Anthony, it is funny, I had this very same idea flash through my head about an hour ago. I have learned so much about myself, from other people here... there are so many symptoms and feelings that I thought were "wrong" or an indication that something was terribly broken inside of me, and here they turn out to be common with other PTSDers... and I had not read about them anywhere else, or maybe I would not have spent so much time feeling so darn irreparably worthless!!

As I have read your posts Anthony, I have really come to appreciate your whole understanding of PTSD. I wish you would write a book. A good book which balances the clinical, anecdotal, real-world, and is told from the perspective of a PTSDer is desperately needed.


Bailey

Surely this has been said countless times, and with more eloquence than I am capable. However. The written word is far too easy to misinterpret. Anyone upset thinking parts of this thread refer to them specifically needs to step back. Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Take a break. Whatever. Seems some are forgetting there are living, breathing people behind these posts. People with feelings. If we were all face to face and could look into each other's eyes there would be far fewer judgments and nasty remarks in my humble opinion.

Jim.

Awakening, if I may relate this to my past, if you don't mind I don't know if you will find your answer here, but hopefully it might calm a troubled heart.

Many years ago (here I go, sounding old, LOL!) when I was in grade school, I used to get these flash-in-the-pan severe headaches. They were crushing, literally felt crushing pain in my head, pushing down on my brain, OMG... I remember one day in like 5th grade, playing soccer, and the headache was so severe that my peripheral vision was blacking out, the sunlight on the grass felt literally like knives twisting in my eyes, the crushing pain was pushing my head down toward the ground as I ran. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! it pounded with each heartbeat. After my team was off the field, I sat down on the sideline and tried to get the pain to calm down, I felt so awful. One of my classmates asked if I was alright. (I must've looked a little pekid, LOL) I insisted I was fine, I was just catching my breath. I would never admit to having that bad of a headache. After P.E. I took an aspirin and it went away probably an hour later. At home, after school, I told Mom I had had "one of those headaches." She and Dad had both had them too, as kids, and sometimes still had them as adults. They didn't have a name; they were just "those headaches."

Fast forward a few years, in high school, about 1:45 PM I would get a severe, pounding headache. God-awful, searing, crushing, impeding, throbbing headache. Every couple-3 weeks I'd get one. They didn't have a name, it was just one of THOSE headaches again. :( If I could slip out to my locker between classes, I'd take an aspirin or two (this was back in the dark ages when you were allowed to have OTC meds in your locker, like aspirin, tylenol, advil and midol, LOL) and probably 80% of the time, it would go away. The other 20% of the time it would hang on, I'd be miserable through the bus ride home and then collapse in my bed in pain. Or I would be a basically useless pulp slogging my way through softball or handbells or theater. I remember resting on the couch upstairs in makeup (my best friend & I were in the costume/make-up dept.) a few times... laying down always helped calm the storm in my head... in softball the coaches always pushed us and I always felt obligated to push through the splitting pain, if I wasn't puking my guts out, I must be good enough to run, right?

Senior year of H.S., my parents' marriage had come unraveled on Christmas morning, and pretty much every day thereafter I got one of those headaches at the witching hour -- 1:40 PM. At 2:30 break (or by 2:15 if I absolutely couldn't stand it) my best friend would walk me down to the secretary/nurse's office, so I could take a couple aspirin and lay down on the cot. Every damn day!! God bless my best friend Anna we are still in touch to this day she would guide me down the hall (otherwise I would veer off into the lockers) and down the steps so I did not fall. She understood. She'd never had one of those headaches but she was compassionate and sweet and loved me. Isn't a friend like that amazing? I went to a small Lutheran H.S., the teachers and staff were all aware of the family problems @ home and that the headaches were very likely related. My afternoon teachers would watch me go down the tubes at my desk, Anna sat next to me and she saw it too of course, I would just look at her, she'd give the teacher "that look" and he'd nod almost imperceptably, and we'd go downstairs.

About this time, the word "migraine" was coined in the medical community. There were even new meds for these "migraine" headaches, but (1) they were injections, and I was mortified of needles; and (2) what I had didn't qualify as a migraine! Why?

• They occurred daily.
• They occurred at the same time each day.
• The daily migraines were often bilateral.
• They often responded to aspirin or laying down with my eyes covered.
• I didn't throw up with them.

That was 1989.

Over the years, the study and classifications of migraines has grown and changed significantly. Obviously what I experienced as a child, we now know, were classic migraines in the form that children experience them. Now we know that the headaches I experienced in high school were hormone-triggered migraines, and senior year those were chronic daily migraines.

I knew through first-hand experience that in 1995-2000, the docs and researchers were clueless *grin* because I knew that tension headaches could trigger migraines, even though they said they didn't. I knew that some tension headaches should be classified as migraines, even though they said they shouldn't because they were totally unrelated. I knew that some migraines lasted well over 3 days, even though the "experts" were adamant that migraines lasted a bloody maximum of 72 hours! Hogwash! I would get 8-10 day migraines almost every month... don't tell me they're not migraines when they match every other criteria except that they don't go away!!

Of course, today, 2007, now the "experts" are conceding all of the above. They are now accepting that migraines are highly variable in symptoms, duration, and what successfully treats them. Meds have gone from injectable-only, to pills, to lozenges, and now I take an anti-seizure medication anytime a headache creeps up. Researchers are bandying about the theory that maybe migraines are a seizure disorder. Huh! Who woulda known?!

My point is this. Even though we did not have a label for "those headaches" when I was a 10-year-old, the fact is, I still had "those headaches" and they did interfere with my life in some ways. Ditto for in high school, and through college. What I had didn't neatly fit into the labels the medical community had invented. My symptoms were oddball, they didn't fit neatly in a category, I was coloring outside the lines. It made me supremely frustrated to not have a tidy category to fit into, because it seemed that it made treatment impossible. If my symptoms didn't match up just right, then what treatment could possibly work? Treatment X was only made for Symptom X. If my headache lasted 6 days, and a triptan med was used on headaches lasting 1-2 days, what was I supposed to take?????

Sometimes the medical community is wrong. Sometimes they don't fully understand what is going on with us as individuals. Sometimes the classifications are wrong. We fall outside the lines because they haven't caught up with us yet.

So what I did, is I treated it as if these were migraines. I told my doctor, I am just atypical, I am a special case, because mine last up to 10 days. I kept journals, I described hour-by-hour the patterns of the pain, what meds worked and for how long. Everything fit the migraine mold except for the overall duration. And we treated the symptoms I had the best we could. We didn't stop treatment at Day 3 just because the published papers of the time said "migraines only last up to 72 hours," obviously I was still in pain at Hour #73, so we kept treating it.

Awakening, you know what you are feeling. Don't worry so much about the classifications... maybe the medical community just hasn't caught up to you yet. :) If you are feeling it, it's real, and it's there. Inventory your symptoms and use the best tools you can get to treat them. If you fall a bit outside the box -- so what? Who cares? Not everything can be neatly labeled. You full well may have PTSD. And depression. Or depression. ??? Do what you can with what you've got. If labels aren't plainly obvious at the moment, treat things as best you can. If you find PTSD resources helpful, use them. If depression therapies are helpful, wonderful! Try things on for size and do what works. It's all that we all can do, really.

I don't know if this is helpful to you, but your post reminded me of those years and years I didn't fit into any classification with my migraines. I hope it helps somehow. :)

Bailey

Just now finished reading the entire bloody thread. Couldn't let this one go... Heads up though, I am only speaking to my daughter on this one.

This is not entirely true my girl. True, you are not capable of working right now. However. It is because of your cancer, not your PTSD. That's why you had to resign from the comic book job. Your cancer, not your PTSD. You could not handle a job where you need to socialize or be around too much activity or noise. However. You seem to forget - working from home is not social and was never an issue for you prior to the cancer. Now that you are in remission again recently, you will be getting that job back, I am absolutely certain of it.

You need to give yourself far more credit. With all the shit you've been through in the past year - cancer, death in the family and so on - you are doing splendidly well. May be biased - however - I would venture to say better than most would in your situation. So cut the crap please.

Dad.

Amen... Dad :) your words ring true for many of us, I believe. All things considered, we are doing splendidly well. So we do need to cut the crap where we are each concerned :) we are all so darn good at criticizing ourselves and discounting ourselves unfairly and unjustly.

I too read a lot of Christmas tension in this thread. I don't mean to say that it is just about Christmas, not at all. The core issues (judgment) are very much there. But it is boiling over to the surface and many of us are more irritable/touchy because we are also carrying this 150 lb. pack labeled "Christmas" on our backs. And I think that's alright -- it's totally normal and to be expected. Everybody has a lot going on.

Hopefully it will all get a little easier to deal with in a few days.

JMO, of course. :)

Bailey