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?

Finding my previously healthy dad dead in bed when I took him a cup of tea in. Losing my mom very recently after she fought stage 4 cancer for over a year. I’ve lost both my parents in less than 3 years-I’m 44. Having a torrential haemorrhage after giving birth to my daughter. 💔

I feel your pain. Although my DH had the anti clotting drug and can physically look after himself he had cognitive damage that makes a normal life and relationship difficult. People can see the physical damage but the personality changes are hidden.

I remember the doctor telling me over the phone ( we were not allowed to be with him -covid rules) that if his blood pressure came down they would be able to return my husband to me in one piece. I clearly remember thinking “ could you tweak a couple of things”. He had a short temper and was verging on OCD at times before his stroke, now he has an incredibly long fuse and happy to live in a tip, which is ok but he will walk past the mess and dirty washing and not think to do anything about it. He was pretty much the SAHP pre stroke, did all the housework and washing. Now he just sleeps. He has problems interacting socially, and struggles with conversation. His speech is fine, he just struggles to keep up. It’s not help by a pre existing knee problem.

Basically he just lives. He frequently gets ready to go out but then changes his mind. The effort of getting ready exhausts him mentally and physically.

He’s currently waiting for a knee replacement, he had his pre op assessment just before Christmas but then they announced delays due to bone cement shortage. His knee means he struggles to walk more than 20yards from the car. It’s an old sporting injury, he was still running regularly at 50 but had to stop when his knee became too painful. He was too young for a replacement at that stage.

I was sort of hoping the knee would be done by now so we can start rebuilding our life. I feel guilty going out without him but his disability means most of the things we enjoy doing together are no longer possible.
He is depressed but I think a new knee will give him back the life he needs to motivate him.

We can’t even go privately for the knee op because of the bone cement issue.

I hate to see him so down but there is nothing we can’t even do.

An ex of mine falsely accused an old friend of CSA. The ex did this because he was mentally ill (drug-induced psychosis/latent schizophrenia), but the police had to investigate it. As with your DP, all suspicion was dropped by the police, but it still ruined his friend's life as he lived in a small community where everyone took the attitude that there's no smoke without fire. (My ex also spread malicious lies about me, but that's another story.)

I wonder if there is anyone your DP knew who might have had similar MH issues? I'm sorry you experienced this.

Back to the thread topic: I can think of a dozen or so horrendous experiences I never want to repeat, but having read some of the heartbreaking stories on this thread it feels churlish to mention them.

My husband being very ill during and after major surgery - waiting for him to come back from theatre was the longest 13 hours of my life, then the next few days on life support and ICU. Very grim indeed.

Sharing.
Living with now ex husband, a 'successful' business man who terrorised me for 11 years from when my daughters were just a few weeks old. He often quoted Jack Nicholson in The Shining, his alter ego. I still get flashbacks to his terrifying face and eyes.

As for 'leisure' activities, Parasailing in the Maldives. Who the fuck thought that that was a good idea for someone who is terrified of heights? Temporary amnesia!

Dear God, you did not want to be in Records Storage in most hospitals in the 70s and 80s... the cockroaches were mega and there were some aisles you did not enter... #crunchcrunch Back then we would often need to pull the records for the clinics the next day and for some reason they were always subterranean, definitely at The London and UCH.

Being told by the PGHM (Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne) that they had overflown ‘something’ but couldn’t yet confirm what/who it was.
After waiting in their coffee room for about 20 minutes, they confirmed it was the body of my partner. Nothing will ever be the same.

Shit. This is terrible. I'm so sorry.

Waiting for a diagnosis. It took 8 weeks from my first scan where it was confirmed as likely to be cancer to then get the actual diagnosis.

8 weeks of not knowing if what I had would give me a few months or would be treatable. Whilst still being a present mum for a then 12, 8 & two 5 year olds. Without my help or support.

it was a blood cancer & 6 months of fortnightly chemo did the job to get me into remission- but those 8 weeks of the unknown was pure anxiety ridden torture. Wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Oh my gosh. How horrible! I would have had nightmares.
What on earth do the wretched things eat and where do they come from

I’m so sorry for your loss

They ate the paper in the note files... worst was flicking on the light switch to find the notes... unfortunately it was part of your role as a nurse in training to pull the notes for patients and to track down missing sets from around the hospital!

In all fairness, there’s trauma like this every moment of everyday! Read these responses, 99% of them are not Covid/lockdown related. People can, and will find a little bit of joy in life during shit situations. There were parts of lockdown and Covid that I found beyond awful, but other parts were the best days of my life for my own personal reasons. There’s trauma and suffering all around us all of the time, so we shouldn’t find happiness in things, ever? Because the world is on fire right now with trauma, conflict and people are dying of cancer (children including) at a rapid rate, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so I’m just checking, it’s okay if we say that we are enjoying life right now, just not 2020/21?

Me too in a weird kinda way

Selling my house and buying another with my fiancé 2 months before our wedding. Going part time at work because I was planning to retire early as I was now more financially secure. THEN 3 weeks after we moved I was woken by the police and fiancé was arrested for something unforgivable. 3 years on I’m still traumatised by it all….. had to cancel wedding and remarket the house 3 weeks after I’d moved in. Also couldn’t get my full time job back. Massive implications on the rest of my life

scabies and losing 2 friends both brother a year apart

Oh @Vintageblueribbonyou’ve done him proud right there with a post that is so full of your love for him.

Thank you

He was an amazing man,so intelligent and taught me a lot

In 2015, I was in the hospital for just about 2 months with septicemia in my left leg, just below the knee, and down to the toes.

The entire thing was agony beyond belief and had swollen hugely to the point I couldn't really bend my knee; I was screaming and crying in utter pain. The entire thing was all kinds of grotesque colours.

The doctors put me in a cubicle in A&E overnight until they could find me a ward bed. Pumped me up with all kinds of drugs.

I was given 48 hours to live if they couldn't get it in time. I was in and out of consciousness, hallucinating. It's 100% true that your life literally flashes before your eyes as your brain and system begin to shut down.

I wasn't scared. I have no family of any sort and am completely alone, with no friends to speak of, so it's not like there'd be tons of mourners seeing me off!

I don't ever want to experience such a terrifying thing ever again!

Not for everybody. We all have different circumstances. I would have liked it, but my husband turned into a total twat.

Exactly!

I liked a lot of aspects of lockdown, the distancing, the not being expected to go out (difficult if you're disabled which I am). So much stuff being available remotely.

Other parts were pretty terrifying if I thought about them too hard, as a disabled person with a heart problem, covid back then probably would have killed me and disabled people were being chucked under the bus, I chose not to dwell on that.

But I've been through a lot of things in my life - a miscarriage at 16 weeks that was horribly, harshly and improperly handled by the hospital with nothing but derision from my Mother, at the age of 19.
Being a witness in a murder case, where the defendant was my friend and the victim my estranged uncle, at 18.
Being homeless, being physically and emotionally and verbally abused by my alcoholic mother.
Finding said abusive, alcoholic mother face down on the floor stark naked hours from death (she did in fact die a few hours later in hospital).
Dealing, solo, with the aftermath of her death, sorting out the house (boarding it up after the police kicked their way in, sorting out her funeral and her will) as my sister and father were absolutely fucking useless and 150 miles away at the age of 27 with no money of my own.

So by comparison, for ME, lockdown was a fucking doddle. If you've lived a carefree existance up to that point, or there were other things going on like a crappy relationship or a dependent and frail parent or you had to work in a high risk environment, then perhaps it wasn't for you but everyones different, everyones had different experiences in life.

This is implying that only people who haven’t been through anything “really bad” would have struggled with the lockdown. Which is not at all true and only shows your lack of empathy, or understanding of others experiences.

Abusive households that the victims (disproportionately women and children, of course) had literally no escape from. No school, no work, just 24/7 in a pressure cooker together. Patients being neglected because staff were so afraid of Covid they just wanted to keep their distance. I know an old lady who was found dead with toilet roll in her stomach because she hadn’t been being fed and had ended up eating the toilet roll.

I’m not going to list all the horrors, but do you really need it all spelling out? Haven’t you heard about or considered anyone else’s experiences before? It gets a lot worse than having a “crappy relationship” or a frail parent and you don’t need much imagination to see how lockdown could make any difficult or painful experience worse.

Hate to say COVID....but COVID!😬
Getting it before the vaccine I only avoided hospital because they kept changing the admission criteria as things got worse. It was the sickest I'd ever been in my life and living alone, knowing nobody could come help me was terrifying.
Also as a nurse working on the wards at that time is not an experience I'd ever want again. Everyday was just soul destroying.

TBH I'm lucky enough that nothing really bad or major has really happened to me (and I hope it stays that way!).
Although like the OP I have also experienced bedbugs and rats under the bath! Still don't know how I ended up with bed bugs!

Another one from me - watching my dad die from complications arising from his addictions, and having an absolutely horrific row with DB about it, because he refused to be there.

There was high emotions all around. DB was physically abused on a regular basis, but I thought he'd regret not being there for dad's death. Everything got out of hand, he accused me of becoming 'complicit' and a people pleaser and "returning to the fold" and called me a gaslighting bitch and a coward. I accused him of turning into the same sort of person dad was (which he definitely did for a while, but by then had done so much to turn around from). All of this while DB2 watched - so he got dragged into it - trying to stick up for me because he feels like he owes me loyalty, but definitely he disagreed with me that DB should be there. Ugly, ugly stuff. I regret bringing it up at all. DBs comments still hurt. He apologised, so did I, and we're ok again, but honestly, I dream about the sorts of sibling bonds you see on TV.

Anyone else finding this thread kind of therapeutic? I'm saying stuff here I never talk about irl

I hear you, on the sibling/parental death trauma thing, and the "Ooohh, that must be nice" feeling when you see/read/hear about closer and more supportive bonds.

What I realised recently is that we are each losing very different versions of the same parent, as we all had such different experiences and interpretations of that person. I keep telling myself that this explains why my siblings behaved in ways I found incomprehensible and often cruel.