"I feel like even before trauma
you had other difficult situations emotionally, with your husband and your family as you described it and that adds up to it all." quote Alisha88

Yes Alisha, this is true, I had a lot of difficult challenges before this event that finally just broke me down.

My husband was a binge alcoholic, he could go a while and not drink and drug then go out on a binge. I did not know what that was either. My therapist has described to me exactly what I went through too. A husband will go out and get totally wasted, and in my case not even come home all night, no phones, no cells phones back then either. Then of course I get all upset, an argument, the promise, even begging for forgiveness and how it will not happen again, the honeymoon period where they behave too, then another binge and another big argument and so the cycle goes, again with the promise, the honeymoon period of being good until the next binge takes place.

Meanwhile what the wife does is she tends to try to compensate for feeling unsafe, that the marriage is unpredictable and will often try to make up for it by excessively cleaning the house, trying to make it perfect something has to be there that presents a feeling of control, however, the wife doesn't realize it is compensating. That is exactly what I did too.

The other thing that takes place is how an alcoholic surrounds himself with others who are like him too. Often what happens is the wife is constantly told that it is "her" that has the problem, because look how everyone else has their party time and gets drunk and even drugs sometimes. It is also not unusual for a husband to insist that the wife is the one with the problem and as in my case, I should get help go see someone, I had the problem not him.

It is also not uncommon for the alcoholic to be an alcoholic because he struggles with ADHD or compulsive ADHD, which is the case with my husband. When I was actually trying to get help, this was not really figured out back then. When I tried to reach out for help, therapists/psychiatrists suggested I take valium, maybe I have anxiety, maybe I am depressed, well, I was anxious but not because "I" had the problem. I suffered 10 years this way until an old close friend and I got together, she was divorcing her husband because he was an alcoholic. She said to me, "If you fight at all about alcohol, there is a problem". She took me to a meeting, and that is when I finally learned about "binge alcoholism".

I had many challenges, even some very difficult health challenges, I even almost died, I had appendicitis where it did not burst but only ruptured a little and leaked toxins throughout my body cavity. I thought I had the flew because it was going around, but the pain got so bad and I got so weak and I could actually feel that I was dying tbh. My husband called an ambulance and when the EMT moved me from my bed onto that hard wooden board, the pain was horrible. I moaned, I was not yelling because I was too weak, but because I moaned the EMT yelled at me to shut the hell up. I will never forget how horrible that EMT was and no one yelled at him for being so mean to me. I was taken to a nearby emergency place, not a hospital, and when they did tests they saw I was in serious condition and had me rushed to the hospital where I was taken right into surgery. When I was on the table, they were getting me ready and the nurse could not find my urethra to put a tube in and she was really angry and mean, I was so embarrassed and that is the last thing I heard/saw and I was under and they had to open up my entire body cavity and move all my organs around to irrigate the toxins out of me. I am actually very lucky to even be alive and they didn't even know if I was going to survive after the surgery.

I have had a lot of bad treatment when it comes to my health issues, people being mean/rude to me. I am now so bad and with the PTSD, I have a terrible time going to see a doctor. My T has found a doctor for me and he talked to her about how bad I am, that I have PTSD and I need to have a GP that can help me with that. I have had too many "bad" things happen concerning my health and doctors that this post would be yet another novel. My new GP spent our first visit just listening to me and told me I should write a book about all the ways I have been treated so badly by health professionals.

My therapist has explained to me that unfortunately, yes, people with PTSD can be misdiagnosed. I actually was talking to him about that this past Tuesday because my medical records are wrong and it has affected how doctors have treated me, something I really don't need on top of already struggling.

My therapist told me that often people who have PTSD can get misdiagnosed as Histonic, Avoidant, Bipolar Disorder, narcissistic Personality Disorder and I can't remember the other ones he said at the moment. It can depend upon what stage someone is in with the PTSD, a person can get diagnosed with depression too because when PTSD is developing the person goes through a stage of depression and withdrawl, I did go through that, so I can see how that can happen. There is a stage in PTSD where the person has a period of feeling ok and even positive, and then will slip into a depressive state, that can be confused with Bipolar disorder.

When a patient presents like I did at the psych ward in a crisis state of mind and are expressing the anger and yet demanding and very protective seemingly very self absorbed, that can lead to a diagnosis of narcissism. It was explained to me that the signs of "trauma" are being misunderstood because the patient is feeling very unsafe and may not want to take drugs and may be too hyper aware and seem irrational and somewhat confused but also insistent. Typically trauma patients are very desperate too. That is what happened to me, and unfortunately I had a psychiatrist that was from India, spoke with a heavy accent, it didn't even occur to me that he would find what I was saying I was so upset about to be "irrational for a woman to be so upset about". I did not even think about "cultural believes" or any of that. I am not the only one who had problems with this psychiatrist either.

You are right, my husband should not have been so mean and short with me when he picked me up. But NO ONE talked to him about me and what trauma patient means. The attitude I got was that I should not have been so upset, I was over reacting and it was a problem to others and was not fair to them. Even my older sister came in to see me at the psych ward and yelled at me. Does that sound like something that should happen to a trauma patient?

Alisha, here is one for you, I had a colonoscopy and during the procedure when they were pulling the scope out and coming through a curve the scope flipped up and hit my spleen causing my spleen to be injured. I was sent home and I did make sure I stayed quiet and rested. Then I went to work on the third day. I had been told I could go to work the day after, but I just made sure I was careful. I began to feel pain, and I began to feel dizzy. By the time I got home the pain was worse and began to concern me. I called the office and got the on call doctor and told him what was going on and he told me to get to an emergency room because sometimes it can mean a perforation took place. By this time I felt I was too dizzy to drive and asked my husband to drive me, he got mad and insisted that I should be fine to drive myself. I insisted and he gave in and drove me to an emergency facility. When I got out of the car and just got in the doors of the building, my legs just gave out under me. My husband stood over me yelling at me to knock it off and get the hell up. OMG, I was so embarrassed Alisha and scared too. They gave me morphine and took me in for an MRI. In this place they send the results to a main hospital and wait for the results. I was the last patient and the staff was getting impatient because it was time to close and they wanted to leave. I was on my third shot of morphine, yet I felt I was inconveniencing everyone around me. Then the phone rang and suddenly the attitude completely changed because they realized I was bleeding internally. They wanted to know who I wanted for a surgeon and I was trying to think through the morphine wanting to remember the surgeon I had that saved my life. I finally remembered his name, but he was not at the hospital this place normally works with. I was put in an ambulance, which was very bouncy, and worried me because of my condition, and these ambulance drivers didn't quite know how to get to the hospital where my surgeon was, so they got lost. My husband was not in the ambulance, so he could not help, he had been following in our car.

I thought that I was going to again be rushed into surgery, and quite frankly I was scared. As I am writing this it occurs to me that I had no one there to comfort or assure me either. I finally get to the hospital and they take me to the ICU, not into surgery. No one talked to me, no one and I waited all night long wondering when I would be taken into surgery. The bazaar thing is not even my own husband said anything to me either. Well, the reason no one would talk to me as I would find out over a month later when I finally "forced" my GP to see me, it because I was hurt in a surgery somewhere else and no one wanted to tell me any thing because they were afraid of being sued. What they did is wait and see if the bleeding would stop on it's own so they would not have to touch someone else's mistake.

Alisha, yes, I have had a lot of bad things happen to me, and it seems I have the worst luck with doctors and treatment professionals too. I was probably very susceptible of developing PTSD. I know I did not have it before, I never struggled as I do now or since I stood there and watched all my ponies and horses, animals I loved so much, worked so hard for, destroyed in front of my eyes.

Again, I sought help from professionals and they failed me. And my husband was not nice and I was treated badly. And then I had a lawyer who was supposed to be really good, and he was really well known too. Unfortunately he was declining in his mental capacity and developing dementia. I kept trying to say something, again my husband did not see it. It got so bad I called several lawyers and unfortunately when they heard his name, they kept telling me to be patient and these lawsuits take time. It took five years and it had to get so bad until I finally found a lawyer who actually knew he was losing it and that yes my case was a mess.

It took me almost 4 years (I probably mentioned this) to find a good therapist. He was trying to help me as I struggled with this lawyer, yet he did not realize just how bad it was. (notice this always happens to me). While I was trying so hard to work with this lawyer who was getting worse and worse and I was trapped and even though I tried to reach out for help, went unheard, that is when the PTSD got so bad that I began to have flashbacks from bad things that happened in my childhood. That totally confused me and began to cripple me. That is when the PTSD began to get very dark, dangerously dark, I felt like no one was going to understand what I was going through.

What I have realized now, is that the reason my childhood came forward like that is because I was in the same kind of situation where I was stuck with someone who had something wrong with him ( my childhood with my older brother who had was a troubled child), a part of me felt sorry for him, but a part of me was scared too, and I did not have enough knowledge to verbally express how bad it was. I had no idea the brain could do that either. I seriously believe that had I not been stuck so long with this lawyer, and had been traumatized by seeing what I loved and worked so hard for destroyed, I would have never had this past come forward in flashbacks and crippling body and emotional memories come forward like they did. I had no idea my brain has all that stored like that either.

I have been badly abused because of how others had things wrong with them. I have been told now "finally" by professionals that I have been an extremely misunderstood person. My husband "finally" has been told that I genuinely suffer. I know he feels really bad, I know he feels badly that he treated me so bad too. My therapist tells me all the time that he is amazed at what I have been through and how I managed to accomplish and function like I did and how strong I was and kept fighting in spite of so much challenge.

All I know is I am very sorry for anyone who struggles with PTSD. I know that in my darkest time I was fortunate to find people who helped through it, some don't even really know it, but they were members here. I think that is why I cant help but keep watch, because I know how hard it can get and how lonely it can get, incredibly lonely and I am just so sorry about that.

OE