PTSD

Yesterday afternoon I got a text from my father telling me that my sister-in-law is in the hospital due to a serious health issue that occurred while she and my brother were vacationing. She is in good hands, but will have to have some surgery and remain in the hospital for a couple of weeks.

My older brother is a rational and slightly pedantic person who has assured me that her condition is “eminently treatable” (his words) and so has Dr. Google. But my mind keeps zapping me with the idea that death is back, and I need to prepare. That this is Death Number 3 and they always come in threes. I’m not close friends with my sister-in-law, but this prospect is very upsetting for me.

My mother died about eleven months before Sarah. She broke her hip in a fall in February 2021 and entered nursing home care during the height of the pandemic. She lived for another six months before dying in September 2021 at age 86. Like Sarah, she did not wake up one day. I do miss my mother, but her time spent in nursing care was such an ordeal for her, and the cognitive dysfunction she experienced was so hard at times to cope with, that her death seemed like a release and a relief in many ways.

I did not have a period of intense grief after she died, but three or four months later, I became very depressed for a while concerning a work situation I was going through. It was a troubling situation, but my reaction and depression were so out of proportion that both my husband and Dr. Z felt that I was having a delayed reaction to my mother’s death. Probably, they were right. It was easier for me somehow to react in a big way to this work situation than to her death.

For many years before Sarah died, I was anxious and wary if she slept late that she could be dead. There had been a couple of special needs kids we knew who “woke up dead” and this reinforced the anxiety. Of course, we’ve learned of many more cases since Sarah’s death. Sudden death or epileptic bed death is also a risk factor with seizures.

I always felt somehow I could guard against Sarah not waking up and ensure it did not happen. Maybe that’s why I habitually wake up at 5 a.m. During the week Sarah got up pretty early to catch the school bus, and would often get up at the same time on weekends, but sometimes would sleep later. I’d tiptoe close to her door and listen.

I do the same now for Max, and for Polly our dog, who is 11 years old, because I have fears that they won’t wake up. Dr. Z says I have a form of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. He says one of the symptoms is this pattern of constantly fearing a repeat of the traumatic event.

Before Sarah, and before my mother, I tended to look at death as a drawn-out sort of affair in which the entire family participated. The dying person, in my imagination, had a slow and steady decline, perhaps entered hospice. There were medical personnel saying “It’ll be any day now” and “You’ll want to get here fast” and the family gathered. Perhaps the soon-to-be-dead person experienced agonal breathing or end of life hiccups or whatever symptoms the hospice videos talk about. For special needs kids, there’s always talk about pneumonia being the cause, and how eventually antibiotics stop working and the child dies in the hospital. But Sarah had never had pneumonia. She’d never had any kind of lung or chest infection.

For Sarah and my mother, death was sudden. We were given no time to prepare. Having paused for a few minutes to think about it, I suppose there are some advantages to this. They were probably not frightened. I would not have wanted Sarah to be scared or to have to leave home or be in the hospital. She hated the hospital. I’m glad it was fast for her.

I just can’t give up the notion that I could somehow have controlled or prevented this if I had been home. I know that’s very egocentric. My husband feels equally guilty, because he WAS home and it happened on his ‘watch’. We found out that Graciela the babysitter, who I mentioned in my last post, was also traumatized by the whole thing and was texting and emailing with our across-the-street neighbor for several months. Apparently, there’s guilt and PTSD for all of us.