Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, and I’m definitely not your doctor. If you’re struggling and you need help, please reach out to the appropriate professional services.
What is medical trauma?
Simply put, medical trauma is a traumatic medical or health experience. This could be a sudden near-death experience such as a surgery gone wrong, developing a life-threatening or terminal illness, or serious pregnancy complications to name a few. These are by no means exhaustive examples.
Maybe you’ve been made aware of your own expiration date – you’ve been dreaming of graduating, getting married and excelling in your career just to watch it all slip away in a single sentence, sat on an uncomfortable chair in a dire-looking doctors office. Maybe you experienced a serious accident and saw your life flash before your eyes – your past, present and future disappearing before you. Maybe you had a medical procedure go so wrong you didn’t know if you’d pull through – never being able to see your loved ones again, no chance to say goodbye. Maybe it’s not a single event, it’s simply the experience of living with a chronic illness – continually grieving for a life that could have been.
No matter what the event(s) was, they all have one thing in common – they are terrifying.
Now that you’ve been truly terrified, something is happening inside of you – something you don’t quite understand or know how to deal with.
That thing is trauma.
Why don’t we talk about it?
For someone who endlessly talks about trauma, I don’t much mention medical trauma. Which is a tad strange considering it’s estimated that 16.8% of people who experience a serious accident or injury, 14.3% of people who experience the sudden, unexpected death of a loved one and 10.4% of people who experience exposure to a child’s life-threatening illness will go on to develop PTSD (PTSD UK, 2023). Here, its also important to note this is simply an estimate of the number who go on to experience PTSD from medical trauma. The number who experience medical trauma itself is higher, and is by no means any easier to deal with.
All trauma is unique, and presents it’s own unique challenges. No matter what causes it, we all like to believe that particular experience would ‘never happen to me’. When we’re talking about medical trauma, more often than not we’re also talking about something no one likes to confront – our own mortality. We see a similar thing in how, as a society, we talk about those of us with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Acknowledging it scares us – medical issues or an out-of-the-blue accident don’t discriminate. They could could strike any one of us at any moment.
So, we avoid it. We don’t want to think and talk about how truly fragile life is. And that makes sense.
But it’s not really dealing with it, and it won’t help any of us in the long run.
How might someone respond?
Trauma can impact people in a plethora of ways. Maybe hyper-vigilance kicks in, and now any loud noise makes you jump out of your skin. Perhaps you now live in a state of perpetual anxiety, where any ache or pain feels like a catastrophe. Or maybe you just feel empty and disconnected.
There is no right or wrong way to respond.
What about the people around them?
One of the most annoying things about trauma is it’s never really isolated to one person. Sure, you might not be the person who had the near death experience, the unimaginably painful procedure or the person running out of time. But witnessing that isn’t exactly a treat either.
If a loved one has experienced a medical trauma, its okay for you to feel your own pain too. Pain doesn’t exist in isolation.
Okay, so how do you deal with it?
This is probably the most common question in response to any form of trauma, and it’s also the one I would scour the universe a million times over to find an answer to.
Really, we all deal with it in different ways. Some people might develop a pathologically dark sense of humour as a coping technique. Others may re-evaluate their lives and re-focus to the things that truly matter to them. Some may find distractions work better, and dive into work and hobbies to avoid confronting the issue. Some people will turn inwards and others will turn outwards. If a response is possible – it probably exists in response to trauma.
If we’re talking about the best way to deal with it, I don’t think anyone really has an answer. Given how broad-ranging trauma and trauma responses are, I highly doubt there’s a one-size-fits-all option.
What I do know is that its okay to feel your feelings. If you’re sad – that’s okay. If you’re anxious or worried – that’s okay. If you’re angry – that’s okay. And if you have absolutely no idea how you feel – that’s okay too.
There is no wrong way to feel. How we express these feelings is what matters.
Where to start: If you’re looking for practical advice on where to start, reaching out to loved ones, even just to talk about nothing, can help. Contacting a relevant mental health professional or looking into self-help resources such as those provided by the mental health charity MIND can also help. If you feel you’re an immediate danger to yourself or others, emergency services can be contacted for help and support.
References:
PTSD UK (2023). PTSD Stats – PTSD UK. [online] PTSD UK. Available at: https://www.ptsduk.org/ptsd-stats/.
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