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?

@sooo4455 we had bedbugs in late 2019/early 2020 and they nearly killed me. My kids were off in university so it was just us - although we did have people visiting us - nightmare. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been with a toddler and a houseful - and rats!! We did the treatment 4 times in total - until finally did the heat treatment. You have my deepest sympathies. Dh thinks I'm nuts for saying this but the lockdown was way easier than the bedbugs.

For me I don't think I could go through again my child's mental health struggles which lasted several years and were serious. We got through it and all is great time but I hope to god we never have to go through anything like that again.

to everyone who has gone through hard times.

thank you ☺️ I feel for your sil it honestly does send you mad. I ended up having a metal breakdown and was later diagnosed with cptsd all from having pests 😳

Homelessness
Addiction
Prostitution
Alcoholism

On a slightly lighter note, a dental abscess. Worse than labour, and I was in labour for 3 days.

Witnessing a man throw himself in front of a train and land about half a metre in front of me when I was about 4.

Losing my dad at 13.

Bring domestically abused and coerced.

What a terrible thing to be going through. X

Being managed out by a toxic senior manager. I was off work with stress for four months and in that time I was told - by my direct manager - that when I got back, I would be on a PIP. I eventually decided to face the music and went back: the PIP had loads of targets that I’d never be able to achieve, for example, ensuring a member of my team achieved xyz. They started it the moment I got back from sick leave despite me being on an extremely phased return.
Then every time I completed a target, a new few got added. This went on for months.
I asked for a WP conversation about an exit agreement, they told me to resign.

I couldn’t as I, you know, needed a job. I wasn’t getting anywhere with job applications.

eventually my Union got involved and the PIP went away. Then four weeks later I was told my role was at risk, and you know the rest.
They were determined to get rid of me and they managed it. I’d been there for 14 years and only got statutory minimum redundancy.

I have a new job now but I am riddled with anxiety and imposter syndrome.

Being cheated on.

My DH dropping dead in front of me at age 47
A brief but traumatic period of homelessness
An enormous earthquake in 1980

My child getting a diagnosis of MS at 16, after an ADHD diagnosis at 13. Just wondering how much more my young person has to deal with. Gutted and devastated for them, I would take it from them in an instant.

Same.

It was horrific for me. At start of the pushing stage my labour just stopped dead. They'd not given me oxytocin as they said it wouldn't needed, it's all very vague now but apparently that caused a problem. The baby's heart rate slowed down on the monitor and there was no staff in the room, then when DH finally located a staff member to come and help me there was a frantic dash down the corridor for me to have a spinal and a panicky forceps delivery.

Baby came out unresponsive from the delay and shock and while they were trying to get her to breathe I had to have my placenta manually extracted. The doctor with the smallest hands in the room had to insert her entire hand into my uterus to pull it off the uterine wall..

We were both ok in the end - he worst of it was the induction was done because scans estimated the baby at 10lbs+ when she was only 7lbs 12. Totally unnecessary.

Having a small child in an induced coma for a few hours and not being certain what state they'd be in when they came round. (They were fine, and weirdly I remember feeling confident it would be OK, but would still rather not go there again)

A lot of my friends really enjoyed lockdown.

Being beaten by my then husband when I was pregnant. No idea how we survived, but I slept with a knife under my pillow that night.

Bedbugs were relentlessly awful for my mental health too. It took us probably a year to get rid, and we had to more or less dismantle the bedroom and throw out everything we owned. There’s such a lot of shame and embarrassment associated with it too, which is silly really, as you can’t at all help it if they decide to hitch a ride home with you.

Suicide of my child

Discovering I had a miscarriage after having a normal scan at 10 weeks and saw him wriggling around .. was going to announce but waited until 12 week scan my gut told me not to. He stopped growing at 11 weeks.

Finding out I had been cheated on by him sleeping with a woman in my bed while I was at work . That was a horrific experience.

also took magic mushrooms once in my youth. Never never again . Those are all the worst things that have happened to me so far in my life

Finding a dead body.

Holding my dh’s hand as he died. And then having to tell my youngest ds that his dad had died - he was 11.

Being under a six-month long investigation at work.

Taking a driving test (so happy when I passed).

Bad migraines with vomiting.

Being ghosted in a relationship.

Living with parents as an adult.

Living with difficult flatmates.

I quite literally hate people who post this. It is beyond thoughtless and tone dead. It completely disrespects those who died, those who lost people to covid and other disease who they couldn't be with, those who died alone, those whose mental health disintegrated and those health care professionals who are traumatised by what they experienced and whose children have suffered from being in lockdown thinking their parents would die every day at work. But hey glad you enjoyed your peaceful summer off work doing arts and crafts with your kids. Go you 🙄

I can relate to this as when our home was flooded in 2007 we moved out for 8 months - hotel, rented house, another hotel. I remember a work colleague saying to me aren’t you lucky being able to get everything brand new? I could have throttled her!
Thankfully our insurers were good and we also had a brilliant loss adjuster who although he worked for the insurers was totally on our side!
Heavy, persistent rain still makes me anxious nearly 19 years later.

Oh and Kawasaki’s disease as a child- I wasn’t diagnosed for 6 weeks and the pain was indescribable…..

The death of my adult son.

I am so sorry 💐

My younger DD having sepsis at 6 weeks old on mother's day. The fear rushing from GP to paeds and hearing her breathing getting worse and worse. And realising (I'm medical) that she wasn't responding to treatment and they were calling ICU to come and intubate. In that moment I believed id lost her. She's now 18 but the fear of those days has never truly gone.

Exactly.
I quit six years ago precisely because of this, and because I couldn't handle the drink properly.