To ask a few questions about PTSD

[jamoncrumpets]

My mother died just under ten years ago. Pancreatic cancer. The time from her first scan to the day she died was about three months. I was 28 and I cared for her at home in her final days. It was incredibly traumatic.

In the last few months I've been having the same dreams I used to have in the immediate aftermath of her death. Dreams where she is very sick and dying. It's agony.

In the last few months I've been suffering so badly with health anxiety that I've been to the GP four times, and am awaiting a psychiatrist appointment for medication review.

Is this PTSD? I genuinely feel exactly like I did ten years ago, same dreams, same feeling of utter hopelessness, only this time I think it's going to be me that dies, and will leave my kids.

Hi OP, sorry you have been through and are going through this.

I can only speak from experience, but my dreams are so very very real that when I wake I still feel and smell everything that happened for a minute or so, this causes severe panic attacks where I can't breathe as I think I am back there again. Things like this also happen during the day when something, a fleeting sight or smell can trigger my ptsd and I'm panicking all over again. It controls my life after 9 years, but with EMDR, medication and counselling with my consultant I'm turning it around to, if not control it, manage the symptoms.

I have been diagnosed with severe PTSD so I can only speak from my experience and of course everyone is different, so I wouldn't begin to suggest or refute that you have ptsd.

I work full time and I make sure any new manager knows that IF anything happens, I'm having a panic attack and not a heart attack. Like I say, living with it and trying to manage it.

I wish you well.

Yes the dreams are very very real. And very disturbing.