Jenbrookify
Bronze Member
I don't really know how to start the story, because I don't know how it happened and neither does anyone else. But I can sort of piece it together based on guessing and what my mom told me had happened before I woke up.
While deeply asleep, I injured my face. I broke my upper jaw clean off of my skull and knocked four teeth out, two partially, two fully. I had a ragged tear above where I broke my jaw straight through my lip. I don't know how. I may have fallen off of my bed, which was about 4 feet off the ground. I may have tripped while sleep walking (which is supposed to be nearly impossible). After the fact I sat on the floor and cried. I was still asleep.
I cried for long enough and loud enough that my mom, two closed doors and a hallway away, heard, woke up, got up and came to help me. She saw blood on my face and thought I just had a bloody nose, so she helped me get up and got me back on my bed. I was still asleep.
She left but I wouldn't stop crying so she came back and turned the light on. That's when I woke up. The first thing I saw was my moms face as she looked at me. She was horrified (that's an understatement). The next thing I noticed was that my face was wet, and my mouth was open. I didn't know why, but I knew I couldn't close it. My mouth felt weird, not exactly terribly painful, but sort of numb and out of place. That's when I reached my tongue up to the roof of my mouth and felt my gums pushed back. Then I felt my teeth protruding from the top of my mouth. I couldn't feel anything. I screamed. My mom freaked out a bit and my little brother woke up, also terrified when he saw me. Everyone was staring at my bloody deformed face and I couldn't understand what was going on.
The drive to the hospital was terrible. I kept waiting to wake up, and as my face grew more and more painful I was wondering how this nightmare could be so awful and so real. My mom drove to the wrong place and when she started cursing that's when I realized- I wasn't waking up, because I was already awake. All I remember is freaking out all over again and repeatedly screaming OH MY GOD.
I stumbled into the ER with my mom and we accidentally went in through a wrong door, even though it said emergency. The nurse at the desk looked at us impatiently and said we had to go out and come back in the other way, but I was near collapsing and was freaking out, understandably. Finally after my mom begged they let me in. I have to say the hospital was f***ing ridiculous. The doctor said they couldn't do anything but they had an oral surgeon on call. They called the surgeon but he said he would see me after 9:30; it was 2 am. No one wanted to touch me. They gave me some morphine which just dulled the by now pounding in my face to a constant severe ache, and later some nausea meds.
I sat for 6 and a half hours with my mouth open, my jaw broken and bleeding. That's what the anti-nausea was for. For 9 hours I had blood running in my mouth and it was extremely difficult to swallow. I still can't stand the taste of blood, and when I get an attack I can't get the taste out of my mouth. At one point I freaked out and couldn't breathe, and my mom ran for a nurse who came in and looked exasperated and told me I was fine. After wheezing a bit more until I was getting faint she finally tried to calm me down.
Around 8, with an hour or two to go, my mom said we should start asking to get discharged. The doctor came and decided, after I had been sitting there for 6 hours swelling up and bleeding away with a portion of my face smashed in, that my nose was probably broken as well and that we should get an X-ray.
They needed to screen me for pregnancy before I had an X-ray done, so I had to go to the bathroom, where they had a mirror. I almost puked again. I hadn't realized that the sticky mess of my face was actually covered in blood, much of it still oozing. On the way to the X-ray room people looked at me with pity. My nose ended up not being broken, though. Just bruised, like the rest of my face.
I got discharged around 8:30 and my mom and I drove to the office twenty minutes away and waited some more there, because we couldn't stand waiting in the hospital anymore. The oral surgeon drove in in a red convertible and looked comfortable. I hated him. I hated him for deciding his sleep was more important than my agony. I hated the hospital for not being able to fix me. I hated everyone for not understanding. All I wanted at that point was to be put to sleep and not have to deal with anything. I wanted to be f***ing taken care of. I wanted to wake up fixed.
I repeatedly asked to be sedated but he refused. I got shots and he and the nurse cleaned my face up, stitched my lip, and moved my jaw and teeth back where they were supposed to be. I heard and felt the whole thing. To keep everything together he braced my front six teeth. I cried.
That happened last august. I get flashbacks if I accidentally think about it or see something to remind me of it, and freak out if I see a bloody face or mouth. I used get the taste of blood in my mouth and couldn't make it go away, but that hasn't happened for a while. What makes this really hard is that teeth injuries take years to heal, and it still hurts and pounds pretty often. When it hurts I have panic attacks and sometimes when I'm alone I cry. It's not really the pain. The pain I can handle, but I can't handle the thoughts that the pain brings.
I had a rocky relationship with sleep for a while, and was mad at my body for letting me get so hurt while I was helplessly unconscious. I couldn't sleep on my own and had to sleep with my mom, and when she got tired of it after a month and kicked me out back to my room, I spent half the night quietly crying on the floor in a ball. I still can't stand the edges of beds, and need to surround myself with pillows and blankets to fall asleep.
It's hard because I don't know what happened; I don't know how to prevent it, who to fight, how to help it. So I fought myself for awhile. I was jealous of my insomniac friend for being able to go days without sleeping. I was angry that I couldn't stay awake, and felt that my body was betraying me to some malevolent force when I fell asleep. I was scared of sleep.
I couldn't understand what was going on. When people heard what happened the first thing they said was not "Are you ok?" or "I'm so sorry and I hope you feel better" but it was "How the hell did you do that?" or "Wow Jen you've really done it this time. You managed to hurt yourself in your SLEEP." I have a way of using comic relief when I am sick or injured because I can't stand people's pity, but this time I didn't want to be laughed at. I had no f***ing clue how it happened, and I was terrified. I didn't need someone to point out the fact that I had severely injured myself with no explanation, and no attacker except for my own body. Of course, what can someone answer to that- "Be careful next time you-" oh wait. You sleep every night. Every night. You abandon control to whatever you might involuntarily do EVERY NIGHT. You can't not sleep. I've tried. I needed a hug.
The months after the accident were filled with terror. Everything was a trigger. The pajamas I wore to the ER. The stairs in my house that I had to walk down while completely dazed. My room, where I woke up sticky and numb and confused. The pain, the constant, pulsating pain. Tooth injuries aren't like others. The pain never stops. It's not like if you stop moving your broken leg you're good- your face just keeps hurting, and for months and years after ward. And everyone always wanted to know what happened. I kept having to talk about something I didn't understand, and when they heard it they wouldn't understand either, and felt obligated to say something. I would have to pretend it's so funny how weird this is, and come home and battle how tired my aching body was because I was scared for my life.
It's hard to be scared of nothing. It's weird to have PTSD from something no one did to you. To think about what your body does when you aren't there. To feel like sleep is a trap.
Who do you fight? How do you help it? How can you avoid the monster that consumes you in your sleep?
While deeply asleep, I injured my face. I broke my upper jaw clean off of my skull and knocked four teeth out, two partially, two fully. I had a ragged tear above where I broke my jaw straight through my lip. I don't know how. I may have fallen off of my bed, which was about 4 feet off the ground. I may have tripped while sleep walking (which is supposed to be nearly impossible). After the fact I sat on the floor and cried. I was still asleep.
I cried for long enough and loud enough that my mom, two closed doors and a hallway away, heard, woke up, got up and came to help me. She saw blood on my face and thought I just had a bloody nose, so she helped me get up and got me back on my bed. I was still asleep.
She left but I wouldn't stop crying so she came back and turned the light on. That's when I woke up. The first thing I saw was my moms face as she looked at me. She was horrified (that's an understatement). The next thing I noticed was that my face was wet, and my mouth was open. I didn't know why, but I knew I couldn't close it. My mouth felt weird, not exactly terribly painful, but sort of numb and out of place. That's when I reached my tongue up to the roof of my mouth and felt my gums pushed back. Then I felt my teeth protruding from the top of my mouth. I couldn't feel anything. I screamed. My mom freaked out a bit and my little brother woke up, also terrified when he saw me. Everyone was staring at my bloody deformed face and I couldn't understand what was going on.
The drive to the hospital was terrible. I kept waiting to wake up, and as my face grew more and more painful I was wondering how this nightmare could be so awful and so real. My mom drove to the wrong place and when she started cursing that's when I realized- I wasn't waking up, because I was already awake. All I remember is freaking out all over again and repeatedly screaming OH MY GOD.
I stumbled into the ER with my mom and we accidentally went in through a wrong door, even though it said emergency. The nurse at the desk looked at us impatiently and said we had to go out and come back in the other way, but I was near collapsing and was freaking out, understandably. Finally after my mom begged they let me in. I have to say the hospital was f***ing ridiculous. The doctor said they couldn't do anything but they had an oral surgeon on call. They called the surgeon but he said he would see me after 9:30; it was 2 am. No one wanted to touch me. They gave me some morphine which just dulled the by now pounding in my face to a constant severe ache, and later some nausea meds.
I sat for 6 and a half hours with my mouth open, my jaw broken and bleeding. That's what the anti-nausea was for. For 9 hours I had blood running in my mouth and it was extremely difficult to swallow. I still can't stand the taste of blood, and when I get an attack I can't get the taste out of my mouth. At one point I freaked out and couldn't breathe, and my mom ran for a nurse who came in and looked exasperated and told me I was fine. After wheezing a bit more until I was getting faint she finally tried to calm me down.
Around 8, with an hour or two to go, my mom said we should start asking to get discharged. The doctor came and decided, after I had been sitting there for 6 hours swelling up and bleeding away with a portion of my face smashed in, that my nose was probably broken as well and that we should get an X-ray.
They needed to screen me for pregnancy before I had an X-ray done, so I had to go to the bathroom, where they had a mirror. I almost puked again. I hadn't realized that the sticky mess of my face was actually covered in blood, much of it still oozing. On the way to the X-ray room people looked at me with pity. My nose ended up not being broken, though. Just bruised, like the rest of my face.
I got discharged around 8:30 and my mom and I drove to the office twenty minutes away and waited some more there, because we couldn't stand waiting in the hospital anymore. The oral surgeon drove in in a red convertible and looked comfortable. I hated him. I hated him for deciding his sleep was more important than my agony. I hated the hospital for not being able to fix me. I hated everyone for not understanding. All I wanted at that point was to be put to sleep and not have to deal with anything. I wanted to be f***ing taken care of. I wanted to wake up fixed.
I repeatedly asked to be sedated but he refused. I got shots and he and the nurse cleaned my face up, stitched my lip, and moved my jaw and teeth back where they were supposed to be. I heard and felt the whole thing. To keep everything together he braced my front six teeth. I cried.
That happened last august. I get flashbacks if I accidentally think about it or see something to remind me of it, and freak out if I see a bloody face or mouth. I used get the taste of blood in my mouth and couldn't make it go away, but that hasn't happened for a while. What makes this really hard is that teeth injuries take years to heal, and it still hurts and pounds pretty often. When it hurts I have panic attacks and sometimes when I'm alone I cry. It's not really the pain. The pain I can handle, but I can't handle the thoughts that the pain brings.
I had a rocky relationship with sleep for a while, and was mad at my body for letting me get so hurt while I was helplessly unconscious. I couldn't sleep on my own and had to sleep with my mom, and when she got tired of it after a month and kicked me out back to my room, I spent half the night quietly crying on the floor in a ball. I still can't stand the edges of beds, and need to surround myself with pillows and blankets to fall asleep.
It's hard because I don't know what happened; I don't know how to prevent it, who to fight, how to help it. So I fought myself for awhile. I was jealous of my insomniac friend for being able to go days without sleeping. I was angry that I couldn't stay awake, and felt that my body was betraying me to some malevolent force when I fell asleep. I was scared of sleep.
I couldn't understand what was going on. When people heard what happened the first thing they said was not "Are you ok?" or "I'm so sorry and I hope you feel better" but it was "How the hell did you do that?" or "Wow Jen you've really done it this time. You managed to hurt yourself in your SLEEP." I have a way of using comic relief when I am sick or injured because I can't stand people's pity, but this time I didn't want to be laughed at. I had no f***ing clue how it happened, and I was terrified. I didn't need someone to point out the fact that I had severely injured myself with no explanation, and no attacker except for my own body. Of course, what can someone answer to that- "Be careful next time you-" oh wait. You sleep every night. Every night. You abandon control to whatever you might involuntarily do EVERY NIGHT. You can't not sleep. I've tried. I needed a hug.
The months after the accident were filled with terror. Everything was a trigger. The pajamas I wore to the ER. The stairs in my house that I had to walk down while completely dazed. My room, where I woke up sticky and numb and confused. The pain, the constant, pulsating pain. Tooth injuries aren't like others. The pain never stops. It's not like if you stop moving your broken leg you're good- your face just keeps hurting, and for months and years after ward. And everyone always wanted to know what happened. I kept having to talk about something I didn't understand, and when they heard it they wouldn't understand either, and felt obligated to say something. I would have to pretend it's so funny how weird this is, and come home and battle how tired my aching body was because I was scared for my life.
It's hard to be scared of nothing. It's weird to have PTSD from something no one did to you. To think about what your body does when you aren't there. To feel like sleep is a trap.
Who do you fight? How do you help it? How can you avoid the monster that consumes you in your sleep?
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