What is an experience you never want to experience again in your lifetime?

[sooo4455]

The most stressful time in my life started about 7 years ago and went on for 2 years and my mental health took an absolute battering and im still not over it. And now im super paranoid about it happening again.

I had bedbugs and a rat problem under the bath at the same time and pest control were useless.
i had a toddler at the time and their was 7 of us and I was advise to put everything we owned (twice) in the garden while they tried to get the bedbugs under control. I had to wash every soft furnishing and beds, draws, wardrobes had to be emptied and placed outside in bags in the sun. Only thing that was allowed in the house was furniture. I had postnatal depression at the time and I just remember sitting in the garden with everything we owned (twice). With the rats they were running around under the bath and were huge. My bathroom is downstairs and they’d chewed from the outside in, the smell was not normal and the noise all day from them scurrying around 🤮
It finally got resolved after 2 years but at that point I was shot to bits. I don’t think people realise how traumatic it is the live with a bedbugs. I’m so paranoid about getting them again I try and stay away from public transport and hotels or I will research the shit out of them before booking and even then I’m hyper vigilant and can’t sleep.

What is something you never want to go though again?

I think people are entitled to share their own experiences.

Being called on Christmas Eve saying my daughter wasn’t breathing but they were working on her and to go to the hospital and meet the ambulance there . Watching and praying for 3 days for a miracle knowing one wasn’t coming and making the decision to turn her life support machine off once she was pronounced brain stem cell death on Boxing Day and then doing the walk of honour on the 27th to donate her organs is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I didn’t survive that i existed that traumatic experience and still do every day with fake smiles , disassociation ptsd some joy a burned soul painful memories a grave , I wish I went with her I really do but I have children and now grandchildren here to focus on who bring me more laughter and smiles and joy so I live a parallel life now and it’s exhausting but worth it to stay until I get to join my beautiful girl who was just starting her second year in college bright funny loved and gave more in life than I ever did and I am so proud of her and the legacy she left behind BUT I don’t think I would survive going through this again 💔

Dried apricots.

Look, I found lockdown a nightmare and very damaging to my MH (and probably my physical health due to delays in medical check-ups), especially as it WAS to quite an extent a repetition for me of previous bad experiences- see my earlier post. But I don't find it offensive that some people had different experiences. Unless people actually blame me for suffering during the pandemic, or wish me a further experience of lockdown, I am not going to be upset by that. Almost any description of a bad experience could be potentially seen as trivializing someone else's (one serious illness might not be as bad as someone else's two serious illnesses; one person's childbirth complications might not be as traumatic as someone else's infertility or vice versa.). But that does not mean that people can't describe their own experiences.

A c section. I had 3 sons natural births only gas and air.
Last son, he turned during my induction and got stuck & needed an emergency c section. Lost 2lrts of blood and had no pain killers afterwards as I was on a drug at the time that interacted with everything other than paracetamol (i refused it as why waste it, it didn't do anything). I have permanent nerve damage in my back & legs from them attempting a epidural in. I passed out 5mins in due to blood loss and woke up hours later in HDU. I have no photos of the birth. None of him freshly born or of me and him. Not even my husband and him. He is 3 in august and I still can't step foot inside that hospital where I had him as it all comes flooding back to me. It was truly horrific and even talking about it now makes me shudder

Probably my divorce because it was utterly horrific and breast cancer. Both of those can stay firmly in the past.

He's my miracle boy and continues to exceed everyone's expectations. He's doing well thanks. xx

Being bullied at work. It was my first permanent job after graduating and I thought it must be normal, I very nearly had a nervous breakdown, but thankfully the two people most heavily involved moved on and things gradually improved after that.

My IVF embryo transfer. I have a long vagina?? And long cervix. So first they had to keep putting speculums in and out until they had one that reached, whilst my bladder was also over-full. I'm still scared of speculums now especially the part where you can feel a bolt being tightened against your labia. Then they had to try various catheters, because none of them would reach all the way inside. They had to bring the medical director in to do the job personally. In and out and in and out, pushing down on my belly. I was biting my husband's hand off. While the embryologist dude stood at the foot of the bed with my embryo in a tube like "whelp, shall I come back later". They told me I could have valium if I had to do it again. It worked though 🙂

My mother died unexpectedly from a perforated bowel. I was in A&E with her and had to ring my siblings to tell them she probably wouldn't survive surgery and to ask if we wanted a DNR. She did survive the surgery but passed away a day later. I had been in the hospital for 48 hours at that point and hadn't slept.
My marriage to a heavy drinker was failing at the time. He insisted that I go to the pub that night. I only stayed for a coke because I was so tired I was practically hallucinating. He stay drinking that night and drank heavily for the next few days until the funeral (Ireland, where funerals happen very quickly). By the morning of the burial he was so hungover and in such a mood he shouted at me so loudly he woke our young adult children.
I'll never get over it. I dread the anniversary of her death every year.

Think poster is being heavily sarcastic.

I’m so sorry for what you went through.
My sister went through something very similar with her 26 year old son. Very sudden and very tragic. He donated his organs too. An amazing legacy but one we wished hadn’t had to have happened.
It was the most awful thing we’ve been through as a family. I look back at that time (4 years ago) with utter heartbreak. Still heartbroken but we’ve learned to live with it. No other option.

@RealLemonDreameri am so sorry for your loss. It must be so hard for you. 💐

Hearing my mother groaning and crying in pain in the next room, from the cancer that killed her age 40 when I was 15.

My mum's experience was very different to mine - she was housebound but became housebound and isolated due to lack of visitors. It was awful. Another relative slipped through every crack imaginable after finally navigating to a place where they were getting significant trauma help - there were letters in their flat about 'failure to engage' during Covid when wasn't failure to engage, it was a major relapse due to being unable to function with all the changes to their care. It was truly awful and they are still suffering now and in major cognitive decline. So I know it wasn't all sunshine and butterflies for everyone else. My daughter started school during Covid which was very very tough, and as I said my then husband lost his job and really struggled. But for me on a personal level, a lot of pressure lifted. I had been struggling badly with anxiety for 5 years at that point and was on the verge of another burnout. I can appreciate that the way I felt before Covid is how some people felt in it. I'm not dismissive at all of the suffering of others.

But I sure as hell am dismissive of people telling others they're disrespectful for talking about their positive experiences. It wasn't all doom and gloom for everyone on every level. They found silver linings, they spent time with their families, they spent time on themselves. If only everyone had had that experience. I'm glad some people did.

This has made me cry. Your poor sweet brother x

This is so sad. 😞

I quite liked it too, that doesn't mean other people didn't suffer, just that not all of us had a bad time. Everyones different you know!

Being run over by a car rushing to beat the lights, though it was mostly my fault as I ran out from behind a bus following a friend! I went over the bonnet and off the side, it caught me in one hip going over and then the wing mirror got me in the ribs, was bruised for weeks but frankly the embarrassment factor was worse as everyone at school saw!

So many heartbreaking posts here. I hope each and everyone one of you is ok.

The worst experience I ever had is a missed miscarriage at 14 weeks. Deep down it was a pregnancy I never “relaxed into”. I had bled pretty much from day one. Just always had a feeling there was something wrong. Had a 12 week booking in scan and all was perfect but two weeks later woke up and just felt something wasn’t right. Booked a private scan at day and no heartbeat. The baby measured 14 weeks 1 day so they told me it had literally just happened. I had an ERPC 3 days later on my birthday. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced but luckily I had my youngest a year later.

Hyperemisis. My last pregnancy was from 4 weeks until 25 weeks. I knew before I even got a positive pregnancy test the sickness started that soon. And people just don’t understand. Oh I had morning sickness. Did you Tracy. And did you dry retch in your sleep, did you feel hungover for 5 solid months. Did you become nearly housebound because you could vomit any place at anytime. Luckily for the last two pregnancies Cariban stopped the worst of the vomiting but I’ve damage to my Teeth from basically 2 years of constant vomiting.

Cluster headaches. Took me 10 years to get diagnosed and the pain is indescribable. They’re called sucide headaches for a reason. Luckily I haven’t had an episode in a long time but found out that they’re caused in my case by a underlying neurological issue which may kill me so there’s that

What happened to him? Why was he shot?

But in the spirit of the thread it is something that the poster doesn't want to experience again.

@BrianBlessedsTonsil i am so so sorry. That’s just heart breaking.

for me it was telling my bestfriend she was being a dick thinking her son had cancer just because he was a picky eater and not eating much but had a porky tummy. Turned out he did have cancer and her Mum-radar was spot on. I’ll never ever forgive myself for that comment.

A few spring to mind, but not as bad as some listed here. My thoughts are with everyone struggling.

on a similar vein to the bedbugs we once had cockroaches after an awful neighbour (eventually evicted and they all spread into the whole block). It got so bad I had to move out and when I was at home walked around with a can of raid in my hands at all times. I still am very very wary of small insects inside my home.

my c sections were also pretty traumatic and wouldn’t want to experience them again.

finally going through infertility during a pandemic. No knowing when - or if - they would start treatment again.

Being physically forced, coerced, intimidated and sometimes drugged in order to have sex with men at the age of 14. Occasionally I got paid.