Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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In writing in my Bad News thread, people were so generous to offer support. I talked there about processing this bad news I just got about my kidney disease. I realized how it is that I have built this anti-suicide plan in my PTSD recovery life, and how this news threatens that plan.
Hm. Learn something knew about yourself every day. I decided to ask a question in a new thread.
Anybody else have their life centered around such an anti-suicide plan? Here's mine.
"So it's hard to accept that the kidney disease has advanced now, against all efforts physical, mental, and spiritual to hold it back. I really don't want to slide into stage 4 because several dialysis appointments a week will take away my ability to travel very easily. I literally live for my trips back home every summer to my beloved little Uruguay. I want to hang in there with my PTSD and not self destruct so I can retire there in 10 years.
I have this plan to die there where my PTSD began in the Uruguayan war of the 1960s when I was young. I've lived with that war in me every day all these years since, so my plan to rest in peace there would bring this PTSD combat thing full circle to rest. It means a lot to my PTSD daily recovery now to have that future plan in place against any suicide plans I'm tempted to make along the way. So this bad news bringing dialysis closer threatens my good master plan."
That's what's at stake for me anyway, in this bad news. Anybody else got something like that?
Hm. Learn something knew about yourself every day. I decided to ask a question in a new thread.
Anybody else have their life centered around such an anti-suicide plan? Here's mine.
"So it's hard to accept that the kidney disease has advanced now, against all efforts physical, mental, and spiritual to hold it back. I really don't want to slide into stage 4 because several dialysis appointments a week will take away my ability to travel very easily. I literally live for my trips back home every summer to my beloved little Uruguay. I want to hang in there with my PTSD and not self destruct so I can retire there in 10 years.
I have this plan to die there where my PTSD began in the Uruguayan war of the 1960s when I was young. I've lived with that war in me every day all these years since, so my plan to rest in peace there would bring this PTSD combat thing full circle to rest. It means a lot to my PTSD daily recovery now to have that future plan in place against any suicide plans I'm tempted to make along the way. So this bad news bringing dialysis closer threatens my good master plan."
That's what's at stake for me anyway, in this bad news. Anybody else got something like that?
Oh Yes, Muji, I reluctantly say. I've made those plans in my head many times over the last couple years.
I began my downhill health slide 4 years ago. I had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and had a car accident 2 years prior. I had recovered somewhat and then boom, another car accident that I caused partly due to being way overmedicated for the fibro. I stopped driving, but decided to go on a sailing trip because I thought (maybe rightly so) that it would the last one I could make. I know fibro can get worse with age and I already had serious back injuries so my friends let me go along for the ride and do nothing but have fun. I caught a virus on that sailing trip, that I ignored and couldn't leave the house for 3 months which went to my heart and caused permanent damage. My heart got so bad that heart failure was on the horizon. If they had stages for the progression of my heart disease it was probably a 2/4. But, a miracle happened and I was put into EECP heart treatment. This was my only treatment option other than lifestyle change to allow me to function again.
Before that EECP treatment I was preparing to go home to live my parents because i had nobody else and I could barely get out of bed from exhaustion. The same parents that tried to evict me a year before (long story there). But I had noone else and I couldn't think, so that was my plan. I made a sneering remark with my friend and parents in the room that Christmas they came out to help when I got my dx; that I was going to call Dr. Kervorkian once I got to heart failure....jokingly. But yet, my dad left the room because he heard me say it the year before when they sent the eviction letter. He knew it was true.
Muji, I don't honestly know if I could do that as I am a Christian and believe that that is not what we are supposed to do and that is what keeps me going. My prayer is that God would make my life peaceful and serene no matter where my end days lead me. Whether that is back home where I grew up or that is here where I've built my life, I have come to terms that God's got me where he thinks it is best for me and that he doesn't want me to suffer or be surrounded by unloving people (I do have one great set of friends here).
Having said that, I understand what you are saying it and why you are saying it. I just hope and pray for you that you can have peace about wherever you are--both in your health and location. Prayers & Blessings Your Way, JP
They still evicted me to pay off my brother's loan, so my backup plan is gone.
It worked for me to go back to where I got my PTSD the second time, but not the first. It really depends, I think. That's why now that returning has worked for me, I'm dying to follow through. Literally.
Love and Blessings,
JP
You know I am diabetic, also that I served my native community, both families and elders. So real close up view for me. It's also a fear since this disease is not particularly kind to natives, or Hispanics for that matter.
You and I the same age ...well that is also there in my feelings on it.
My plans over the years have failed , some because I was naive, only once because I changed my mind,a few for no worldly reason. They really should have worked, but didn't.. I found myself here. Where I met you and others that shared ways to survive this life even with PTSD and the many physical damages, disabilities of my treatments by others. Along with the pain of RA OA, and others, carrying me through breaking my arm and coming to terms with the loss of the dexterity that makes the art happen. Helping me accept all the losses that came with loving very deeply my John, and losing him and the posse of friends and family that did care, on the other side.
The diabetes always carries that future in my mind as well as amputation of what little my legs can do.
Here at DS you and others taught, told me I was not defined by my disabilities but by my strengths.
You are also defined that way by us here. By how you choose to live. So just like John took the chemo knowing it would not cure but help me get through a hard point in each year I always have. I ask that you look at that dialysis as the same... a means to live life longer with your now much stronger emotional heart. Your past made you choose to live, to fight to remain and grow through this painful start, to prove to yourself you are more than what afflicted and effected you..
You have been making so many changes in thought, that you are an inspiration that send out waves of belief that we can do this.
There in Uruguay where it seemed to start for you is only the most visible place where it started. I think with your parents changing location, didn't change it just added to it.
You are important and loved here, and if this CKD leads to the last days, why leave that? If there medical ability to assist you is less than perfect your physical friends and support are here. Not there, where though the multitudes know the pain of that war, but do they know you?
I would be hurt to see you leave in any form of defeated feeling, but rather see you fight as you have taught us and all your students so well. Then there is always the chance of better medicine, not yet conceived there, that may alleviate your prognosis here, transplant of one kidney could give you that.
If you look around here and at the rosters of students you have touched, leaving would be the ultimate step into isolation that you have fought so hard to conquer.
I am sorry so long, but until it is understood to have all your who ya gonna call people taken against their will, understanding how losing even one more can hurt too much.
J.
Let me just say this.
My suicide prevention plan was the fairly lame but ever-appealing-to-my-contrary nature "I won't let them/it win".
Now it's remembering taht when I was ready to give up---not the time I made the cut to go into the abyss but when bedrdeen in pain about 2 1/2 years ago now---I asked my hubby and mom t oplease let me "go". I was staying solely b/c of their pain, not for my reasons, and I just was so tired. So tired of trying and fighting.
Mom said she couldn't tell me why all this pain in my life, but maybe she could... tomorrow... And to just at least wait until I saw one lsat might-help doctor. (Long version is on my jouranl and is *very* long.) Point being? He helped. That doc helped.
I have had a long battle back from that and it let my PTSD zombies outta the basement but....
Maybe... tomorrow... I don't know what's going to happen next. Could be worse, better, or the same.
Could be I have no idea what's in store.
I could wax poetic and talk about how at my lowest points, I discovered I was not in a dead end but that there was a trail leading out, no matter how rocky or hard the climb---and it'd be true---but that'd also sound like one of those awful motivational "bits" you hear on TV and then I'd have to slap myself upside the head.
It's true you may have to change your plans and what you've come to find stable, true, and acceptable in your life. I'm feeling that just about every day since this bleeping accident 3 years ago, and doubly so since the PTSD "budded".... but that said, I'm so contrary I've been told if I drown they'll find me upstream, so...I may be a lousy source of input here.
My new suicide prevention plan is: When I see cognitive degeneration and/or physical pain to the extent that I lose who I am? Okay. Until then? I promised to keep trying. I keep my promises. I promised my husband and mom those were the only conditions under which I'd do it. And I will keep my promise.
Lame, but it works for me.
Also, yesterday I saw a butterfly rare to my area that is only here b/c the winter was so hard---and almost no bleeping stinkbugs for same reason---so.... metaphorically, that's kinda where I'm at. Looking for those butterflies.
Gentlest purrs and know you have my admiration and support in any decision you make,
Leo
I'm really sorry to hear about this, Muji. I know I can say this to you without offending, so, could it be that Your plan is not part of the Great Cosmic Plan??? I can see why you'd want to retire to Uruguay, but maybe there's some unfinished business here and this is a way of having you complete your destiny???
The whole closed door/open window thing...
Sorry if I sound like a bumper sticker, but I do think that some times messing with our Plans is a way for God to keep us on our toes.
Hugs.
I can see how my early plans, specifics of them, fell through and I had to just do whatever the best option was at the time. But now I can see, Romans 8:28 is true, "God works all things together for good, for those who love Him, and are called to HIS purposes" All those detours I took were actually part of the Plan. I am supposed to be right where I am at this very moment, and it's even greater than my original plan. Basically, I wanted to be a great doctor,, on a par with Madame Curie, pioneering medical breakthroughs on a grand scale. And you know what? I am! I'm actually doing a significant thing in helping medical people learn about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome! I wouldn't have done it this way though, not by having it. Anyway, ..
My suicide prevention plan,, is kind of similar, in a way... I want to be functional until the end. I want to die with my boots on. I don't want to linger and languish in some convalescent home while ..... no.
My big prayer is "Lord, keep me functional."
Last week, when I was so sick and thought I might die then, I had an insight that it would be better for those around me if they had a couple of days warning, so they could prepare,, so,, okay. Yes, I talk to God about everything.
I'm going to be honest with you,, my thinking,, just mine, and I don't recommend it. I want to die with my boots on.. living right up to the end.. like my father said. And the song I posted.. going on adventures. Me, not you, but me.. I would go ahead when it's time,, to whatever risky dangerous place.. and do some good there,, and if it hastens my passing to be in such an environment.. halleluiah! I come from a military family, and am trained to press on, suck it up,, not whine or feel sorry for myself.. go and do what I have to do, knowing I may survive the day and I may not. You know the Indian "hokahey! It's a good day to die. So, my battles are not with enemies,, but with poverty, sickness, hate itself. Let me go and dig some wells for potable water, feed some kids and drop dead while doing that.
Ah, but we have to be where we are called to be. Last year, while I was planning to go to Pakistan, it happened that I moved from one apartment to another, the first a smaller building with a yard and stuff on a nice and quiet street.. to this place, in a high rise in a different community. I didn't want to come here, but, believe it or not.. God made it very clear that this is where he wants me. I've been getting active in this community, and now I see why I'm here. There are a few ethnic groups here that should be getting along better, some kinds of social deprivation,, that they don't even consider deprivation. I've started a craft club, am in a garden club, and am doing some improvements in the infrastructure. I can do them when I want to and am up to it, as a volunteer. haha and the tricky part is that.. going to another country, for me, would be a trip that I would do something and then come back home,, but here.. it's more long term.. and can't just say.. "okay, I've done some good and going to go home now".
But it's not time for you, yet. You're not in stage 4 yet. Be ready to adjust your plans as God implements His Plan. (deli, another bumper sticker.. hehe)
Good morning Muji.