The Start of My Mental Illness and PTSD
My life was never going to be a normal life. My brother is 23 months older than me and was born with cerebral palsy. I was also born with developmental issues, they were just never addressed at birth. I think if they had been, life would have been a lot easier on me. A lot of my mental illness and PTSD could have been prevented.
When I was four years old my mom was cooking french fries and chicken. Suddenly a horrible grease fire broke out. My mom was burnt with third and fourth-degree burns over half her body. We were all evacuated from the house.
When we returned a year later my room had severe smoke damage. They never fully fixed the fridge, they just painted it over. How were we supposed to move past it? The worst of it was that my mom looked like Frankenstein. She was covered with bandages and tubes from head to toe to keep her alive. The doctors took her from me and kept her in the hospital for almost a year. When she finally came home she spent about three years in bed wearing special bandages that nurses had to come and take care.
I was terrified of her because she wasn’t the mommy I used to know, and I was scared to hurt her.
My Mental Illness and PTSD Began at Age Four
At four years old I began having nightmares and flashbacks to the trauma of the fire. It was the beginning of my mental illness and PTSD that continued on my entire life.
My dad had to start working long hours at various jobs over the years to provide for our family. Because there was no one there to take care of me, no one to do my hair, pick out matching outfits, or brush my teeth. The other kids at school picked up on this and the way my mom looked. They started bullying me, as if I didn’t have enough reason for my mental illness and PTSD. They even called my mom “crispy critter” to tease me. Fire alarms in school were major triggers.
At six years old I became very withdrawn and scared. By the time I was eleven my mental illness and PTSD were full blown., I had started cutting myself to externalize my inner pain. In addition, I had started displaying physical aggression toward others. The mental illness I was diagnosed at age eleven was severe PTSD, and Major depression.
Through grade school I also struggled academically, never quite getting a handle on what was going on in class. In high school, I was actually diagnosed with a learning disability as the cause of this. I got some help through an IEP but it wasn’t much, but after I graduated a special needs program sent me to a college program for kids with learning disabilities an hour from home. I met the love of my life, Shawn, at this week-long program.
Getting Locked Up in a Psych Unit
We started dating four months later. Once I was eighteen, legally an adult and able to ask for my own medical care. I started receiving mental help for my mental illness and PTSD. I finally started on various antidepressants, but they were not the right ones for me, I continue to struggle with my mental illness and PTSD. At age 21 my battle continued to rage full force. Despite the presence of my love, Shawn, I spiraled out of control. One morning my mom found me with my wrists split open and raced me to the hospital where I had a forced admission at a psychiatric hospital an hour from home. I was locked in for six weeks of treatment. Shawn was the only support I had, and the only reason I pulled through.
Once I was released I moved in with him and his parents. I was at a standstill with my mental illness and PTSD for the next several years with mysteries to come. I married Shawn at 24, a year and a half after we got married I had my life-changing accident with the stool at work. During the year and a half after the accident when people were trying to piece together the fragments of what was wrong with me, I ended up being drugged into a fog.
Being Drugged Into an Oblivion
They originally thought I had a conversion disorder due to trauma from the fall. They had to nix that theory when they realized I had a neurogenic bladder (that resulted in the birth of Nemo). Then my psychiatrist, who really didn’t know what she was doing, snowed me with Fentanyl and a bunch of psychiatric medications that didn’t mix. She drugged me into an oblivion.
It continued on for way too long. Then one day I was supposed to go for a nerve test in my ear and during the prepping for the test I had to come off all my medications. 26 hours after coming off the meds I collapsed at home.
Shawn brought me to the ER where the on-call psychiatrist stabilized me and put me back on the medications then admitted me to the psych unit to wean me off the medications in a medically controlled manner.. My mental illness and PTSD were looked at, and I was finally properly diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well. Now we are trying to find the pieces of the puzzle that connect all my brain injuries with my developmental delay and physical health issues.