Helping You Understand

You just don’t understand.

 
So, let me try to help you…

That first sentence has slipped though my lips more times than I can count. The second sentence usually does not; mostly because after the original sentence, I am trying to hold back tears and a sense of failure. So let me try to explain, in what way that I can…

The word “understand” means this: to be thoroughly familiar with; grasp the idea of; grasp the importance of.  I don’t think that anyone can fully understand something unless they’ve a) been through the situation, or b) discuss the “thing” in depth and detail with a living, breathing person. In application to my situation, you cannot understand the panic, guilt, and sorrow that accompany a car wreck victim unless you are one, or you talk to one for more than 15 minutes about the event.

Here are the things that I think you need to know if I am riding with you:

-       1) PTSD is real and it’s real scary: When it comes to reactions to things in the car, I’m not in control of how my body reacts.  I cannot “calm down” no matter how forcefully, or how many times, you say it. Trust me, you DO NOT want to go through 5 panic attacks in one car ride. It’s not pleasant. I don’t want to feel like I’m suffocating, that I’m going to pass out; I like oxygen, truly.

-       2)  When I close my eyes, it’s usually because something I just saw reminded me of what I saw .5 seconds before my car was obliterated (not because I want to take a nap).  Whether it is the color of a vehicle, the make/model of a vehicle, the surroundings, the weather, the way the road turns, the way the vehicle ahead is turning, what is coming in my peripheral vision – something in my vision field has reminded me of the car wreck.  The best way to get rid of that bad memory is to remove it from sight and take a deep breath. Yes, there may even be a physical response: a shudder or attempting to shake the memory out of my brain (it doesn’t work, unfortunately), or putting my hands over my eyes. 98% of the time, I am not closing my eyes because you are scaring me; I will tell you if you are a scary driver, trust me.

-     3) Certain sounds make me nervous and need to take a deep breath. Ambulances and fire trucks are big in this category, especially since I was injured and needed those services.  Sirens trigger a response that takes me back to the moments of “ouch”, and “I can’t move my legs/arms/neck”. Also, things like squealing tires and loud noises can make my heart rate jump to 180. It’s a Pavlov response thing: If the last thing you heard before being bruised from head to toe was squealing tires and had something large hit you, that sound will instantly remind you of ouchies again. 

-       4) Just like sounds, certain smells can have a bad effect on me. Squealing tires usually give a burnt rubber smell. I could hardly stand to be in a parking garage after my highway crash. It’s a signal to my brain to want to panic. I need to breathe through this situation. The first month after my 2^nd wreck, I dissolved into tears and shook from head to toe at the sight of emergency vehicles…so really, I’m better than I was.

-       5) This one is hard to explain…accelerations/decelerations can absolutely make me panic. You know Newton’s first and third laws of motion, right? That every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it; and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction? Yeah, so when a car pushed me into an at-eye-level semi trailer (all of us traveling at 70ish mph), I spun out and was sent in the opposite direction, and 3 months later when I was traveling 40mph downhill, and a 2,000 lb work van hit me head on, I stopped. VERY quickly, and VERY forcefully, and VERY painfully. The rapid deceleration (aka, brakes) that you may apply makes my heart want to explode. When you take off quickly, we are naturally pushed back into the seat a bit, but when you are tossed around a car and forcefully stopped by seat belts, airbags and steering wheels, it’s not a cool feeling like it was when you were 5.

-       6) Bad hospital stays make things worse. The first night was a nightmare because of a bad IV not getting any pain meds to me. The second night, my nightmares became living monsters because of a bad reaction to muscle relaxers. During that time, it was hard for me to distinguish between what was real and what was dreams. If you had to recollect a wreck (that was amplified in the dream because of drugs) every 10 minutes for 6+ hours, you just become naturally jumpy and shaky. It’s just a fact of life now. When you don’t feel safe in your dreams, it’s hard to feel safe in real life sometimes (talk about Nightmare on Elm street...)

-       7) Being jostled can also be a trigger for panic. When you are hit from any side in a car, you feel it in every bone, muscle, tendon, and cell in your body.  We know that drunks survive more crashes because they are loose and limber, whereas sober people tense up and brace themselves – sustaining more injuries and higher probability of death. Having an air bag deploy (read: explode) in your face does not tickle. I remember checking for my front teeth and touching my nose after the airbags because my face and head hurt so badly. My chest hurt from impact with air bag, steering wheel, and seatbelt straps, and my knees hurt from collisions with the dash board. Therefore, sudden turns, stops, and whatever else, still bother me. My ambulance driver also went over a pair of very rough RR tracks at 40mph…also not a fun feeling.  My gurney was bouncing and the EMT with me had to hold on to keep upright – He who was whole and healthy was holding on and then there’s me with bones sticking out, body bruised & bleeding. Long story short, RR tracks still make me tense up.

When you put all these factors together over the course of one car ride, sometimes even going through all of this in a matter of seconds, being in a car can be terrifying. It doesn’t matter how long ago the accident was, or how much you say you're “over it”, your body is still reacting to the stimuli around you and trying to avoid the feelings it felt on Day Zero.

Feelings of guilt crop up because there is genuine guilt and shame at still feeling scared. I don’t want to be scared to drive or ride with someone.  I always LOVED the car..LOVED donuts in the snow…LOVED stomach dropping turns and hills…LOVED carefree country drives. I feel bad about feeling scared, and feel bad that you may be upset at me for getting scared…

I cannot control the panic and bile that rises within me when these things happen. My only solution is to breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe slowly and deeply. I cannot help that my voice shakes, and trust me when I say I despise the tears that want to squeeze out. No matter how much I will them away, they come because my body is re-living what happened – this time without the adrenaline to sedate the nerves and suppress my senses. These times my feelings are raw and uninhibited, and I am still learning how to manage them, and how to manipulate them so that I can enjoy being in a vehicle again. I don’t want to be tense from point A to point B every time I sit inside one. 

No matter how much you sigh; no matter how many times you tell me to “calm down” or “you’re overreacting”; no matter how much you think I’m okay and back to normal...I’m not – but I am learning to be okay again. All I need you to do is try to understand.  I don’t expect you to fully comprehend my experience, just be patient and willing to understand.

One day I will be okay. I’m better than I was yesterday, and tomorrow I will be better than today. 

One day at a time.