To ask for help- husband witnessed a death

[bingbangbongding]

Hi all,

Need help.

Husband was leaving work today and found a colleague dead in his car. He was about 50, was still warm. He asked passers by for help but no one would help him. Everyone had left work.

He called 999 and they got him to drag this man out of the car and perform CPR even though he said he was dead. It didn't work.

The ambulance and police arrived and the ambulance worked on him for a while. Police dismissed him immediately (didn't even want his details which I thought was weird).

He's absolutely shaken and has decided to get quite drunk (understandable).

Has anyone been through this?

How can I support him? I'm terrified he's going to get PTSD or something.

What your husband is doing is normal. It's good to talk about the event it sounds like he is debriefing himself, trying to make sense of it all
Witnessing what he has just witnessed and done is very stressful.
I'm a nurse and I do what your husband does, I talk it through, trying to make sense (I don't get drunk every event) but I do try and process it.
I'm going through something similar with my DH as he's just witnessed his friend being punched, knocked unconscious and thought he was dead. He keeps getting flashbacks and can hear the noise of his friend falling.

My dad died of a heart attack walking home. The young man who tried to help him very kindly visited my mum after at our house. It must have been really difficult for him but it really helped my mum talking and thanking him and I hope it helped him too.

Very sad for your husband who had a horrible experience that will leave him shaken, and his colleague, of course, who has lost his life

but he wont get PTSD from this, he wasnt in any danger was he

You don’t have to be in danger yourself to get PTSD.

Thank you for your expert advice. We will follow it.

He's still awake. We are watching comedy and he's asked if the dog can come in the lounge if he falls asleep (the dog is usually in bed by now), he says he feels comforted by it.

He's laughing at the fact that someone ran up (after the paramedics arrived) and shouted 'I can help! I am a chiropractor!' And the paramedics just looked at him like and asked him to keep traffic moving down the road as people were stuck behind the ambulance.

Stressful and unpleasant events are quite apart from traumatic ones that cause PTSD.

I suppose some people are mentally fragile. Though I can't help but feel that the over-reaction here is minimising traumatic events & PTSD.

Similar to:

• My cat died. I'm sad. Am I depressed?
• No.
• What am I?
• You're just sad.

(and probably trans if you ask on TikTok 😂)

normally you do, he wasn't in danger, he didn't witness any violence, nothing there to trigger ptsd

An old man at a bus stop had a stroke and died in front of my 12 year old son once, he was a bit shaken for a day or two, but nothing unhealthy.

More concerning was my other son seeing a man beaten with heavy weapons, and fountaining blood, but it was half a field away, and again, he wasn't afraid very much for his own safety, and no long term issues. He was shaken for a few days.

seeing relatives die, etc these are normal parts of life, just not so much in our culture right now, maybe, but in all other cultures, and in all previous times,

Your husband will be fine

Back in the summer, one of my friends dropped dead at my feet. Thankfully there were a few of us around so didn’t have to do CPR as others did that, however I was the one who coordinated the CPR and the use of the defibrillator. Thankfully police, paramedics and air ambulance arrived very quickly. I was also the “team administrator “ (all members of a sports team), so once emergency team took over, I was then the point of contact for police etc with next of kin details etc.
My DH’s attitude was people die all the time, just get over it. Thankfully I had a couple of very good friends that I could speak to when I needed to.

You just need to support DH and listen to him when he wants to talk about the situation. He will go through the range of emotions connected with death/grieving, ie anger, guilt, and eventually acceptance that there was nothing he could have done differently.

sex drive typically increases after witnessing a death. Traditionally believed that chances of concieving a boy also increase after witnessing violent death

He's laughing at the fact that someone ran up (after the paramedics arrived) and shouted 'I can help! I am a chiropractor!' And the paramedics just looked at him like Hmm and asked him to keep traffic moving down the road as people were stuck behind the ambulance.
@bingbangbongding - that's hilarious - I know a couple of paramedics - I will take a delight in telling them this. 😀

@bingbangbongding Give your husband some space to process this.

I've been in his position twice, the first time, I felt a lot of guilt because if it works on the TV, why not for me. Later, depending on when people had done CPR training, they had differing views and advice - that initially made me angry and frustrated. The reality is that with certain events, even surrounded by specialist doctors, the majority of people will not make it.

The second time, I was close to a major London teaching hospital when someone collapsed. The person quickly received excellent care from passing doctors and nurses, but still nothing could be done. I called my wife and took a long walk to gather my thoughts before going home.

Both memories are still with me, I don't feel guilt, I do find it bizarre that police didn't want a statement about how a young, slim woman died on a busy street - but perhaps it happens more often than we realise.

Let him talk if he wants to, don't bring it up unless he mentions it and don't expect too much of him for the next week or so. Hugs to you both.

This.

Having witnessed many deaths over the years I would be careful to not blow this out of proportion. Yes of course its not nice and you should support him but don't jump to PTSD. Its a trauma for the poor man's family not your DH. Its perfectly normal for him to be upset in the circumstances but just give him some time.

That's a horrible experience, your poor DH.

Just wanted to echo other posters who put this far better than I can- no, PTSD isn't inevitable after something like this.

I've had a couple of random experiences, like being held up us a shopkeeper and worse, seeing a driver have a seizure & slam into the pedestrians next to me). What your DH is quite different; most traumatic situations have their own nuances I reckon.

Let him process it for a few days and see how he feels. Totally agree that if this happened in his work carpark, he needs to report it. And make use of any support they might offer if he feels like it.

Hugs to you both.

Let him talk, and allow him some space to rest too when he needs to give his brain a break.

I've been through an experience similar to this where I had to rescue a drowned woman and attempt to revive her. It was unsuccessful. This was several years ago, but I still have difficulty seeing people that look like her and going near the place where it happened. I occasionally wonder if I could have done anything different and she might have lived; but I know that isn't likely. I remember the police visiting me too afterwards. I never had any therapy but perhaps I should have done - if your DH shows any sign of difficulty I'd recommend it.

I performed CPR on my (very dead) husband. I felt his ribs break below my hands. I don’t have PTSD. It was fucking awful. But PTSD is not an inevitability.

I’ve done CPR on an elderly man who dropped down in front of me in a queue, I know the success rate of CPR isn’t great and it didn’t work for this man unfortunately, but I’m pretty practical and knew I’d given the man the best chance that I could and it never affected me afterwards. My sibling had to perform CPR on our dad at home, they brought him back but he died 3 days later in hospital, my sibling is a researcher in trauma and was able to work through their feelings and were left with no ongoing problems. So PTSD is not inevitable.

GP might be able to give him diazepam for 24/48hrs whilst he goes through shock. This is what I had.

There are good studies that show that playing Tetris if you are having intrusive memories is really helpful.
It helps disrupt the way that traumatic memories are stored.
So if he is struggling with repetitive memories get him to play Tetris.
It is too late for me to track down the studies.

let him talk. let him talk. often in traumatic events we also shut down parts of the brain for fight or flight survival mode. so over the next few days things might come to him.or he might question himself. his story might even change slightly. be weary and calm with him over this but dont laugh or accuse him of lying or conflating. the brains simply cxathing up now.
remind him also "if you could have saved him would you" and there we go. so all the questioning,what ifs, times hes now thinking of that simple question will answer it all.

Reading these experiences makes my heart ache.

OP, your DH did everything he could've possibly done. And in all likelihood, that poor man was dead by the time he arrived. I hope if it were me in that car, someone would've attempted something, however futile.

He was actually very brave. Remind him of that when he's calmer.

I've never had to do CPR, but I have attended crime scenes where there have been dead bodies, and not always in a nice state. I've had trauma debriefing for one of them, and she made me talk through my whole day focussing on how I felt at each stage. It took a couple of weeks for the flashbacks to stop on that one, but being able to talk to someone about the finer details of what was happening and how I was feeling about it really helped.

I hope he feels better soon.

Diazepam is a good call if you can get any prescribed unfortunately I suspect by the time you can, the benefit of it will be mostly lost (it has an amnesiac effect that can lessen the effect of recent traumatic events).

Otherwise, keep talking to him, keep letting him talk, keep reiterating, CPR is nowhere NEAR as successful in real life as TV etc has people believe, even when done on reasonably healthy people, or indeed in hospitals (though they're generally not healthy people).

The best success rate is actually on athletes, when given immediately, because they're so fit and the people giving it generally well trained, but even THEN... by no means a high success rate (I suspect they are what gives us the success rate for 'outside a medical setting' in the first place, if you take them out its practically zero!)

It does sound like and I am certain a paramedic or dr would confirm, that he never had a chance of saving this person, from the moment he clapped eyes on the guy, the tiny delay in making the call will have made zero difference to the outcome.

I am sorry he has experienced this, but he can take some comfort from knowing he cared enough to do what he could, and many many people would not have.

Yes to Tetris or really anything he could do that is repetitive and uses a bit of brain power but not too much.

Video games can actually be quite good if he's into that kind of thing (obviously not too exciting/ shootery ones, but calmer ones, puzzle games etc).

He should try to talk about it as much as he can, to you, to friends/ family, to a counsellor. Every time he speaks about it will help him process it a bit more.

And obviously the other usual advice like getting outside if just for a little walk, or more intense exercise if that's his bag.

Occupying his body and his mind with something, whatever that is.

I'm sorry to hear that so many passers by did not help. That must have added to the trauma :(

What a load of rubbish. Don't post about mental health issues if you don't know what you're talking about.

If you're cat was the only emotional connection you had and something that helped you not to feel lonely or isolated, of course you might become depressed.

People who get PTSD are not necessarily mentally fragile. That is stigmatising nonsense. PTSD is often caused by a traumatic event combined with a sense of powerlessness to change/escape from the situation and a lack of the right kind of support afterwards.

The OP's husband seems to be doing all the right things by talking about it at his own pace, reframing the situation (he was already dead and there was nothing he could do about it etc), getting reassurance from stroking his pet and watching things that make him laugh on TV.

If your DH does develop intrusive thoughts OP, then he may need some psychological support. Someone who specialises in Rewind or EMDR would be ideal. What it does is help people to put the memories which could have become fractured and confused, back into the part of the brain that stores every day memories. So looking back you remember the event as something much more like you remember a more usual event, less powerfully and without the same emotional charge.

As PPs have said, he may not need this though as he's handling it in his own way and you're providing excellent support for him by listening and going along with anything he instinctively needs.

*Your not you're.