There’s No ‘Post’ In My Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
By Sandra Joy Stein
I wonder whether my manifestations of stress will ever actually be post-traumatic.
This story is part of The Establishment’s series on PTSD Awareness.
“Sandra!” the nurse screamed from my son’s bedroom. My head shot up from my pillow. I jumped out of bed and ran down the hallway. Turning into his bedroom doorway, I found my son sleeping soundly and his nurse looking at her iPad. I didn’t bother asking if she had yelled for me; it was clear that she had not.
“Sandra!” a different nurse had yelled two nights prior. Apparently I did not hear her. My husband, who did, woke me after our son stopped seizing. The seizure resolved without medical intervention, but my husband worried that the air conditioner’s hum had drowned out the nurse’s shout. Since then I have slept fitfully in the heat.
“Sandy!” My husband yelled during our son’s first seizure five years earlier. “Get me my phone and get dressed! I’m calling 911.” An ambulance took us to the emergency room. Forty minutes and an intravenous dose of Ativan later, the seizure finally stopped. We were admitted to the neurology floor. After 10 days of watching our son lose his ability to walk and talk and swallow, we learned he had…
