Is it possible that medical trauma, suffered by children, can cause post-traumatic stress disorder in their parents? From my research on myself, a sample size of 1, I’d conclude that yes, it is possible.
My symptoms are as follows…I have trouble taking life “seriously”. Deadline at work? In general, this is a stressful concept. In reality, I have a hard time getting myself to focus and produce. My old mind game tricks don’t work anymore – really, after your daughter almost dies as a newborn, and suffers everything she did in her first year, it’s hard to convince yourself at any given moment that it matters if you finish 1 page or 3 pages of writing in a day. So, more often than not, it’s 1. My second symptom is that I take everyone else’s tragedies too hard. Like, waking up in the middle of the night crying over a friend, whom we see a few times a year, who has cancer. It’s not that I normally would not feel sadness and empathy. But the pain of this news goes straight to my heart, skipping the filter of my brain, and fills me with hurt. A random link this morning took me to a blog of a woman whose newborn daughter has another rare disease, and whose daughter has suffered 10x what Miss M has. Tears, I know, are a normal reaction. But I feel this pain in my heart, and it doesn’t go away when I move on to other things.
Have I mentioned that I have not slept without the assistance of a medication in over a month? I remember the days when I slept easily. It’s odd that now that Miss M’s medical future will likely be filled with predictable stability, for at least the next several years, I feel as disoriented as ever, just as much as I did when we were in the moment, dealing with it.
And I feel like those moments are trapped inside me. I’ve tried talking to others in person about some of those experiences. But it makes me feel broken when I do. I generally regret opening up, regret the way that I express my emotions and describe the events. I’m told that talking about these events is how you heal. Somehow, writing about them makes me feel more whole than talking about them. Maybe because I can release the worry of judgement, here in my anonymous world.
kfscutie 