I’ve been noticing that I have developed a fear of doctors and medical offices when it comes to taking care of my own health.
I guess sitting in an office with the doctor who was giving the results of my husband’s dire diagnosis was not helpful. He was yelling at us that we needed to leave town immediately for Seattle to start treatment because it was that bad!
From there it was all the late night emergencies where I had to drive my husband in the middle of the night to the ER in a strange city and in the middle of Covid. I almost wasn’t allowed to be with him in the ER. Then getting lost in the big city trying to drive back to our apartment alone because my husband had to be admitted. It was stressful.
Then it was waiting on all the results of the bone marrow biopsies- so far 8 or 9. Also waiting for all the blood test results every week to see what all the cells were doing.
It does a number on your head. I’m beginning to fear that my own health may not be good. I have to go in and get checked out but it’s creating quite a bit of anxiety.
I know I need some counseling and I have had plenty before.
Anyway it’s another issue that just complicates everything.
The MC is lovely, but my mother’s negative outlook/depression/confusion/anxiety/bizarre questions/non-acceptance of logical answers, and on and on, feels like getting hit with an emotional 2x4. Every time I visit. It’s so very, very stressful.
Those who had provided caregiving had IL-6 levels significantly higher for individuals of the same age who hadn't cared for someone.
This addresses the new nomenclature:
"PTSD and DSM-5
In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association revised the PTSD diagnostic criteria in the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; 1). PTSD is included in a new category in DSM-5, Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders. All of the conditions included in this classification require exposure to a traumatic or stressful event as a diagnostic criterion."
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/essentials/dsm5_ptsd.asp
I have also read that it's referred to not as PTSD but PTSS (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome), which makes sense b/c it seems to function more as a syndrome than a disorder. I would argue that this kind of experience, just like that in wartime, isn't a syndrome; it's more of a body's response to conditions for which we never really acclimated. I yield, however, to those with medical and/or psychiatric experience.
One of the very interesting aspects of the earlier literature was the comparison of IL-6 in noncaregiving individuals to those who had cared for someone for a significant length of time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC166443/
" Caregivers' average rate of increase in IL-6 was about four times as large as that of noncaregivers." and
"These data provide evidence of a key mechanism through which chronic stressors may accelerate risk of a host of age-related diseases by prematurely aging the immune response." (kind of scary, isn't it?)
and
"A growing body of evidence has implicated caregiving as a risk factor for health. Compared with noncaregivers, men and women who provide care to a spouse with a stroke or dementia report more infectious illness episodes (1), they have poorer immune responses to influenza virus and pneumococcal pneumonia vaccines (2–4), their wounds heal more slowly (5), they are at greater risk for developing mild hypertension (6, 7), and they may be at greater risk for coronary heart disease (8). Moreover, a prospective longitudinal study found that the relative risk for all-cause mortality among strained caregivers was 63% higher than noncaregiving controls (9)." (Numbers in parentheses refer to citations in the article.
This addresses only spousal caring for those with stroke or dementia; there are obviously a lot of other caregiving situations besides these two.
Not good; we caregivers have to take extra special care of ourselves.
Also this:
“we caregivers have to take extra special care of ourselves.”
I’ll add:
In fact the less you care, the “better off” you are: financially, emotionally, physically.
The more heartless you are, the better you’ll do in this world. Stepping on others, getting richer; selfishly just thinking about your own life.
But:
We’ll all prove them wrong. As someone else posted: let’s show them it’s not a disadvantage to be kind: let’s “win” against the jerks of the world.
When I met my biological family in 2000, I was diagnosed with PTSD afterward. And I hadn't even met them in person yet, just over the phone! Paxil helped me tremendously, by the way.
PTSD can come about from a wide variety of situations, including an anxiety provoking caregiving situation that's gone on for a long period of time! I have a good friend who's suffering from this exact situation and medicated for it by her PCP.
There is also something called CPTSD or Chronic PTSD which you should Google and read about; it's associated with chronic, ongoing trauma vs a single event that leads to PTSD.
Definitely see your doctor to talk about this situation in further detail.
Best of luck!
I am extremely sensitive- actually I’ve been called an Empath. I think the stuff I’ve been through with my husband- it really has affected me.
I’ve been taking something called Rescue Remedy and something called Calm by Highland and they have worked wonders and they have kept me from freaking out.It’s all homeopathic. Plus I’m heavily into qigong practice - been taking many workshops and working with a qigong master. Also doing something called EFT. Everything has helped to a certain degree but it’s been nice to get the support of all of you. That has really helped too so thank you!
I think the important thing is to avoid labels, perhaps. PTSD is something we can recognize in ourselves after trauma. The tendency to be triggered. The label is unimportant.
Caregivers suffer many things, anxiety, worry, hopelessness, guilt, desperation. And there is an after effect to this as well. Arguing words and labels doesn't help....the person is looking for relief, even for understanding and companionship by those who understand what they are experiencing.
Whatever we call it, we who have given care to others understand it exists, acknowledge it, and attempt to do the work to get through it, even to learn from it. Lynn,I sure do wish you good luck. I think you'll be fine. Along with the trauma you have learned a lot. The coin has two sides.
Psychiatrists are medical doctors (DOs and MDs) who spent years in medical schools, internships, and residencies to be eligible to take medical and board exams to practice. Lots of brain power and resilience are required to become a psychiatrist. It is ok to believe psychiatry is not helpful to you, but trashing the whole profession only shows your lack of understanding of the world around you and reveal your ignorance to the world.
To the original poster: any doctor that yells at you is unprofessional and should be reported. And then find a new one. I have changed my doctors for less egregious behaviors.
You need to prioritize your own health and seek help for your husband's care wherever you can. If that means sending him to hospital by ambulance or patient transfer instead of being present yourself, then do it and don't feel guilty.
I wish you well.
So yes, people in war situations have experienced unimaginable horror. PTSD? No kidding. But caregivers are in another kind of trench. It may not be the immediate soul wrenching horror of stuffing your buddies intestines back into his body but it's still a mind numbing continuous day to day erosion of your spirit when you have to deal day after day after day with one small emergency after another after another.
Yes, it's PTSD. Don't kid yourself.
I'm sorry that I upset you. It was not my intention.
I would never have been strong enough to be in home caregiver to anyone 24/7, but I did manage my brother's Trust as Trustee and I was his POA. Just getting all of that together from half the state away made me so anxious I thought my eye tic was permanent. I was jumpy. I was afraid. And I will be so honest as to say it has, at 80, left me less strong. I learned a lot. I did a great job, and now it is over. I can recognize and appreciate that, BUT, it has made me a bit more "fearful" of everything from airline flights (which I had cancelled until I thought I'd go nuts) of finances and documentation, of loss of my partner and what that would mean. To say nothing of the tech that keeps passing us by as we age. It has in some ways made me stronger, but in some ways there is--just as you observed--a PTSD that persists.
I wish you the best and my heart goes out to you.
(And here's just how nutty it can get. Sometimes I lay in bed awaiting sleep saying "spell world backwards" or "subtract by 7s from 100", and etc. Hee hee. It is both funny and NOT).
Your comment about "the tech that keeps passing us by as we age" caught my eye. I have been trying since January to purchase a new laptop which I absolutely need. After a TON of research, I finally bought a new one at a major retailer and was so excited to turn it on so I wouldn't have to keep borrowing one from a library. I never got to first base, meaning it simply wouldn't turn on -- and this was from one of the two major manufacturers of laptops. The retailer refused to give me back my total purchase price -- they wanted to keep $300 -- but after a major 3-month battle which involved dozens of pages of documents faxed to my bank, accusing the retailer of fraud, I finally prevailed. (I'm still using a borrowed laptop from the library). Smartphones are another story -- and we need these, like the computer, for medical related questions/appointments, etc. I'll not go into my experience in that realm but I'll just say this, again based on personal experience: you have to be VERY cautious in putting any new software on your phones (aka "software updates"). If you're unsure of what the update will do to the phone, or whether your phone is new enough to handle the update, just say no.
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