M
mooreye
Hi Guys, I haven't written on this forum before. I have read some amazing stories and mine seems trivial in comparison, but it was the toughest battle that have ever had to fight through. I have always thought of Post Traumatic Stress as something that happened to guys on the front line and I also had that innate sense that these things couldn't happen to me, but I was wrong, very wrong.
In May, 2011, I was 53 and in the best shape for my life, fifteen stone and six pounds and down to 6% BF. I was just 3 weeks out from the NC Brits over 50’s, which I had won twice before and things looked well. The only precursory signs I had to the problems that I was going to encounter was acid reflux
I was lay at home after a hard session on the wheels and I felt like I was going to be sick, but what greeted me was blood. I went with my girl to the A&E and they did some tests on me, but nothing showed up but they kept me in for observations. I was lying there, talking to my girl when all I knew was that I spewed out a lot of blood. I must have passed out then because when I came too, it didn't look like the clinical setting of a hospital bed, it resembled a battlefield.
The bed was full of blood, so were my clothes, my girl and some of the nurses. There was an hive of activity as doctors pushed lines into my veins and prepared a blood transfusion. My anxiety at this point was compounded by some patients asking if I was dead?
I could see by my girl's eyes that she was scared as I now surveyed the scene a little more clearly. In my mind I thought this is it, I am dying and at that stage, I never dreamt that I would wake up as they wheeled me down to theatre.
It was a shock to wake up In HDU, covered in lines that monitored my heart and blood pressure as well as giving me medication and blood. It was three days before I could eat and then just little drops of fluid and tiny morsels of food. I was told by the consultant that I had a Mallory Weiss Tear and this was exacerbated by it rupturing across an artery and that I had encountered heart problems during the endoscopy that they had used to clip the laceration.
I never slept that much, my mind played graphic replays of the trauma and kept me awake. When I got home, it got worse. I had been told to rest but I couldn't, time after time, the flashbacks came back to haunt me. I was getting more and more depressed too, my body felt fat and I couldn't risk training.
Each and every day was battle; at times I just hid myself away from anything and everything. I had beaten many things to become a five times British champion. I had recovered from Brain trauma and lived with M.E. but this felt like I would never recover and I must admit I thought many times about suicide.
It was over six months before my girl talked me into going to the GP. He referred me to a psychiatrist, who after listening to me, diagnosed that I was suffering with Post Traumatic Stress and Adjustment Syndrome.
I felt better for knowing what was wrong, but still very ashamed because It was a physical illness.
Any improvement was quickly dashed by the consultant telling me after my second endoscopy, that although the laceration had healed, in his opinion because I didn't drink or didn't have an illness that meant that I was retching a lot, that the heavy lifting that I was doing must be the catalyst.
If I went back to competition training, I risked a bleed again. It suddenly hit me that I had spent much of the last thirty years devoting much of my life to the sport and now It was over. It really hit me bad and although I knew that I had a good innings and that this wasn't my livelihood like some buggers have had to face up to, but it still hurt.
At first, I became more depressed and the flashbacks ripped through me, but it slowly dawned on me, that there was a life before competing and that the problems I had shouldn't be hid away. That was the problem with society, most people can accept physical illness but it is seen by many including myself as a weakness.
It took me another 8 months till I got myself together to go back to both work and the gym on a graded return. I still have up and down days, but I am now back to training to some degree and I have also returned back to work.
I learned a lot from the experience, I remembered why I took up sport as a young kid and that wasn't to be massive at the expense of everything, it was to be healthy and for the sport to be part of my life and not my whole life.
I have CBT since and that helped me, but there are still up and down days when even getting out of bed seems a major chore. It took me a long time to write this, it's cathartic for me now to talk about it, but I delayed getting help, simply because I was ashamed because it wasn't a physical injury.
In May, 2011, I was 53 and in the best shape for my life, fifteen stone and six pounds and down to 6% BF. I was just 3 weeks out from the NC Brits over 50’s, which I had won twice before and things looked well. The only precursory signs I had to the problems that I was going to encounter was acid reflux
I was lay at home after a hard session on the wheels and I felt like I was going to be sick, but what greeted me was blood. I went with my girl to the A&E and they did some tests on me, but nothing showed up but they kept me in for observations. I was lying there, talking to my girl when all I knew was that I spewed out a lot of blood. I must have passed out then because when I came too, it didn't look like the clinical setting of a hospital bed, it resembled a battlefield.
The bed was full of blood, so were my clothes, my girl and some of the nurses. There was an hive of activity as doctors pushed lines into my veins and prepared a blood transfusion. My anxiety at this point was compounded by some patients asking if I was dead?
I could see by my girl's eyes that she was scared as I now surveyed the scene a little more clearly. In my mind I thought this is it, I am dying and at that stage, I never dreamt that I would wake up as they wheeled me down to theatre.
It was a shock to wake up In HDU, covered in lines that monitored my heart and blood pressure as well as giving me medication and blood. It was three days before I could eat and then just little drops of fluid and tiny morsels of food. I was told by the consultant that I had a Mallory Weiss Tear and this was exacerbated by it rupturing across an artery and that I had encountered heart problems during the endoscopy that they had used to clip the laceration.
I never slept that much, my mind played graphic replays of the trauma and kept me awake. When I got home, it got worse. I had been told to rest but I couldn't, time after time, the flashbacks came back to haunt me. I was getting more and more depressed too, my body felt fat and I couldn't risk training.
Each and every day was battle; at times I just hid myself away from anything and everything. I had beaten many things to become a five times British champion. I had recovered from Brain trauma and lived with M.E. but this felt like I would never recover and I must admit I thought many times about suicide.
It was over six months before my girl talked me into going to the GP. He referred me to a psychiatrist, who after listening to me, diagnosed that I was suffering with Post Traumatic Stress and Adjustment Syndrome.
I felt better for knowing what was wrong, but still very ashamed because It was a physical illness.
Any improvement was quickly dashed by the consultant telling me after my second endoscopy, that although the laceration had healed, in his opinion because I didn't drink or didn't have an illness that meant that I was retching a lot, that the heavy lifting that I was doing must be the catalyst.
If I went back to competition training, I risked a bleed again. It suddenly hit me that I had spent much of the last thirty years devoting much of my life to the sport and now It was over. It really hit me bad and although I knew that I had a good innings and that this wasn't my livelihood like some buggers have had to face up to, but it still hurt.
At first, I became more depressed and the flashbacks ripped through me, but it slowly dawned on me, that there was a life before competing and that the problems I had shouldn't be hid away. That was the problem with society, most people can accept physical illness but it is seen by many including myself as a weakness.
It took me another 8 months till I got myself together to go back to both work and the gym on a graded return. I still have up and down days, but I am now back to training to some degree and I have also returned back to work.
I learned a lot from the experience, I remembered why I took up sport as a young kid and that wasn't to be massive at the expense of everything, it was to be healthy and for the sport to be part of my life and not my whole life.
I have CBT since and that helped me, but there are still up and down days when even getting out of bed seems a major chore. It took me a long time to write this, it's cathartic for me now to talk about it, but I delayed getting help, simply because I was ashamed because it wasn't a physical injury.
