traumatic medical stuff

It seems like hospitals should do a much better job at helping patients with the emotional issues related to their medical treatment.  They should have known not to put you in a room with a mother whose infant would be coming in to nurse.  And they should have made a therapist available to you if you wanted to talk about your feelings.  Really, they should be making a therapist available to any patient undergoing something traumatic.  I don't think hospitals ever do that, but they ought to.  I mean, if a patient wakes up in the middle of surgery, you could guess that they might be sort of traumatized, right?  If a patient has to be put in restraints for whatever reason, they might be sort of traumatized by that.  I don't think it's hard to understand that.  So why isn't it being addressed?

I agree.  

The two hospitals here that I have used for inpatient medical treatment (more than just 24-hour post-op observation) both routinely offer to have one of their chaplains visit a patient (they ask if you would like a visit when they do all of the Q&A once you have been admitted and get to your room), but that is, of course, not nearly the same as providing a visit from a counselor.  They also both have social workers on staff to provide referrals and assist patients who have financial concerns (e.g., needing some type of expensive medication if yhey have no prescription drug coverage)  or continuing care needs once they are discharged, but they do only case management tasks (I know one of them).  They also both have master's level licensed Counselors and PhD Psychologists on staff to do psych evals in the ER.

It is unfortunate that the hospitals do not recognize this need.  

Lora

You know, I can't remember ever being asked if I would like a visit from the chaplain when I was admitted to the hospital.  And I've spent a fair amount of time in hospitals!  I think it's good that they do that but it would be even better if they also offered a visit from a counselor.  I think people that don't consider themselves religious would not ask to see the chaplain but they might still need to talk about things with someone.  And the case management type stuff is also very important but still doesn't provide for patients that need some sort of counseling.

@ our facility we ask every pt is they want a visit from the chaplain

I've had surgery more times then I can count, well over a dozen times.  Two incidents stand out.  
When I had my first daughter it was a VBAC.  I fought hard to find a OB who would even let me go into labor because with my son they had a problem getting him out so they made two incisions on my uterus, one across and one up and down, like a cross.  They were concerned that I would rupture during labor.
I was so disappointed that I needed a c sec with my son.  I had been in labor 2 days and pushed for 2 hours and I just felt like I had been cheated.  I was determined to have my next baby vaginally.  I contacted several OB's and none would touch me until I found Dr. C.  He was very anti cesarean and was willing to let me have a trial of labor.  Actually at that point I was so gung ho I wanted to have a home birth.  Fortunately the midwife I choose decided against it, although she did attend the birth.
I had it all worked out, the birth plan, who would be there, the video, everything.  My due date came and went.  And kept going.  Finally 2 weeks later my OB was going out of town and agreed to induce me before he left.
I went in Friday morning and at first it seemed like a repeat of my first labor.  Lot's of pitocin but no dilation.  Thank God for the epidural.  After about 15 hours my OB came in and checked me.  Still at 5.  He told me he was going out for a bite to eat.  He told me to go to sleep and I would probably have the baby in the morning.  He left, I sent everyone home except my husband and tried to go to sleep.  A little while later the nurse comes in to check me and she got all excited.  The way she was acting I thought I had delivered the baby right there.  She said I was at 10 and ready to push.  So we had to call every one back about 1/2 hour after they left.  My nurse then went to try to find the doctor.  Good luck.  He wasn't answering my page.  And because of my situation they didn't want me to deliver without him.  Finally they found him and he came back and the rest of the people came back and it was show time, time to push.  Only I had no urge to push whatsoever.  So they kept telling me to push and I kept saying I was.  After a little while the doctor decided that I wouldn't be able to make progress if I had the epidural and told the anesthesiologist not to give me any more.
Welcome to Hell.  I have never known it was possible to be in so much pain.  On a scale of 1 to 10 it was easily a 100.  I was screaming and yelling and begging everyone to help me.  I begged the doctor, I begged the nurse, I almost begged my 5 year old son but I had the sense to realize that I might scar him for life if I did that.  My friend told me later it was like I was drunk on pain.  It was like those women on TV screaming except much worse.  The nurses were telling me to be quiet, I was scaring everyone on the floor.  Nurses and orderlies were popping their head in to see what was going on.  It must have sounded like a person was being murdered.  After 2 hours of pushing and me begging for a c sec, begging for a knife to cut the baby out myself, begging to be put out, the monitor showed the baby's heart rate dropping and at that point the doctor said she was too far in the birth canal to do a c sec so he decided to use forceps except she was still very high up so he used something they called high forceps, which I've heard that they rarely used because it was safer to do a c sec at that point.  Except I had a OB that was very anti c sec and he was going to drag that baby out of my pelvis if it killed me.  The only good thing is they turned the epidural back on.  I've never been so grateful in my life.  Finally the pain was over.
The doctor brought a mirror up so I could see the baby being born, except at this point I wasn't really able to tell what was going on until he brought out his scalpel and performed an episiotomy that was longer then a c section incision would have been.  I remember looking at that and thanking God I couldn't feel it but I know I was going to suffer when that epidural was gone.
I think I went into shock because I don't remember her being born, just that she was out and she wasn't crying and they started to get concerned but I saw her just looking around the room and I knew she was OK.  She started crying just as they were taking her to the NICU.
As if the delivery wasn't bad enough my epidural had slipped and became a spinal.  Complete with a spinal headache except headache is such an innocuous word.  Makes it sound like you can take and aspirin and it will be gone.  This was excruciating pain every time I lifted my head.  They tried to do a blood patch, another torture session, and it didn't take.  I couldn't lift my head for 3 months.
And as if I hadn't already had the birth from Hell, after I took her home the next day she ran a fever and they admitted her to the pediatric ward because once a baby leaves the hospital they become "dirty" and can't go back into the nursery.  This hospital had the worse pediatric ward in the world.  There was no place for the parents to sleep.  She shared to room with a baby who had a raging infection, with her mother who had a c section and also have a raging infection.  I threw a fit and they moved her to a private room.  And since they couldn't find anything for me to even sit in, much less lie down, I called the doctor that was covering for my doctor since he was out of town and he agreed to have me admitted again so I could be near my baby because I refused to leave the hospital without my baby.  And the pediatric ward was at least a mile from the maternity ward, in another wing, so I had to manage to walk there, with my horrible head pain, so I could be with her because, like I said, she was a "dirty" baby and couldn't come near my room.
That was the worse experience in my life and the worst part of it was I couldn't bond with my baby.  I was in too much agony.  My mother in law had to take care of her and would take her into bed with her to sleep.  They bonded extremely well and my daughter to this day is very close to her grandmother and we have had our struggles over the years.
I swear to God, to this day, 25 years later, I still have issues because of that birth.  The episiotomy cut into my rectum and I have had problems going to the bathroom ever since, even after surgery to try to fix it.
After that experience the second one seems minor.  It was after my pannectomy.  I had an epidural and I developed bad itching from it.  I was given some drug IV to stop the itching, I forgot the name, and the nurse came in to administer it.  As soon as she did I started feeling funny and I asked what she did to me.  She wouldn't answer me.  I honestly felt like I was about to die.  I kept asking her what was wrong with me and begging her to help me and she just totally ignored me and didn't say a thing.  I called my friend and she told me to call my surgeon.  I tried to call him but couldn't reach him so I called 911.  They must have thought I was crazy when I told them I was calling from the hospital.  They told me to call a nurse and I told them I was trying and no one would come and I thought I was going to die.  The nurse would walk past my room and wouldn't come in.
Finally another nurse came in and I asked her what was going on.  It seems that instead of giving me 0.25 mg of the drug she had given me 25 mg.  I asked her if I was going to die and she laughed at me.  I was so upset.  I really felt that nurse owed me an apology, someone should have at least acted like they felt bad about it.  I told the nurse that she better not let that nurse who did it near me.
When I got home I wrote a letter to the person in charge of patient relations about the experience and he sent me a letter saying it was too bad it happened to me.  They said the nurse had been disciplined or given more training or something.  To this day I feel that they handled it wrong and didn't show the proper concern or remorse for what I went through.
Other then those 2 experiences I have to say that I have been treated pretty well when I go to the hospital.  I am a pretty easy patient, though.  I rarely call a nurse or bother them unless absolutely necessary.  The last time I stayed in the hospital I hardly saw a nurse.  They were very busy so I didn't bother them.  I was doing pretty good though and was able to get around and didn't need any assistance.

I wasn't even thinking of childbirth stuff until I read your post, but I think childbirth experiences can so easily be traumatic because it's such an emotional time.  Just having to have a C section if you wanted a natural birth can be traumatic.  And people act like all that should matter is that you have a healthy baby and whatever you had to go through to get a healthy baby should be worth it.  And of course having a healthy baby is very important but that doesn't mean other things aren't important, too.

I guess usually the trauma goes away after the birth of a healthy baby.  I know after the birth of my son, as soon as I held him it didn't seem so bad, except being disappointed about having a c sec.
I didn't realize how lucky I was with my daughter until years later I met a couple who had my doctor and had the same thing happen and he refused to do a c section and by the time their daughter was born she had been without oxygen so long she was permanently brain damaged.  She lived in a care center, unable to walk or talk, needing constant care.  They were suing the doctor.  There but for the grace of God.  I knew then I had nothing to complain about.

I, personally, haven't had a traumatic medical experience but had an incredibly traumatic experience with my now 15 month old. When he was 4 weeks old my then 2 year old got pneumonia and what we later assumed was RSV. This was right after Christmas. The 2 year old was in the hospital from 12/29-1/3. The day the 2 year old got discharged our then 5 week old was admitted in respiratory distress. He, too, had RSV and bilateral pneumonia. Our local hospital is small and our pediatrician has rights there so the first day was ok...he was on O2 and pretty constant breathing treatments while they tried to figure out what was wrong. On day 2 things took a horrible turn for the worse. He had struggled for so long that the pedi decided to have us emergently transported to Children's Hospital Boston. While we were waiting for the transport team he attempted to do the necessary lumbar puncture so that CHB would have whatever they needed ASAP rather than having to do it there. My husband had gone home to pack clothes because I had a stomach bug and was told I wasn't going to be able to go with him because he was being placed in the Medical Intensive Care Unit. I watched in horror while my mother (who is a nurse at our pedi office), the hospital nurse, and our pediatrician folded my newborn in half in an attempt to do this LP. He crashed. Like, literally turned gray. They called a code. The room flooded with people. I was hysterical. (I'm getting hysterical now just typing it). My husband was walking back into the hospital as they were calling the code and walked into a room of 20 some odd people trying to stabilize our newborn. It was horrific. We could hear the nurse manager in the hallway pretty much yelling at our pediatrician to "get this baby out of here. you need to call the helicopter and get this baby out of here this baby cannot die here." Our pedi was holding out for the transport team because it's basically a mobile emergency room. He was afraid that if we took the helicopter he would crash again and a.) they wouldn't be able to do anything and b.) neither of us would be able to ride with him. The transport team finally came and I rode up to Boston with Joshua. 

He had blown through several IV's prior to even being transported so that as soon as we got there we spent 3 hours waiting as a team tried to get a central line in. They failed. He was intubated, sedated and on a ventilator for the first 6 days. He kept losing IV's and I will never, ever forget having to look into his eyes when he would come out of the sedation while they were essentially stabbing him everywhere to get another IV and he was silently screaming. He ended up with an IV in his head because they had blown every vein in his feet, hands and arms. He needed a blood transfusion and had more chest xrays than I can count. He had withdrawal from the morphine when they finally took him off and put him on the CPAP. He was in agony and so was I. They wouldn't let him eat. I was breastfeeding and understood I couldn't nurse him but I had to beg them to give him an NG tube. DH and I participated every morning when the dr.'s rounded and I LOST my mind when 4 hours after the doctors approved the NG tube the nurse still hadn't put it in. I'm generally a nice person but I had had it at that point and flipped my lid. It was done within 5 minutes and he started to calm down. When I say he was withdrawing I mean it 100%. Every time he moved he screamed. I couldn't touch him or pick him up because he was just miserable. I was seriously worried about the long term effects.

Luckily once he didn't have to stay on the CPAP long and after 10 days in the intensive care unit was released home and was back to our normal happy boy. He has had a lot of after effects of having such a severe case of RSV. He was hospitalized another 3 times that year. And just last month we spent 4 days at our local hospital again with bilateral pneumonia, RSV and a partially collapsed lung.

Honestly, I know I have some sort of PTSD related to this. I have a lot of "sound" memories...we've had to go up to CHB a bunch of times after this for specialists and other appointments and whever I hear the alarms from the vital machines I get a little panicky. We did get offered a chaplain and social worker at CHB. I am a social worker so the day I lost it and the nurse told the social worker to come in and talk to me I just found it a little amusing. There definitely needs to be more "follow through" on the hospital's end in helping patients work through traumatic medical stuff. It's hard, if not impossible, to just "let it go" like it was nothing.

See, I think that kind of thing can definitely be just as traumatic as an experience where you were the patient.  I would not be surprised at all if you did have PTSD.  I bet a number of people that told these stories do.

The only way I know how to deal with my PTSD is talking about it, sometimes over and over, and feeling the feelings associated with it with someone who understands and is supportive. I have gone through cases of kleenex, pounded pillows, and experienced through the profound fear. On the other side is release and relief.

I need the experiential types of therapy in addition to the dialectical behavioral- just talking helps but hasn't been sufficient for me.

Massage and other forms of body work have been so helpful with teaching me healthy, healing touch.

Meditation has been essential in teaching me to calm and center myself.

Exercise gets my endorphins going, and I feel better.

Time doesn't always heal- I think the emotions just go underground.