Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Aug 23, 2007
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Feeling Better Now
I was a bit low when I wrote my last Snippet, as we have been going through what you might call a bad spell recently, so hopefully the medication they have put me on now will do its job and cheer me up. You see I was recently diagnosed with having PTSD which was something I had heard about but never for one minute thought that it would affect me personally. I often wondered why I had the feeling of impending gloom hanging over me and I had just put it down to the long winter we had this year. Yet off I went to see the PSN (counsellor) that the doctor had made an appointment for me to see, after my wife (Mk2) originally sent me to see him, saying that she had noticed changes in me that I myself had never noticed. It's a bit complicated I know, but you see I am not in the habit of going to see a doctor unless it is really necessary.
Ever since my back injury I have had to go and see so many different specialists and doctors as part of my compensation claim. I even had to go be examined by a doctor from the DSS in order to qualify for the disability benefits that I now receive and another one to qualify for my DLA (disability living allowance) So you see after that lot, going to see a doctor on my own behalf is rather off putting. Yet I will still have to go through the same thing all over again in the year 2010 as that is when my present claim runs out, and the whole process starts over again.
As I sat there in the counsellor's office, feeling very awkward, not knowing what would happen next, she started to ask me simple questions at first which seemed to relax me and I dropped my guard. Then, and I can't even remember how we got onto the subject, I found myself recalling events that happened years ago, which made me come over all emotional, a feeling that I cant honestly say that I have felt before - apart maybe from being at the birth of my first daughter. Now that was an emotional event, to witness new life, your own daughter coming into this world.
These traumatic events that I had recalled had happened to me so long ago, yet I could remember every detail of them, and yet I could not tell her what I had for breakfast the day before. Anyway, after about half an hour or so I was making my way back home, this happy feeling came over me (and I must admit its been a long time since I had one of them) but I think it was the fact that I knew the name of this thing that had affecting me for all those years, and that I was not the only person ever to have felt that way. I think just knowing that someone was capable of curing me, or at least help me get over this monster, that really cheered me up.
The simple fact that someone knew my problem straight away, and came out with a name for it, knocked me off balance for a time, as she made it sound so easy, and then casually told me that there was a name for it; it's called PTSD.
As soon as I got home I went on-line and popped into this ex-service site that I have been going to for the past three years, as there is a bloke on there who talks about this PTSD all the time. So I sent him a Post Message telling him what had happened to me, and asked him not to say anything to the rest of the lads on there as well; you know the Black Humour we all used in the forces and the ambulance service. He sent me back a reply straight away, telling me that there was quite a few of the others that are getting treatment for the same thing, or had done in the past.
This surprised me really at the time, yet when we linked up on Skype to have an "on-line live chat" he told me a lot more about it. Thinking about it now, I think I learned more by chatting to him on line, than I did while sitting with the counsellor, I suppose that was because this bloke had actually experienced the same feelings and moods that I was going through as well. Which meant that I was not alone, like I had thought earlier, and that there was help out there for people who needed it? I looked PTSD up on the Internet and found that it has been called various things in the past, like Shell Shock from the First World War to Battle Fatigue in the Second, and a few names since that.
The main point being that folk who suffer from it are not off their heads or nutters, as many people would like to say, and that it can happen to anyone who has experienced a frightening or terrible event. This can range from being mugged in the street to witnessing a bad road accident, or indeed any incident that has caused stress or anxiety to the person affected. Now I am not going to climb up on a soapbox and start preaching all about it, or try to convince people that is an OK thing to have happen to them. No, I am just going to keep attending the therapy sessions and keep taking the medication, until at some time in the future hopefully, I will be back to what passes as normal for me. Like I said earlier, the simple fact that there is a name for this, and that help is available is enough for me, and I will go about my normal life, coping as best I can in the hope that one day, I will get better.
