Sufferer Nearing The One Year Anniversary Of My Near Death...

[Sparty77]

June 14 will be the one year anniversary of the day everything changed. And things are getting worse.

On that day, 2012, I was sitting on a bench near a memorial fountain, watching my son play. This fountain is in the middle of a parking lot/shopping center. I will not spill completely here as I just can't go into all the details still, but at that moment I was struck by a full sized pickup truck, which shot me forward and crushed me, pinning me in the memorial fountain in about 2 feet of water, holding 2 broken legs, a broken shoulder, massive degloving injuries on my right leg (where the truck tire had spun the skin and separated the skin from the underlying tissue) a broken shoulder, and a multitude of other injuries. I was eventually rescued, and spent months in the rehab hospital before returning home. I've been physically rehabbing ever sense, and seeing counselors for PTSD and depression. I am an attorney, but I have not returned to work, because I can't.

There are a number of news articles about what happened...but I'm having trouble posting links. Search: Hudsonville, fountain, accident. Nice photo there too.

I have the support of a wife and 4 young kids, but they just cannot understand. She tries and tries, and she hurts for me, but unless you are on the edge of death...where I accepted that I was going to in fact die...that all the years and all the stuff added up to mean nothing in the face of a ludicrous death in ridiculous situation...how can I convey how that actually feels?

I'm suffering from increased apathy as the date approaches. It doesn't help that I have depositions in the civil case coming up also. I find no interest in any of the things I used to love anymore. I can't read...I don't bother with tv shows...I'm finding an increasing dead zone.

It's that brush with infinity, with the idea that oblivion is on the doorstep...I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm afraid of leaving my kids and wife behind and the hole that would leave for them. But death itself...people here know. You look it in the face and you...change.

I just decided to look for a community of those who have actually suffered like this, and that's how I ended up here.

I'm sorry for the scattered introduction. I'm really not too good at talking about it. Hopefully there are those here who understand. I think that's what I'm really looking for. Understanding. Not the pseudo understanding you get from those who want to help, or who feel real bad about what happened.

Jason

 

[intothelight]

Hi Jason,

Welcome to the PTSD Forum! :)

I am truly sorry to hear about your accident, and you will find there are members here that have had similar experiences and truly understand the struggles you are facing. I hope you find the information and support here beneficial as you continue to heal.

Take care.

Debbie

 

[The Albatross]

Hi Jason and welcome. Yeah, when you look death in the face you change... but change is not a one way ticket. It is static. I hope you can collect yourself and be at your most efficient and effective for the civil case. I know I am affected (though to a lesser degree now as time has past - about 5 years from my last near traumatic break) by calendar dates/anniversaries.

The brain and the human spirit are resilient things... we can reconnect with things we enjoy or find new ones. I think of my PTSD as "adversity boot camp" it is my constant companion and has been with me most all of my life. I have no concept of before trauma except from before age 6 I think.

Glad you're here.

 

[ashdawn8287]

Welcome. Im sorry you went through that horrible situation.

 

[nursenurse]

Dear Jason,

Welcome to the forum, and thank you for sharing your incredible story. It takes a courageous person to be here and bare their souls for all to see. And it is a remarkable start to healing. While it only took a split second to change your life forever, it will take time to make sense of it, to take control of it once again. Be kind to yourself. There are many here who can help you, who can empathize, who have broad shoulders when you need to just vent. It can and will get better, even if it is different, but not without some bumps along the way. I hope you find some comfort here. You are among friends.

 

[Resilientbibliophile]

Welcome Jason,

What I can offer may not reach the threshold of understanding consistent with meaning so very much to you, but all the same it reflects what I've been doing. Even as the focus required to read anything just seems in so short supply (been there too) I find memoirs of political prisoners, those who've been restricted to solitary for extended periods, Holocaust memoirs/analysis of the same unexpectedly comforting for what for some would seem the merciless and uncompromising review of lone individual in both extreme and absurd circumstance. Holocaust literature in particular very effectively embraces the cruelty of what is random and devoid of meaning - hence especially appropriate given so many elements of what confounds you.

Know that there exists an extremely rich 'unofficial' trauma literature that cast help recast identity and help carry you to a place where you'll recognize yourself again. Who else might relate back what it means to live one life with all its assumptions and opportunity sightlines, and then in an instant a sense of self, surely a sense of basic safety, both the conception and reality of personal agency is just fundamentally shifted? Some quiet gains made by this writer for such immersion cannot be reduced to perfunctory platitudes rolled out on-demand when the skies turn gray. One witnesses how others compensate, how they resist, when it's wise to resist, when it's best not to, etc.

Furthermore, the psychological terrain of resilience sometimes greatly facilitated for reliance on others is underlined, but so too the limits and terms of such reliance. Processing trauma, integrating such into identity is taken as seriously as possible across what I've read as of late. At times I almost wish to exclaim publically that finally the tone is appropriate if nothing more. Like some you'll chance across here and for venturing further, there is definitely something to say for entering into a space (even a virtual space) where a controlled nod of the head exchanged by two or more people equates to unspoken understanding not strictly availed elsewhere.

Mostly what I'm suggesting is work no one else will strictly prompt us to do for they occupy 'Normative range experience land' - a place many of us have departed from not strictly to return. Still - there are tools to join the best qualities of the time-tested essential 'you' with the 'you' of altered circumstance and overwhelming memory/recall. At this point that is all I can offer up - not wishing in the slightest to cheapen your experience of all that has transpired and isn't entirely comprehended by those close.

It takes time to sift through the messages on this board, to cull the good from the less so. Taking into account the grave risk of further triggering and the tunnel-vision many of us evidence (I'm largely accusing myself here!) for gravitating back almost obsessively to this forum, you indeed will note a qualitative difference between those who empathize from without and those who try to fashion tools and strategies for living both with and surely inside of the experience. A lot of this exceedingly creative coping and adaptation will be the personal operating manual you pen in your mind for assertion even when the faintest requirement for assertion seems a joke in the most terrible taste. So much of this constitutes psychological D.I.Y. territory for such is ground zero.

Yes - the anniversary is coming, but so too is the day and days following it. Some thought must be out there in relation to processing an integrating an experience rooted in time and place. Materials that would aid in the reestablishment of some basic sense of control consistent with reclaiming personal agency whilst better attuning loved ones to the enormity of the challenges faced. I'll search a little bit to see if I may plug in materials here, whereas know too that this is the first anniversary, with the payoff for any effort made perhaps only availed to you come the third anniversary or sixth. You have to hold onto that possibility for blending courage with pained assertion. Such is almost nonnegotiable if my experience and experiences serve as any reasoned guide. Very kind regards...


P.S. Television dramas and film treatments of trauma are cleanly wrapped up in two hours and discourage for often being formulaic and trite, whereas to live with the day-to-day experience and to negotiate out process is something very different. By way of contrast and especially if you've not seen it, the film Ordinary People (1980) resonates strongly as a sophisticated work consistent with the reassessment of the possible in the wake of wretched awfulness that some fail or even refuse to understand. Timothy Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore, Jud Hirsch, Donald Sutherland star - very sophisticated this.


M.

 

[endlessocean]

Hi Jason. I looked up the incident. What a horrid scene. I understand what it is like to be in the jaws of death too. It is amazing that a mistake on the part of someone else can shatter your life or even claim it. A simple stupid mistake, and the end of life occurs. It makes life seem so trivial. I understand. Everything that seemed so solid just liquidates. Everything that seems permanent, is now turned into an illusion almost.

I am very sorry this happened to you, and I hope you are able to heal form your injuries enough to "join" your life again. I think the recovery period is very surreal, too. I watched other people live their everyday lives while I struggled just to "get" a life back. Existentialism is very interesting to me, and authors such as Nietzsche are of particular interest.

The spiritual realm is not one that many people often consider as much as someone who has faced death. I think about what I believe a lot. I am not sure. I just know that I want to make the most of today while I have it. I want to be mentally able to participate in life.

I hope this forum helps you as much as it has helped me

 

[KP the nut]

Hi Jason and welcome to the forum.

My PTSD was also triggered by an accident. One moment, life is fine and the next well, you know.

I hope the information and support here will help you. One thing is for sure, you are not alone, plenty of support here.

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

Welcome. :)

 

[a3a2]

I read the article, Jason. You saved your son. You are amazing.

I too, was in a horrible accident...hit by a car while biking. A year may seem like a long time, but recovery from such a serious accident is going to take longer. Get counseling if you can, and give yourself the gift of time and patience.