Medication and Trauma
Recently I was recommended a book, "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma," in an online group. I felt an academic interest to it because I enjoy reading about the brain and also I was married to a Vietnam Vet (Otto Tune d. Sept 2014) for over twenty one years.
He still exhibited a hyper reaction to certain stimuli although it had been decades since he had been in a combat situation. As a little background, he went into Vietnam the first time at 19 years old. He used to say that he had his birthday in country. He was there for three tours. He had members of his team would go in-country and set up radio stations to DF enemy positions.
He made it sound less dangerous than it was. He used to sleep with a combat knife under his pillow. And if he heard a noise he was halfway across the room with a knife to the intruder's throat. It was why he told me (after it happened once) that I needed to call his name before I walked into any room he was sleeping in.
I met a lot of Vietnam Vets who also had that kind of twitchiness. I felt safe in their company though. Unfortunately at his death I was thrown from that company because I only came sideways into the Vietnam Vet world. It did give me some skill in calming down a stress-rattled vet, which I have used in the VA hospital. And yes, I was a patient helping another patient.
I think one of the reasons we found each other is because I also have hyper reactions to certain situations. I still need to sit with my back to a wall and facing the door when I am in a restaurant. When Otto was alive I gave him that seat, knowing he could protect me.
But this is not about him and his reactions. It is about me.
As I was reading the reactions in the book, I was kind of shocked that I show some of the symptoms in the book. No, I am not seeing a problem and making it mine. When I finally dragged myself from a certain family situation, I was shellshocked for years. My parents were particularly violent towards themselves and towards their children. Every time I would go to school, my parents would beg me to come back to help with the children. At the time there were nine siblings. I would go back. Everything would be okay for awhile and then the fighting would start again. I would try to run and again and then get dragged back to the same situation.
This happened over and over until I made the big break and went into the Navy. When I met my late-hubby, I hated to be touched. I didn't trust a single thing any man (or woman) said. I had a trigger temper. I learned ways to defend myself and I was very very prickly.
Those years with Otto were good even when I was diagnosed with a chronic disease in 2003. The big trauma for me was when I was walking through the Landstuhl hospital (military in Germany) and I didn't have the energy to walk more than a couple of feet. My husband held me up so that we could walk to the far side of the hospital to see my doctor. About halfway their my doctor ran to us with a wheelchair. He had just seen my kidney labs and the creatinine was so high that he didn't know how I was walking. This meant I had no kidney function.
I almost didn't make it in that hospital. I was so close to death that I could feel myself going. I refused to sleep because I was afraid that I would be gone. I've been close to death a few times. This time I could feel its cold breath on my neck.
I was put in a German teaching hospital, where they finally diagnosed me with Wegener's Granulomatosis. They gave me cytoxan and high dosages of prednisone. My kidneys came back immediately to about 50 percent. But that was just the beginning.
After-effects of Prednisone
One of the reasons I am so apprehensive of going back to a prednisone/immunosuppressant regimen that will be needed for a kidney transplant is because of what followed the next two years.
I was taking 100 mg of prednisone daily to keep my immune system in check. What we hadn't been told was the cost of this medication in my mental health. I had fatigue, paranoia, and hallucinations. I can say those words but I cannot convey the sheer terror I felt when I was sitting in a chair and seeing sharks swimming around members of my family. It was like I was seeing two realities superimposed on each other.
I couldn't get away from the feelings. I wanted to run away all the time. I would beg my late-hubby to pack me into the car and we would go to the ocean. I would hear what I thought were the thoughts and feelings of my brother and sister-in-law. They were all negative thoughts about my uselessness. I would hear thoughts telling me that they were going to hurt me and maybe near the end of the high prednisone episode, that they would kill me.
One day my brother, who I had raised, walked inside and I looked at him and saw my father. I said "What the hell are you doing here?"
The day that my hubby finally called the doctors and told them he thought the medication was causing my problems, I had just tried to jump out of a moving car in the middle of Las Vegas.
I was sleeping 18 hours a day because my body was so weak. I could read words. If I watched a TV program, I became one of the characters. There was no barricade between my mind and my subconscious.
Even worse I couldn't access any good memories. I could only see death, destruction, and burning. So many times I saw flames were there were no flames.
When the prednisone reduced, my symptoms reduced until the hallucinations finally faded away. But it left me broken with no confidence in my brain or my abilities to take care of myself.
Death and Trauma
Until 2014 I had one or two friends, but my life was protected by Otto. I had a lot of things happen in the medical field of my life and I had problems with every immunosuppressant I took, but what broke me more than anything else was his death. It was sudden. He started to complain about how he hurt and how tired he felt. He was still working and then three months later he was gone.
I went under. I think for a month I could only cry and I was numb.
I moved. But eventually I realized that I wouldn't survive (I had thoughts of suicide) if I didn't get some kind of intervention. My brother recommended a therapist.
I kept flashing back to when he was in the hospital and I didn't insist he go to SLC or Sacramento. I beat myself up thinking that I could have saved him if I had just realized how bad the cancer was. It was six months of this.
I just don't know how anyone can continue when they are seeing this type of stuff (rape, violence, or combat) over and over without relief. I can see why so many kill themselves.
I also went to the VA and worked in some Cognitive Behavior groups. I found it easier to talk to them than to someone from the outside. Plus my therapist helped me talk through my childhood. It might seem trite to say that a lot of my feelings of isolation and unworthiness stem from my childhood.
Can I claim to have PTSD? I don't know. I do know that I needed help when it came time to crawl out of hurt. It doesn't mean I'll suddenly be an extrovert. Heaven forbid.