Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

[Scenic WonderRunner]

The damage/cuts on the door appear to be from bolt cutters!

I'm locked and loaded!..............:ar15: :ar15: :ar15: rngartis





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[Rexsname]

No good news to report

I dont have anything substantive to report from todays hearing. The door was not slammed shut in our faces niether was it thrown open. More hurry up and wait. I was not allowed to speak to or for Carrie. I hope to speak with her tomorrow.

I also had a Doctors appointment this afternoon. He set me for some blood work and heart stress tests. Oh goooody! More Stress:ar15: I was very tired after a stressful morning that I dont recall exactly what all was discussed at the medical appointment. I guess I will know what they want me to do shortly before I am to do it.

I really feel inarticulate.....I cant properly express myself and it frustrates me. I thank you for your prayers. I thank you for the moral support. Some of you have provided financial support that has been an amazing blessing. Most of you ,I have never met. I am eager to remedy this. Thank you for being my friends...........

REX

 

[Rexsname]

This has been a rough week for me. Physical pain, mental and emotional stress and loneliness have taken thier toll. I know that I can't give up, but it is harder and harder to hold it together. My ability to focus is just about gone. I just can't hardly keep from crying. This is hard


REX

 

[vengeful]

This has been a rough week for me. Physical pain, mental and emotional stress and loneliness have taken thier toll. I know that I can't give up, but it is harder and harder to hold it together. My ability to focus is just about gone. I just can't hardly keep from crying. This is hard


REX

I know there's nothing I can post to make this any easier for you Rex. Just know that each of us is pulling for you to beat this. Talking is a great way to let it out. If you keep stuff bottled up inside, it eventually takes the path of a cluttered garage where you can never find t he right tool at the right time. It is important to keep your emotions and thoughts organized, just like your garage and tool chests, so when the time comes to react to, or fix, something, you've got the right resources at your disposal.

I know that when you're suffering it's hard to "organize" your mind and heart, but it helps. It helped me a lot.

As always, if you need anything, we're only a mouse click away!

 

[Rexsname]

My sister is here from Oregon. She has come to help my parents pack up their house after having lived there for 25 years. Mom and Dad are in their 80s and are moving to Salem OR to move into a 'new' retirement home. While moving boxes this afternoon, Mom fell down the stairs. Nothing broken and only a few bandaids. She will be heading off to Oregon in a couple of weeks and Dad shortly thereafter. Her eyesight is all but gone, she can't hear well at all and she is not happy about losing her independence.

I dont know that I'm able to sit down and tell her how much I love her and thank her for her example and hard work. I fear that when she leaves for Oregon I'll not see her again.

This would be a hard thing to go through if I were mentally/emotionally well and stable, but I'm not quite there.(yet) I feel like I am getting worse, rather than better. I am scared most of the time. I have terrible thoughts of what may happen, but need to be strong for my wife. I'm not scared for myself so much but rather for how it would affect Carrie.

I've just re-read this posting and I think it reads worse than it should. I long for human contact but dont want to blubber and cry infront of a friend. I fear I wouldn't do much better on the phone.

I hate sounding like such a downer..........I like happy alot better than whatever the he@# this is.

REX

 

[Rexsname]

Oh yeah, my sister......She came over to my house and helped with going thru boxes of paperwork and clutter. I feel better about having gone through them and shredding the stuff that needed to have been shredded. Getting rid of actual clutter DID help with some of the mental clutter. My sister was(is) a Godsend in this chore and yet another person I can't let down by doing something stupid.

REX

 

[Rexsname]

Breaking point

I dont know what "I cant go on anymore" really means But I think I came pretty close yesterday. I woke up a little weepy and by the time I got in the shower I was broken. I called the Guidence Clinic and went through the phone tree 6 times!! "Please listen carefuly to the following options........" "Please enter your partys extention now......" Please enter the mailbox Identifier after the tone............" I couldn't get a human to talk to so I just gathered myself up and drove down to thier office. The squeaky wheel gets the grease! I was able to speak with a counselor for about an hour and have a standing apointment each monday. At some point in the process I will have a psych-eval and then they will know more about what needs to be done.

It was hard to get this process started about a month ago. It was HARD to wait until my turn was supposed to come up. It was embarrassing and upsetting and very hard to bump my place and just go in and demand services.

I know that I'm not alone in my struggle with depression/PTSD/mental illness. Even tho it's hard to do, You owe it to yourselves and the people who love you to make the diffucult step and ask, plead, demand some help. I am not well yet. I dont see the light at the end of this very long tunnel. I sometimes feel as if the tunnel is colapsing in on me. But now I know that someone will be digging in to help rescue me.

Thanks for letting me vent,

REX

 

[nwoods]

GOOD JOB REX.

Not long ago you struggled to get up. Now you are taking action and getting out and GETTING HELP. These are positives, and a sign of growing strength. You may not feel it, but it's there.

How's the trip planning going for Dusy?

 

[SpeedAgent]

You are doing the right things. A piece of advice that was given to me not too long ago that I now live by:

"Slow and steady wins the race" so nothing happens overnight. Keep doing what you're doing.

Chris

 

[ntsqd]

Second both above. I had been thinking about how to phrase a response and they said it better than the road I was going down.

 

[kellymoe]

Rex,

I'm praying hard for you every day. I believe deeply in intercessory prayer. Keep the updates coming so I know what to pray for.

 

[Rexsname]

Thank you all for the kind and encouraging words:arabia: . I dont know what the future might hold but I cherish these friendships.

"Slow and steady wins the race" I dont know how steady I am in all this. I seem to go in fits and starts. After I have a day where I feel like I have accomplished something/anything, I am so tired that I wonder if it's worth it.

"How are the plans for the Dusy?" Sorta on hold, it's been a bad week for me. I put a couple of blue ice thingys in the Coleman Coolmatic on Monday along with some frozen water bottles. This morning when I checked, the blue ices were still frozen in the middle. It has been plugged in, in the house this whole time. I have the A/C on. While I appreciate the offer of the loan of the ARB, I think I have too much on my plate to properly deal with all of the logistics of the pick up and return. I hope you can understand. I am going to do my best to fit as much frozen and pre-cooled stuff in the cheapy cooler as possible and hope for the best.

Thom, You have been steadfast since the beginning and I am truely grateful.

 

[Rexsname]

Kellymoe,

I got plugged into a Bible study group that starts a week from today. Thank you for praying for me. I have such a hard time praying, my ability to focus and quiet my mind are greatly deminished. Even posting on this forum requires a great deal of effort to write things done the way I want it to sound. I know that all of our prayers are 'getting through' . Carrie is also comforted by these prayers. She wants so badly to be able to take care of me but circumstances dont allow that at the moment.

WhenI was younger, I only wanted to be a good Cop and a godly husband. I might still have a shot at the second one.

Thank you for praying for me, please dont stop.

REX

 

[ntsqd]

You're welcome, Rex.
If you were always steady you'd have nothing to judge the non-steady times by. A life of perfect smoothness would be dull indeed. Learning how to damp out the extremes should be the goal. At least the lows. Let's leave the highs in place!

Rex,

I'm praying hard for you every day. I believe deeply in intercessory prayer. Keep the updates coming so I know what to pray for.

Kellymoe,
How are you yourself doing?
There have been others who've posted troubles in dealing with this. I'd like to hear how you are doing too.

 

[kellymoe]

You're welcome, Rex.
If you were always steady you'd have nothing to judge the non-steady times by. A life of perfect smoothness would be dull indeed. Learning how to damp out the extremes should be the goal. At least the lows. Let's leave the highs in place!


Kellymoe,
How are you yourself doing?
There have been others who've posted troubles in dealing with this. I'd like to hear how you are doing too.

Well in light of everyone else I consider myself doing quite well. I feel I am a "recovering" PTSD victim. I hate to use the word victim though. I have a wife who is very understanding and as I begin to feel more and more normal I can pick up and share the load with my wife. My biggest struggle right now is pain. I am 4 years post back surgery and suffer from chronic back pain. This obviously didn't help with and contributed significantly to the depression. Don't ever get hurt at work. It is like pulling teeth to get in to a pain management program even though I was granted "lifetime medical" after my injury. I am no closer today than I was 6 months ago in getting into a pain program. I live my life on 4 Vicodin a day which helps a lot but gets expensive paying out of pocket because work comp wont help.
The think I am most thankful for is that I can continue to work with no restrictions as a fireman. I don't know what I would do if I had to leave on a disability pension. I need to gut it out 10 more years for retirement. I'll be 51 then and although that is young I already feel 51 physically. I had a tough time rolling out of bed this morning. Being a fireman/paramedic in LA takes a toll both physically and mentally. Don't get me wrong though, I love my job.

Right now I'm heading out to the garage to make a garden trellis out of some round steel I just bought. Welding is a good way to keep my mind off the pain.


Thanks for asking.


Kevin