As many here know, in addition to PTSD I've got chronic kidney disease at a level near dialysis. I have only 40% of my kidney function, which means my blood to my extremities isn't oxygenated enough. So I have nerve damage in my legs and walk with a cane. It means I have to go see a neurologist every few months to keep track of how nerve damage is advancing.

Today I went to my neurologist's appointment. Before seeing him, his nurse took my blood pressure and so forth. I commented that I liked a bracelet she was wearing, and she surprised me by telling me it was in memory of her 16 year old daughter who died last December in a car wreck. Her father is a cop, and it turned out he was the first one on the scene and he had to watch her die.

As many here also know, before kidney disease got me I used to be a hospital chaplain, and now from that experience, degree, and training I teach death and dying classes to nursing students at a community college. I'll admit that that helped me cope with the shot of her telling me her horrible story so unexpectedly.

But what really helped me was this group here at DS PTSD. That's because she got very real, and told me she lost her faith over this, and she's felt suicidal. I didn't answer her as a chaplain. I told her instead that I had PTSD and belonged to this support group. I told her that here we can tell each other about suicidal thoughts and not be judged. I told her that given what we've seen here that many others in the world have not, it would be unusual if suicide never entered our minds.

It wasn't that I was encouraging her suicidal thoughts. It was just that I was accepting them, and then telling her that we here have them and tell one another and live on somehow. We never "get over it," whatever it was that happened to us, so much as we help each other live with it.

She said some people tell her it was God's will, and that it makes her angry. I told her that whether a person is a Christian or not, it helps to remember that even Jesus cried out about feeling abandoned by God when he died. You're going to feel what you feel in times of complete crisis. It's ok.

She told me that she felt rage. I said good, because Kubler Ross said anger was one of the stages of grief. It's past the stage of denial, so that's progress. I said stay angry as long as you need to, and you'll get to the next stage in due time. I told her to keep talking to people who do understand loss, too. Like people here in my DS PTSD support group.

Just thought I'd thank everybody for how DS PTSD made me able to be in that conversation today. Has th