we need to think about how we explore and recognise stress disorder in ourselves and those around us. Then we can move on to think about therapies that can help to manage PTSD in those affected and to help those who are there to support them too.


Thank you all for reading my blog, my reality. 

You are not alone 💙, please reach out to your friends, family, your trusted doctor, but do not suffer in silence. 

Here are a few useful links you can use to help you start your healing process.

https://www.mind.org.uk/

https://mentalhealth-uk.org/

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/

https://www.rethink.org/

https://www.idealflatmate.co.uk/flatmate-HQ/top-10-uk-mental-health-charities/

Love to you all 💙💚 Ami 

Remember I am always here to help 💙💚


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