PTSD

A traumatic event in somebody else's life has sparked the need to document my own experience.  I worked as an intermediate paramedic for at least ten years of my life.  I loved every minute of it.  It was a personal challenge as well as a learning curve every day I was out there on the road.  In my day, there was no debriefing, no support if one felt things were too much. Sensitivity was seen as weakness, so no one showed any emotion except for hilarity in the form of dark humour.  Things seemed fine until one night.  I was off duty and putting my young daughter to bed when we heard what sounded like a wet guinea fowl hit the window.  The whole house shook.  A silence of deep proportions took hold and then the screaming.  I realised it had been a shotgun blast.  From next door.  I rang the emergency number and sent my daughter, with the phone out to where neighbours were gathering in the road.  Then I jumped over the wall.  The sight was not one I would choose to describe.  There was nothing I, or anyone, could have done.  So I did what I could as far as managing the situation, handed over to the police, collected my daughter and returned home.  We made a cup of tea and chatted about what had happened.  While I was lamenting why, my daughter put everything into these wise words saying "Mum, he chose to leave this world this way."  We finished her bedtime story and she went to sleep.  While I waited for my husband to come home, odd things began to happen.  I 'saw' gaseous mustard coloured hands coming out of cupboards, through windows and up under the stairs.  Grabbing at me.  I could not feel safe anywhere in the house.  I kept thinking bullets were going to come through the garden wall.  It was highly disturbing.  I realised it was probably Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The following day I went to work and kept reliving the events of the previous night in my mind, but one must prevail, so I did.  The senior paramedic on our shift suddenly decided to grill me about the intricasies of our latest patient and I felt such a fool because I couldn't answer him.  All that knowledge gleaned from years of experience, gone.  My mind was blank.  I had shut down.  I didn't care.  I decided that day that I did not want to be a paramedic any more.  I wanted to go and do something normal.  But after being in my line of work, how does one define normal?  I lost my confidence, I was fearful, I relived the incident continually and I was an insomniac for months.  I did get back on the horse eventually after taking myself off for psychological help, but I have never felt the same way about my work as I did before this event. Being a paramedic was my life.  Now it is a part of my life that I remember fondly.   It will never be left behind and no person will go unattended ever, but PTSD made things different.  It put things into a perspective I am lucky to have.  I am lucky because I understand what others go through and the importance of being counselled in a job that is abnormal for most.  I am, however, privileged to have served and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.