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Can a life threatening disease be considered trauma?

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Changing4Best

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I have Lyme Disease (you know, the one where you get bitten by a tick and get the bull's eye rash and then get really sick...) and I also have CPTSD from more traditional traumas. I was wondering if a life threatening disease can also be considered to be a trauma as well? This thing is insidious and recurs over and over. Originally, it went into my heart and I almost died from it. In fact, there was a little girl of 8 years old who did die from it while I was being hospitalized for it the first time.

It is incurable. It is caused by a tiny bacterium that is almost as small as a virus, in fact so small that most antibiotics don't really "get" at it well enough to eradicate it entirely (so it keeps coming back). Also, the antibiotics that are used against it have to be administered in high doses for long duration, so this complicates things a lot too. You get this kind of situation where you don't know which is worse, the disease or its so-called remedies. Frankly, both are very traumatic for me.

Also, since my immune system is compromised by this awful scourge, every time I get sick with ANYTHING, I run the risk of this thing recurring along with whatever is ailing me at the time! Generally, just getting sick is a worse ordeal than what it used to be, before this thing happened to me. Recovery takes longer and I feel so washed out, even if I just get a cold.

So, on top of having been molested as a child, and raped as an adult, I have this thing to deal with too. Sometimes, life is just too much for me and I feel like dying. I would not actively try to take my life, but the thought does occur to me when I am sick, because I just feel so half dead.

Does this make any sense?? Do you think this thing qualifies as a trauma too, especially since it never really goes away? My immune system is always at war with it and will be for the rest of my life!

And now, to make matters worse, the Centers For Disease Control have denied that it can be a chronic condition, probably because the insurance companies lobbied for this, as antibiotics are very expensive! There are other branches of our government that still recognize it as possibly being chronic in some cases, but probably as time goes on, the insurance companies with get to them too, SIGH.... which would mean that I could not be treated for it when it recurs, if it does, and it usually does, about every 2 years or so, if not sooner!
 
Thanks @hodge, I just got this book called OVERCOMING TRAUMA and PTSD by Sheela Raja PhD and it is a workbook, and I have been thinking that it might be a good idea to treat this thing as a trauma too in doing this workbook. She does not mention life threatening illnesses as traumas in the introduction, but I thought of it as a trauma as I was reading through her list of possible ones as something that I thought she had missed! That is why I asked. I wanted to know what folks here think.
 
AH, OK, I read the article, thanks @Friday for the clarification. I needed to know in order to use this Workbook correctly. I'll just stick to the molestations and adult rape when working in the Workbook then. That should keep things manageable. Otherwise I might have ended up having to write a book in order to complete this Workbook. None the less, the Workbook is hitting upon things, as I read it, that may not be traumas, but sure's hell did ruin my life anyway! And some of those things resulted in the very real traumas I did experience in later life. So I know I will have a lot to do in this workbook, either way, I think.
 
Now I am confused and here is why: The Workbook states that one of the things that are considered to be "Trauma" is "You experience ... a situation that involves threat of actual death" and the Lyme Disease was just that for me! Someone died from the disease, while I was being treated for it. I almost died from it too, because it went into my heart. I was so severely sick from it that I was bedridden for a long time after I was hospitalized for it too. And now, over 25 years later, I am still being affected by it seriously. I can have a panic attack, if I have to walk in the grass, for instance. Ticks are everywhere this year, and a few years ago I was re-exposed to the disease by another tick bite too. All I did was to walk through the grass, and a few days later, I got the rash. I was treated for it, but then, a year or 2 later, I relapsed and ended up in the Hospital with a lung infection after I had a sinus infection. That lung infection lead to two more hospitalizations that winter.... so, you see, this thing threatens my life every so often. So now I really don't know if I should treat it as a "Trauma" or not! I am so confused. @Friday
 
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Again, the Workbook is called: OVERCOMING TRAUMA and PTSD by Sheela Raja PhD and other books and sources may have different definitions for trauma, obviously, I guess.
 
I'm thinking, also, that it may have been more traumatic for me than for your average person because I was already PTSD due to having been molested as a child. I was not yet diagnosed for the PTSD at that time, nor was I even aware of the fact that I had been molested. That came up later on in therapy.

None the less, the fact remains that I already was PTSD when I got the Lyme Disease and this might very well have affected how I reacted to it. One of the questions in the Workbook is: "How I reacted" and so that has to be considered too. I was DEVASTATED by the Lyme Disease. It wrecked my life. It took me a long time to recover physically, but mentally I have always since that time been badly and deeply affected by it also.

In fact, one time I even had a panic attack while watching someone on TV walking through tall grasses, one of the worst things a person can do, in terms of being highly exposible to the disease. Since that time, I have had an aversion to watching TV, and I don't even own one now. I am realizing right now all of this. I never realized what was my TRUE aversion to television! Until today.
 
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