LittleOneMedic
New Here
Good afternoon!
I stumbled across this forum while typing "PTSD in Paramedics".
**Please forgive the jumbled thoughts in this post, i'm a little tired and trying to grapple with my inner demons...not to post this but to suffer in silence****
So let me unload a little baggage..(again i'm sorry if this is more of a rant and maybe I just need to see it written down to really know what to do)...I've been a paramedic for the past 18 years and have seen the good in people and also the worst. Since starting this career, I knew that this job was for the love of the job and I knew that there would be sacrifices that I would have to give to keep my sanity doing this job. My marriage of 10 years fell apart around me, when he said that he would love me for good or for bad....and well he didn't. (He was a computer geek)
I have seen some unimaginable things in the 18 years, ghosts that will haunt me till the day I die and things that I had wished I had done differently and maybe the outcomes would have come out better.
Now, after all these years I ran a call of a "unknown nature" and recieving the page we set off code 3. When my partner I got there we were the first on scene and the family directed us to the "FAR" back 40 of the property where the womans father lived in a camper. The family had stated that the went into the camper to say good night to her father (this was at 2am by the way) and when she shook him, he didn't stir. Now there is NO electricity in this camper, so I had my parnter grap the flashlight and while he illuminated the camper while i went in I saw that the father was in the forward portion of the camper on the "bed" section with his back to me. I had the monitor and set it on the "counter" next to the bed and I placed a hand on the mans arm to gently shake him and riggor had already set in. I looked behind me and told my partner that it was a DOA with riggor and to call off fire, while I confirmed the DOA in 3 leads. I tried to get a little closer to the raised bed and kicked a small charcoal BBQ that was still HOT...embers shot up when i kicked it. This call didn't seem right to me..but I turned the man over and I had the flashlight and it illuminated his face and his eyes were open wide and cloudy. Again, I have seen decaptiations, gun shot wounds and all sorts of gore and it never fazed me...but this sight was chilling and it shook me far more than I thought it would.
After the call my partner and I talked about the call a little...joked and things (our attempts to cope with things that didn't make logical sense. But since that night I have had NIGHTMARES where I wake up screaming and thrashing because I would see the man standing and pointing at me...or the dream was only of his eyes... I thought that this was one of "those" calls that all the seasoned medics warned me about in my first years, but this was almost 9 years into my career. Over the following weeks the nightmares would hit everynight that I wasn't working...or I wouldn't sleep. I would just stay up reading or surfing the net.
At this point I have no husband and my family wouldn't understand..and being in a male dominated work force I tried to hide it and deal with it silently. I ended up taking benedryl for dreamless sleep but ended up more tired than anything. I went to my sup and told her what was going on and I went to therapy to deal with this. After 2 years of therapy she said the last ditch thing I had to do was to write a letter to the man that I wasn't able to save... let him know that I did my best and I was sorry that I couldn't save him and that he could leave me and know that I would put my effort into the next call. <sigh> Now, I'm no therapist but I thought that this was a crackpot way of saying "you're hopeless and I can't fix you".
So I buried it...nightmares would hit and I would just deal with it. I joined the Army, and inwardly thought that this would all disappear once I joined. Well, it didn't. I've saw things that I wouldn't wish upon my worst eneny...and my nightmares got worse. I thought that this was my fate and I would just have to accept it and the next man I meet would just have to understand that I was just a BROKEN medic. I met my soon to be husband in the Army...Airborne SF and I was in Seventh heaven...he was just like me...sick sense of humor and well it was kismet (yes I used the word Kismet LOL.) I was able to focus on our relationship and tried hard to keep things that I did on the civilan side to myself...I tired to fool myself into thinking he wouldn't understand and that he would leave me if he knew the REAL me...(defense mech of mine to push them away before they could push me away...)..Over the past 4 years i've opened up little by little, he'd share some hurt and I would do the same..until I was able to tell him about that dreadful night.
All this time I thought I was able to keep burying the dreams and thoughts...i guess came out while I was sleeping. I was talking in my sleep and having night terrors where he couldn't wake me from. I talked to my doc and he said that things like this will crop up from time to time (he was an ER doc that turned to family practice so he understood paramedics thought process)....He put me on lunesta, ambient which I ended up sleepwalking and sleep cooking and sleep driving...well I gave up on real sleep and have never really slept more than 3 hours at a time at night. Well as the months went on it seemed that, that little dream breakout was going to go away...but in the last 2 weeks I have been waking up with nightmares almost every night...the man with eyes...and then it started to spread to nightmares of my soon to be looking at me with those cloudy eyes...and then it flips to I hear him and my kids screaming for help and I can't get to them...they are within arms reach but I can't reach them...this went on all night till I just burst out crying and decieded not to sleep...and haven't since.
I'm sorry that this posting is not only chopped in half but scatter brained. I can't seem to marshall my thought clearly and i'm not sure if I was able to paint an accurate picture of the "Brokeness" that I am.... I'm honestly scared to close my eyes...to hear them screaming..and then the messed up gaze from the man....am I going insane? Have I finally gone off the deepend?
Does anyone understand this? I need an arm. It's taken me everything that I had to post this and this feeling of exposure is quiet intimidating. I feel like i'm drowning and I'm the only one that has this going on. Can anyone throw some light my way?
I stumbled across this forum while typing "PTSD in Paramedics".
**Please forgive the jumbled thoughts in this post, i'm a little tired and trying to grapple with my inner demons...not to post this but to suffer in silence****
So let me unload a little baggage..(again i'm sorry if this is more of a rant and maybe I just need to see it written down to really know what to do)...I've been a paramedic for the past 18 years and have seen the good in people and also the worst. Since starting this career, I knew that this job was for the love of the job and I knew that there would be sacrifices that I would have to give to keep my sanity doing this job. My marriage of 10 years fell apart around me, when he said that he would love me for good or for bad....and well he didn't. (He was a computer geek)
I have seen some unimaginable things in the 18 years, ghosts that will haunt me till the day I die and things that I had wished I had done differently and maybe the outcomes would have come out better.
Now, after all these years I ran a call of a "unknown nature" and recieving the page we set off code 3. When my partner I got there we were the first on scene and the family directed us to the "FAR" back 40 of the property where the womans father lived in a camper. The family had stated that the went into the camper to say good night to her father (this was at 2am by the way) and when she shook him, he didn't stir. Now there is NO electricity in this camper, so I had my parnter grap the flashlight and while he illuminated the camper while i went in I saw that the father was in the forward portion of the camper on the "bed" section with his back to me. I had the monitor and set it on the "counter" next to the bed and I placed a hand on the mans arm to gently shake him and riggor had already set in. I looked behind me and told my partner that it was a DOA with riggor and to call off fire, while I confirmed the DOA in 3 leads. I tried to get a little closer to the raised bed and kicked a small charcoal BBQ that was still HOT...embers shot up when i kicked it. This call didn't seem right to me..but I turned the man over and I had the flashlight and it illuminated his face and his eyes were open wide and cloudy. Again, I have seen decaptiations, gun shot wounds and all sorts of gore and it never fazed me...but this sight was chilling and it shook me far more than I thought it would.
After the call my partner and I talked about the call a little...joked and things (our attempts to cope with things that didn't make logical sense. But since that night I have had NIGHTMARES where I wake up screaming and thrashing because I would see the man standing and pointing at me...or the dream was only of his eyes... I thought that this was one of "those" calls that all the seasoned medics warned me about in my first years, but this was almost 9 years into my career. Over the following weeks the nightmares would hit everynight that I wasn't working...or I wouldn't sleep. I would just stay up reading or surfing the net.
At this point I have no husband and my family wouldn't understand..and being in a male dominated work force I tried to hide it and deal with it silently. I ended up taking benedryl for dreamless sleep but ended up more tired than anything. I went to my sup and told her what was going on and I went to therapy to deal with this. After 2 years of therapy she said the last ditch thing I had to do was to write a letter to the man that I wasn't able to save... let him know that I did my best and I was sorry that I couldn't save him and that he could leave me and know that I would put my effort into the next call. <sigh> Now, I'm no therapist but I thought that this was a crackpot way of saying "you're hopeless and I can't fix you".
So I buried it...nightmares would hit and I would just deal with it. I joined the Army, and inwardly thought that this would all disappear once I joined. Well, it didn't. I've saw things that I wouldn't wish upon my worst eneny...and my nightmares got worse. I thought that this was my fate and I would just have to accept it and the next man I meet would just have to understand that I was just a BROKEN medic. I met my soon to be husband in the Army...Airborne SF and I was in Seventh heaven...he was just like me...sick sense of humor and well it was kismet (yes I used the word Kismet LOL.) I was able to focus on our relationship and tried hard to keep things that I did on the civilan side to myself...I tired to fool myself into thinking he wouldn't understand and that he would leave me if he knew the REAL me...(defense mech of mine to push them away before they could push me away...)..Over the past 4 years i've opened up little by little, he'd share some hurt and I would do the same..until I was able to tell him about that dreadful night.
All this time I thought I was able to keep burying the dreams and thoughts...i guess came out while I was sleeping. I was talking in my sleep and having night terrors where he couldn't wake me from. I talked to my doc and he said that things like this will crop up from time to time (he was an ER doc that turned to family practice so he understood paramedics thought process)....He put me on lunesta, ambient which I ended up sleepwalking and sleep cooking and sleep driving...well I gave up on real sleep and have never really slept more than 3 hours at a time at night. Well as the months went on it seemed that, that little dream breakout was going to go away...but in the last 2 weeks I have been waking up with nightmares almost every night...the man with eyes...and then it started to spread to nightmares of my soon to be looking at me with those cloudy eyes...and then it flips to I hear him and my kids screaming for help and I can't get to them...they are within arms reach but I can't reach them...this went on all night till I just burst out crying and decieded not to sleep...and haven't since.
I'm sorry that this posting is not only chopped in half but scatter brained. I can't seem to marshall my thought clearly and i'm not sure if I was able to paint an accurate picture of the "Brokeness" that I am.... I'm honestly scared to close my eyes...to hear them screaming..and then the messed up gaze from the man....am I going insane? Have I finally gone off the deepend?
Does anyone understand this? I need an arm. It's taken me everything that I had to post this and this feeling of exposure is quiet intimidating. I feel like i'm drowning and I'm the only one that has this going on. Can anyone throw some light my way?
