Let’s talk about PTSD Bay-Bee! Let’s talk about you and me!

So. We again, interrupt this blog to write about the current status of the author. Last week I spoke about starting a new job in the emergency room to which I will add, It is amazing! And I’m not saying that at the risk of my boss reading this. I’m saying this as, “HOLY COW” I’m honestly so happy and have learned so much. I’ve been there 24 hours and have already seen some wild stuff. Having one hand hasn’t been as difficult as I anticipated.

Let me start at the very beginning, Last Friday, my boyfriend and I decided to hike Half Dome. For those of you who don’t live in California, Half Dome is in Yosemite and is 10,000 feet tall and an extremely difficult hike. Let me remind you, I still have heart disease. So we hiked Saturday through Sunday and I worked an ER shift Monday and Tuesday-both 12’s. My calves are killing me. I then went to Orange Theory on Wednesday. My God I am sore. I’m getting to the point I swear.

Today is Thursday. Today is my ten year heart valve replacement anniversary.
I have been part cow for ten years. I’m sitting on a beach in Santa Cruz with my entire family after visiting my cardiologist at UCSF and hearing, “Your valve looks really really good.”

To be in good health feels like the biggest blessing in the world. To hear that you get to lay on the beach, surrounded by family, enjoying time off school, makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world. At dinner, I lost control. Monday, I have my cancer scan. Here I am, sitting with the ones who have been with me through it all, telling them, “Happy 10 years” makes me lose it. How did we make it this far?

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I work in the ER now. I am and have been a very critically ill patient. I cried through dinner hearing my family member’s perspectives of my diseases and what ten years means to them. We talked about PTSD, how we handled it, and what we learned about it.

The moral of the story is, even ten years out, we still are struggling to recover from pediatric diseases. We need to normalize that. My mom told me, “You don’t remember. We moved so fast because you wanted to run. We tried to get therapy but you wanted to sprint. We fed off of you. I knew you would ask for help when you needed it. You were strong and would survive.”

Monday brings cancer scans and Thursday I’ll be back in the ER. I hope my patients feel my empathy. I am still the patient as well and PTSD is still very much my reality. The reality is, my blood pressure was 179/93 at the doctor’s office and my pulse was a whopping 106. They thought I was going to stroke out. In reality it’s the anxiety. It’s the fear of being told, “Your valve is failing and we need to replace it.” This yearly anxiety of not knowing. For the first time, I’m finally admitting that I truly have PTSD. It is so real. And I’m learning to ask for help. I blog about this so others aren’t as afraid to admit it as well.

I feel like we are so caught up in surviving, we forget to feel. So when we slow down and let our emotions catch up with us, we feel overwhelmed and alone. Any event that triggers those feelings brings us back to that awful moment of hearing that we have cancer or need open heart surgery. So, happy anniversary. Here’s to normalizing childhood trauma PTSD and not being afraid to ask for help.