my journey with PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I haven’t written or talked about this much. Honestly, I think the biggest reason is Imposter Syndrome. Even when I got diagnosed with it I didnt’ believe the doctors. I had assumed that only veterans or people who had been in traumatic accidents could experience this disorder.

So what was my triggering event? Here is my journal entry from that time:

  I was in Thermodynamics trying to take notes. I was becoming very disoriented. I couldn’t hear my professor or see what he was writing on the board. I got up and left class. I was walking around campus completely lost. I recognized the engineering building and walked into it. I went to my advisor’s office. I told her I was really confused and didn’t know what was going on. She called one of my roommates and had her direct me home. I was having a hard time breathing and was in a lot of pain. I was in my room tearing apart my desk looking for my insurance cards. I didn’t recognize anything I was touching. I couldn’t focus on anything. My roommate came in and said it was time to go to the hospital. I couldn’t stand. I told them I was drowning.

  When we arrived at the hospital I tried to explain to the doctors how I was feeling. I told them something was seriously wrong and I wanted to be kept overnight. They asked my roommates if I had been drinking or doing any other recreational activities. They said no and that they’ve never seen me like this before. The nurses listened to my lungs and said I sounded fine. They said that I was probably just stressed from school and that I was having a panic attack. They prescribed me morphine. I got the drip and seemed to calm down a lot. They said I needed to rest, and not let myself get worked up again. The doctors sent me home and said to take it easy. 

I collapsed in the parking lot.

I could see everything fading to black as I crashed down. My head hit the ground and I was out. I could feel my roommates picking me up. I told them I didn’t want to go back in to the hospital, they weren’t listening to me there anyway. We went home and they laid me on the couch. I began to gasp for air. I wasn’t breathing. I told my roommates I was drowning again. They called the hospital and asked what to do. The hospital said not to come in and that I needed to rest. I could hear my roommate saying, “she’s turning purple”. They said if we absolutely wanted to come back in we could, but they had already done everything they could for a panic attack.

Back in the hospital’s emergency room, they rushed me through the waiting room and into a room. I begged them to keep me overnight. I told them something felt very wrong. They listened to my lungs again and said they were clear. They took an x-ray this time to probably shut me up, and it came back clear too. I could hear them telling my roommates that I just had too much excitement and should stay home the rest of the weekend. No going out of the apartment.

  Saturday morning I remember making a phone call.

I called my friend from back home. I told her no one would let me talk to my parents and that I was dying. She said that she would call them for me if I wanted. I don’t know why I called her. I don’t know why I was so certain I was dying, but I honestly was scared for my life. I felt like no one was taking me seriously, and I was drowning.

I don’t remember Sunday at all. 

Then I was woken up by my dad. He had McDonald’s breakfast in his hands. He was trying to force-feed me. I asked him what he was doing there (they lived 4 hours away). He couldn’t sleep because he was so worried about me so he got up and drove to Iowa. He had been on the phone all morning and got me an appointment with a urologist. I had just had a kidney stone a few weeks ago and he thought it may be my kidney failing. Since I only have one that could be why it has made me so sick. I told him I had a differential equations exam later that day that I could not miss. (there’s that stress the doctors were talking about).

 In the hospital parking lot, I opened the door and fell out of the truck. I couldn’t walk. My dad picked me up and I screamed, it hurt so bad to be held. It hurt so bad to try to walk, to breathe. Somehow we made it to the waiting room. I was sitting in a chair and looking at a lady when I could feel my eyes shutting and my body falling. I don’t remember that doctor’s appointment at all. I met with a urologist apparently and he asked me a few questions. He immediately admitted me because he knew something was seriously wrong with me and it was not my kidney.

 I woke to a million people rushing into my room.

I was lying on a bed and hearing a lot of frantic medical terms being shouted over my bed. Code blue. It felt like a scene from a dramatic hospital tv show like “House”. I could hear someone next to me saying “She’s not breathing, we’re going to need to insert a tube”. I panicked and thought, wait! I’ll start breathing! I was frantically looking around the room for my dad. He was by the door and they were pushing him out.  This was when I knew it was bad. He had tears in his eyes and he was no longer allowed to be in the room with me. I thought this is it.

They came to say goodbye  

My dad called my mom and said the doctors told him I wasn’t going to make it through the night. She grabbed my sister and they drove through the night to be at the hospital to say goodbye to me.

 He also called my roommates and thanked them for everything they did to help me. He said that the doctors didn’t think I’d make it through the evening and that if they wanted to come and say goodbye they could.

 I was in a medically induced coma.

In the ICU I was breathing via a ventilator and had a million tubes in me. My left lung had completely collapsed, and my right one was filling with fluid. I had double pneumonia and a serious infection in my chest. The doctors were puzzled by the speed of deterioration of my lungs, and couldn’t figure out what the infection was and if it was limited to my lungs and chest. They inserted a tube into the side of my chest to try to drain some fluid from my lungs, and to start testing it for a diagnosis. Overnight my left lung filled with fluid again. The drain was not yielding very much fluid so they were preparing me for surgery. The hope was to get all of the gunk out of my chest and lungs, restoring them to full functionality. This would allow me to come off the breathing machine and breathe on my own.

They told my parents the infection could be very serious, and to prepare for the worst. I had tons of visitors. A big Italian family drives 4 hours to say goodbye to a girl in a coma.

  The surgery was very difficult on my body. I lost a lot of blood and needed a blood transfusion. They inserted two chest drains to catch any new fluid/bacteria that the body would continue to produce for a bit. My (only) kidney was damaged by the bacterial infection, meds, the CT contrast or all 3.

  When I woke up from the coma

I couldn’t hold on to memories of what had just taken place 5 minutes prior. They gave me a pen to write with and I couldn’t hold it. I was on some major hallucinogenic drugs, and had some terrifying visions. One night I was screaming and my mom came next to my bed and I told her there were millions of spiders on the ceiling. I was terrified.

  Luckily, that grogginess faded after a few days. During those few days I kept asking my mom what happened. I told my mom I had to get back to take my Differential Equations exam. She told me a week had already passed and everything that had happened, and then I drifted off to sleep. I was so exhausted. I was terrified I was going to have to learn everything all over again like a child.

Part of me was worried I would never learn these things again.

  Many people ask me if when you wake up you feel like you have been sleeping forever. I did not. I felt like I hadn’t slept in a month. I felt like I had been hit by a train. I ached all over.

  I was in so much pain and then a new nurse came in. She asked me if I was ready to start physical therapy. I kind of smiled at her and then looked questioningly at my mom. The nurse said it was important to get moving since I had been so sedentary for a week. I told her I couldn’t even hold things in my hands. She had me get up out of bed and walk all the way over to the chair next to my bed. I think I took about 6 steps. I had to sit upright in that chair for 30 minutes. It was so excruciatingly painful, and I wanted nothing more than to curl back up into my hospital bed. I was shocked at how little movement was so difficult and yet so praiseworthy.

A couple of days later I did a complete loop around the ICU.

  By the next week I was asking my parents if we could walk to different floors of the hospital. When my roommates would visit I would do laps around my floor with them. I was excited to get up and get moving. I thought the more progress I showed the quicker I would recover and the quicker I would get back to school.

They had to pump my stomach, TWICE!

 My movement was good, my kidney was stabilized, and I was breathing on my own. The only thing was I couldn’t seem to eat or drink anything. I was eating a couple of ice chips an hour, but I had been on this diet for about 12 days now. Whenever they tried bringing me applesauce or increased my water intake I would get nauseous and throw it up. One night I woke up and started puking. I woke my dad up and told him I couldn’t stop throwing up. I continued to throw up for a couple of hours straight. I hadn’t eaten solid food in almost 2 weeks so I was throwing up only stomach acid. My dad called a nurse in and they decided they would have to pump my stomach to try and stop me from throwing it all up. They pumped it overnight and stopped it first thing in the morning.

The next day we tried some applesauce for lunch and the same thing happened. They pumped my stomach a second time and did some testing. I had pancreatitis. I had gone through a lot in the last two weeks, much of which I was asleep for, but this seemed like the worst of it. The only treatment for pancreatitis is to totally rest the pancreas - meaning no food or drinks until the pancreas appears to be back to normal. Back to the ice chip diet.

It felt devastating to have a setback.

I was so eager to get better. My counts were all good, I was feeling stronger, and I was itching to get out of that place. I had built up my spirits and was being very positive, but this really hit me hard. I also came to terms with not going back to school that semester. Missing two weeks alone would be difficult to make up in any program. Engineering seemed especially insurmountable. I also would not be able to walk to class, carry even a single textbook, or be able to keep up with the workload. I became so depressed. I had to file paperwork to drop out of school. I felt like such a failure. I had a long road ahead of me. I went home to St. Louis, and worked on recovering.

  Both of my parents went back to work, and my sister was at school. So I sat at home, alone. I was in such a bad place. My family was so grateful to still have me in their life, and I was so angry. Of course I was grateful to be alive, but I was so devastated. I also weighed about 75 lbs. I think anyone losing about 20 lbs after a month of hospitalization would be a bit cranky too.

6 months out, and I was back to myself.

I had to go in regularly for checkups. I had so many specialists at this point. I had to go to a doctor for my lungs, another for my kidney and my pancreas, and even one for my heart. They continued to test the functionality of all these organs. The numbers weren’t just looking good, they were looking great. They all asked how each organ or part of me felt, and I said fine. I just wanted to move on from this so badly. Being stuck at home made me feel like I was still sick, and I wasn’t according to these numbers.     

Then I went to my regular physician’s office for an appointment. She asked all the questions the other doctors were asking. She closed her laptop and looked at me. She said, “is there anything else going on Angelina?” I said I think I’m okay. She asked if I was doing okay emotionally or mentally. I paused and thought about it. I told her some strange things had been happening that I hadn’t talked about with my parents. I kept waking up in the middle of the night with nose bleeds. Or I would drift off into almost a daydream and I’d be back at the hospital. I would suddenly feel the pains I had felt while I was in there. My hands hurt all the time from the memory of all the needles.  After I would have one of these daydreams I would oftentimes throw up, or have another nosebleed. I told her I hadn’t really talked about it because I just thought it was part of the recovery.

She started explaining to me what PTSD was.

She said that many people who go through a traumatic experience end up suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She told me I should consider going to therapy.

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted to put this all behind me. I figured if I just went back to school I would get over it. I would get back into my routine of going to class, studying, and hanging out with my friends. I headed back to Iowa, and had to repeat the last semester. I was now behind all of my classmates, and feeling pretty overwhelmed. This doesn’t help PTSD. I began having terrible flashbacks. I couldn’t focus, I was always scared I was going to go into a flashback, and I was doing poorly in school.

Now I was reliving it, over and over again.

I was having memories of before I woke up from the coma. I called my parents and told them about the flashbacks. I told them what was in them and they confirmed what I envisioned. I could tell them about conversations had while I was unconscious. I could hear family members in my hospital room. These flashbacks were very vivid. I kept thinking I was back in the hospital. Most of what I had gone through was scary for my family, but I had been asleep for it. It was like a constant nightmare. It would happen in the middle of a class, of a test, or of a conversation with somebody.

I decided it was time to try therapy.

I went to a couple different therapists, and everyone gave off that Hollywood persona of a therapist. Then on about the 4th therapist I had a schpeel ready to go when I walked in the door. I said, “I don’t really believe in going to a therapist. I don’t like the idea of someone analyzing my thought process, and writing it all down on their notepad”. She set down her notepad and crossed her legs beneath her in her comfy chair. She said okay, lets just have a conversation. She said I won’t write anything down, I’ll just listen to whatever it is you want to talk about. I was shocked. I told her I was reluctantly seeing her because I needed to do better in school.

  I began telling her about my flashbacks, and that I thought PTSD only occurred in Veterans and car crash victims. I said I felt like a fraud for accepting that diagnosis. She told me that PTSD is very real in patients who have gone through much less traumatizing events. It doesn’t matter what anyone else views your experience as, only how you feel about it. Especially since I was having “visions” of things I hadn’t truly experienced prior. 

Therapy was so beneficial for me.

This experience had a lot of layers. Not being listened to, almost dying, hearing those you love tell you goodbye, feeling their deepest emotions, dropping out of school, and just the physical toll this illness took on my body. Another major part of this was the lack of explanation. Doctors were not only puzzled by how this began and progressed so quickly, but also had been surprised by my recovery. They had told my parents to tell me goodbye. They had said there wasn’t much hope.

If you made it this far thanks for reading! I have only shared bits and pieces of this story with a select few. It feels so personal and very vulnerable. This was the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through but it feels important to share. I was adamant about my physical ailments but then tried to hide my mental health ones. If you are experiencing PTSD symptoms don’t feel like you are an imposter. It is much more common than you think. 1 in 6 U.S. adults will experience PTSD.