MuddyWaters
New Here
Hi Everyone,
I've been lurking for a few weeks now and have yet to see anything like I'm about to write, so I'm keen to hear from others if they are similar to me or not:)
My brother was 21 and diagnosed with leukaemia and I was 25. We were very close and as it turned out I was the perfect bone marrow match for him. We did the transplant and I did platelet recovery donations as well. It worked for four and a half months and then he rejected it. All in all it was 20 months that he was ill. It was truly horrific to watch him go from being healthy and athletic, to a yellow (liver failure due to chemo), bald, every anorexics dream skinny, pain filled (a sheet on him would have him screaming in agony) shadow of himself.
Seeing him actually die as I held his hand, is an image that will never be erased from my memory. There was nothing peaceful about it at all like what's shown in movies. He fought right up until he took his last breath. The doctors couldn't believe that he was still conscious and talking till 20 minutes before he died, not when he was on enough morphine to knock out an elephant. This kid did not want to die. His body failed him but his spirit didn't. I kissed him and could taste the poison leeching from his organs that were shutting down. He smelt and tasted like death.
For the first seven years after his death it was as if I'd never had a brother. I moved interstate to start again. I worked 90 hour weeks and kickboxed. I didn't have any photos of him in my home. I never spoke about him other than when people asked me about family. I'd simply say that I had a brother but he was dead. And I never told about about me doing the bone marrow transplant for him. It was as if he had never existed.
I then had a car accident and took nearly two years of rehab to get back to being able to care for myself. I was left with a permanent neck injury for which I will be on pain medication for the rest of my life. During the rehab I had to move back home as I couldn't at that time care for myself. I hadn't been back there since my brother had died.
Upon returning to my interstate home where I had moved after my brother died, a good girlfriend whose mother had cancer turned to me for support. Both she and her brother would call me and talk for hours about what they were going through. I would see them in their home too with their Mum. Things were fine until one day when I hadn't seen their Mum for about two months and I dropped in. She looked like my brother had looked near the end. It was also coming up to the anniversary of my brothers' death. I didn't know what was wrong with me but I felt like something had broken. I went home and suicided. The decision was that quick. It was just that simple.
Now the PTSD- Complex Grief roller coaster had begun, and I had no clue as to what was going on. After being hospitalised and being misdiagnosed and treated for the following four years by a doctor who had assessed me in hospital, I was getting nowhere and the talk therapy was fixing nothing. This doctor was highly recognised and exceptional at what she did, yet she could do nothing for me. For four years she treated me for free because she thought that I was exceptional, considering the diagnoses she had given me. I was apparently a master at compartmentalising.
She put me forward for a PTSD study group involving grief, which was funded by the government. To this day I am grateful that she recognised that she was not helping me and that she had the strength of character to admit it. After weeks of testing I was accepted into group A where they would be using CBT as the choice of therapy. After three weeks I was kicked out of the group because they quickly realised that they could not help me in the 10 weeks that the study would run for. The level of my rage was apparently scaring other women in the study group too.
I was referred to the psychologist (K) who had put the study together as she specialised in PTSD. She took me on and we worked really hard using exposure and schema therapy for the next two years. K then stopped seeing patients and went back to academia. I was handed to another doctor in the practice but I never felt really comfortable with him so I stopped therapy. I have never been depressed. I have never been on any sort of medication for PTSD. I was also able to work while doing therapy. In a lot of ways my compartmentalising has held me in good stead.
The big difference in my life from before I suicided to now, is that I can't, no matter how I try, shut down the entire 20 months that my brother was ill for. I don't have flashbacks in the way that I have read here that people have. Mine is more of a constant living in it. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I can be working, or out with friends, or having a shower, it's there in my head and it never turns off, ever. It runs like a movie from the moment I got the phone call telling me that he had leukaemia, right up until I drive off from the cemetery after burying him. Every smell, sound, sight, even what I was wearing is there. It just never goes away.
Three months ago I moved back to where I grew up, as I now have melanoma. It was time to be with my extended family and childhood friends again. I'm not anymore "triggered" here than I was when I moved interstate. I'm interviewing a new psychologist next week who uses EMDR in the hope that I can finally shut this down.
It's now 20 years since that phone call. I didn't think about him for the first seven years after his death, so it's been 13 years of this never ending, same playing movie, going around and around in my head. Every detail is as fresh now as it was 20 years ago. Does anyone else exist like this?
Thanks for reading and it's nice to meet you all:)
I've been lurking for a few weeks now and have yet to see anything like I'm about to write, so I'm keen to hear from others if they are similar to me or not:)
My brother was 21 and diagnosed with leukaemia and I was 25. We were very close and as it turned out I was the perfect bone marrow match for him. We did the transplant and I did platelet recovery donations as well. It worked for four and a half months and then he rejected it. All in all it was 20 months that he was ill. It was truly horrific to watch him go from being healthy and athletic, to a yellow (liver failure due to chemo), bald, every anorexics dream skinny, pain filled (a sheet on him would have him screaming in agony) shadow of himself.
Seeing him actually die as I held his hand, is an image that will never be erased from my memory. There was nothing peaceful about it at all like what's shown in movies. He fought right up until he took his last breath. The doctors couldn't believe that he was still conscious and talking till 20 minutes before he died, not when he was on enough morphine to knock out an elephant. This kid did not want to die. His body failed him but his spirit didn't. I kissed him and could taste the poison leeching from his organs that were shutting down. He smelt and tasted like death.
For the first seven years after his death it was as if I'd never had a brother. I moved interstate to start again. I worked 90 hour weeks and kickboxed. I didn't have any photos of him in my home. I never spoke about him other than when people asked me about family. I'd simply say that I had a brother but he was dead. And I never told about about me doing the bone marrow transplant for him. It was as if he had never existed.
I then had a car accident and took nearly two years of rehab to get back to being able to care for myself. I was left with a permanent neck injury for which I will be on pain medication for the rest of my life. During the rehab I had to move back home as I couldn't at that time care for myself. I hadn't been back there since my brother had died.
Upon returning to my interstate home where I had moved after my brother died, a good girlfriend whose mother had cancer turned to me for support. Both she and her brother would call me and talk for hours about what they were going through. I would see them in their home too with their Mum. Things were fine until one day when I hadn't seen their Mum for about two months and I dropped in. She looked like my brother had looked near the end. It was also coming up to the anniversary of my brothers' death. I didn't know what was wrong with me but I felt like something had broken. I went home and suicided. The decision was that quick. It was just that simple.
Now the PTSD- Complex Grief roller coaster had begun, and I had no clue as to what was going on. After being hospitalised and being misdiagnosed and treated for the following four years by a doctor who had assessed me in hospital, I was getting nowhere and the talk therapy was fixing nothing. This doctor was highly recognised and exceptional at what she did, yet she could do nothing for me. For four years she treated me for free because she thought that I was exceptional, considering the diagnoses she had given me. I was apparently a master at compartmentalising.
She put me forward for a PTSD study group involving grief, which was funded by the government. To this day I am grateful that she recognised that she was not helping me and that she had the strength of character to admit it. After weeks of testing I was accepted into group A where they would be using CBT as the choice of therapy. After three weeks I was kicked out of the group because they quickly realised that they could not help me in the 10 weeks that the study would run for. The level of my rage was apparently scaring other women in the study group too.
I was referred to the psychologist (K) who had put the study together as she specialised in PTSD. She took me on and we worked really hard using exposure and schema therapy for the next two years. K then stopped seeing patients and went back to academia. I was handed to another doctor in the practice but I never felt really comfortable with him so I stopped therapy. I have never been depressed. I have never been on any sort of medication for PTSD. I was also able to work while doing therapy. In a lot of ways my compartmentalising has held me in good stead.
The big difference in my life from before I suicided to now, is that I can't, no matter how I try, shut down the entire 20 months that my brother was ill for. I don't have flashbacks in the way that I have read here that people have. Mine is more of a constant living in it. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I can be working, or out with friends, or having a shower, it's there in my head and it never turns off, ever. It runs like a movie from the moment I got the phone call telling me that he had leukaemia, right up until I drive off from the cemetery after burying him. Every smell, sound, sight, even what I was wearing is there. It just never goes away.
Three months ago I moved back to where I grew up, as I now have melanoma. It was time to be with my extended family and childhood friends again. I'm not anymore "triggered" here than I was when I moved interstate. I'm interviewing a new psychologist next week who uses EMDR in the hope that I can finally shut this down.
It's now 20 years since that phone call. I didn't think about him for the first seven years after his death, so it's been 13 years of this never ending, same playing movie, going around and around in my head. Every detail is as fresh now as it was 20 years ago. Does anyone else exist like this?
Thanks for reading and it's nice to meet you all:)
