Is it normal to feel traumatised by a hospital stay?

[Owaala]

Hey, can I share my experience and see if anyone has had anything vaguely similar? I had a total thyroidectomy with neck dissection as I have stage 4 melanoma and it had spread to my neck lymph nodes at the same time I needed my thyroid removing and on a pet scan they weren’t sure if the cancer had spread to my thyroid as well on the 20th of October.

Drain failed, had to have emergency surgery early hours of the 22nd where because I’d eaten tea I had to be put to sleep in an urgent way? So I was awake when they used the paralytic and then I haemorrhaged to the point that I had 22bags of blood products , was kept in for a week in total as it was a real shit show. Was home for 6 days and then woke up on Halloween so so sick, my neck felt so tight and I had a really hoarse voice. I couldn’t drive because of the operation so I got a bus and a tram back to the hospital that did the surgery.

Waited 10 mins to check in at reception in A&E, walked into triage and left all my stuff in the waiting room and the nurse was like ooh wow, yeah no you need to come with me immediately, went over to majors and saw my neck for the first time that day and it was absolutely gigantic. Dr comes and has a look and put me into resus. I had to get a poor nurse to go and get my stuff from the waiting room!

I was admitted to the same ward I had been discharged from the week before in the bed opposite 🤣. Had a ct scan and lots of antibiotics. On ward rounds the surgeon comes over and says ‘yes we’ll get that drained now’ and I was like ooh yay thank you. Stupid me! He stuck a needle in my neck without any anaesthetic and withdrew 50ml of pus from it. It hurt so much.

I had an ultrasound and it showed I still had 100ml of fluid and that actually the pocket had got bigger between the ct scan on Friday and the ultrasound on Saturday. They then decided I needed a 3rd surgery to put a drain in (again)! And left me nil by mouth for 3 days whilst they dealt with more urgent urgent operations and I completely understood but god I was a grumpy cow!! It didn’t help that I work in the hospital and was trying to keep it quiet and then one of the surgeons ratted me out

I was discharged on the 8th of November, and I quite honestly feel traumatised by the whole thing. I found out on Friday that 5 of the 40 lymphnodes had cancer but the immunotherapy I had before the surgery had killed the cancer and the area of my thyroid that they thought was cancer was just inflammation from the immunotherapy induced hyperactive thyroid, so I’ve got another 12 months of cancer treatments to make sure it doesn’t come back.

Has anyone else had such an unbelievably shocking experience ?

Yes it is absolutely normal to be traumatised by all of this. I’m so sorry @Owaala that is indeed traumatic. Take some time, take a step back for a bit to recover. It really is a whole lot to process. I am sending every good wish that that experience sees you on the path to recovery and hopefully over time you get to put this experience behind you.

Have you got some good support to speak to about all of this. There is a lot of evidence to suggest good support can really help with recovery from trauma. Maybe you can speak to a counsellor of family members or friends are not that type.

Oh I definitely agree it was all needed I don’t want you to think I am going to complain because I’m not. It was just when I was sitting down and thinking about it all it was shocking to me that I survived. That was my point. What should have been a 1 night in hospital easy operation turned into a complete ordeal

You will definitely need counselling, and to work through your experience and to discuss your diagnosis in general.

The lack of response from your cancer group is rooted in fear, they are probably afraid of a similar outcome and can not adequately support you. Mumsnet is a better place in that sense. As people are not going through this experience themselves, and can see more clearly how traumatic it must have been for you.

The Facebook group is probably better for practical advice.

I’m sorry you went though that. Sadly I think is is common to be traumatised by a hospital stay. I had a traumatic birth with my first, lost a lot of blood and was treated very poorly afterwards by medical staff (rude, dismissive, told to get on with it on my own when I asked for help getting to the toilet/ what to do with my new born when I went) on the ward. I discharged myself against their recommendations after one night it was so bad. Absolutely awful and all i got from family and friends afterwards was “at least your baby is healthy” absolutely nightmarish stuff and it took me about two years to realise how wrong it was and that it was actually traumatic and the way I’d been treated was not ok!

I think it’s normal to feel traumatised by the experience you had. I’m not sure it’s normal for a hospital admission to be so traumatic. However, emergency medicine often is traumatic.

I think… just be gentle with yourself, accept that it was a truly awful experience and that things could possibly have been better. That what you’re going through is hard and it’s Ok to be shell shocked.

That sounds terrible. I know someone who was in hospital for a week in major trauma, they released them but then a few days later breathing became extremely laboured. I kept on thinking they had to be recovering.

Ambulance takes them back to same hospital. It turns out they had two litres of blood in their lung that was seeping in and they missed it last time?! Needed a transfusion in the ambulance and a drain and another week in the same ward and hospital. That really traumatised them as they nearly could've not gone back.

Bloody hell, I feel traumatised reading that!
How awful. I really hope you have an easier time from now on and that you recover well.
How good are your friends and family? I hope everyone is being very nice to you!

Look at all these people on here supporting you! It is normal to feel traumatised. That's ok. You can absolutely do this and I hope the healing is going ok. There's lots of scattered advice but one thing that might help while you are off work and still taking things slow is finding a good book (does anyone have any recommendations for books that help with post surgical recovery?) and then a silly book (Sarah maas?) taking yourself off to a nice coffee shop / if you have a Macmillan coffee centre that will also do the same and you will find others similar. Stay a few hours. Have cake. Watch the world. You are with people / not with people.

If you need practical advice on wounds etc there are actually a lot of specialists on here.
Walk before run.

That is horrific. I had horrific maternity experiences so did my babies. Both times two weeks in hospital - lots of failures. I’ve had a lot of therapy as i nearly died and my kids both nearly died. Lots of mistakes and then changes made to how the hospital will handle things for other mothers and babies as a result, I didn’t sue them although my eldest ended up with a lifelong condition as a result of their actions.

Thank you all so much

I had half my thyroid removed a few months ago very uneventfully (along with a huge nodule) and it still massively took it out of me and left me feeling shaken for a while. In my case the operation went well but they told me just before that it would be harder than expected because of how my nodule was sitting within my neck. I was therefore in the operation for longer than expected and really felt like I'd been through the wars when I woke up.

What you've described would be traumatic for almost everyone especially because neck-based blood lost is very rapid and severe and your neck already feels horrendous after they've been at your thyroid.

I'm presuming given you had a total thyroidectomy you are also now on thyroxine replacement? If so I'd definitely give that all time to settle too, it's normal to feel quite low while you have hypo symptoms and they're getting your new levels sorted.

But I'd also look into counselling of some kind, this is classic and understandable medical trauma. If your op was cancer-related, are you getting support from Macmillan or other cancer orgs? They may be able to pass you on to some specialist counselling support.

Yes I am on thyroxine now, I feel like the dose is too high weirdly though. Im
on 150mg but I’m having a lot of symptoms that feel a lot like it felt when I had a hyperactive thyroid. I was diagnosed when I went into a thyroid storm which was absolutely terrifying. I think I am going to look at sorting some counselling.

thank you

This is what my neck looked like after the 3rd surgery as I said I’m surprised I was discharged home as fast as I was after the haemorrhage. I’m not a weepy person but I’m so so emotional at the moment. I think I need to give myself some slack

I'm sorry that this happened to you @OP .

It shouldn't be normal, but I've known it to happen.

My late husband had a triple bypass back in 2009 and his GP told me that it's not uncommon for those who have been through that to have PTSD.

More recently, I was traumatised by a day procedure. I had no idea until he started that the gynaecologist attempting to remove polyps from my vagina and cervix was going to do so with no anaesthesia.

I nearly went through a red light on my way home - I was in a state of shock. I made it home without further mistakes, thank goodness, and went to bed after taking OTC painkillers and hallucinated that my husband was checking up on me.

What you've described sounds indisputably traumatic and I'm not remotely surprised that you're struggling to come to terms with it.

I had emergency surgery for a burst appendix, sepsis and peritonitis, followed by a 10 day hospital stay, a couple of years ago. Aside from the impact of the surgery and the sepsis itself, I lost a huge amount of weight and muscle as a result of not being able to eat post-op, and intravenous nutrition being withdrawn too soon, which meant that I ended up very weak, and struggled to walk and to move my body generally. I found the whole experience really difficult, especially the way it challenged my idea of myself as (up until that point) a healthy and capable person.

I noticed that, as I was recovering, I really needed to talk about the experience to family and friends, even several months after the event. I felt a bit guilty (and possibly a bit ridiculous) about this, as I'd survived – so what was the problem? But talking about what's happened to you is an important part of your recovery – essential to it, in fact. As a previous poster has suggested, maybe your ICU can signpost you to some counselling/support or, failing that, your GP. And hopefully the people around you will also understand that this is something you really need to talk to them about.

Wishing you all the best with your recovery - you've had such an enormous amount to deal with.

That is awful

That’s so helpful to think that about the group. Thank you!

Just a bit of an update probably boring. I have reached out to the icu counselling service and the bma for help. I’ve also got an appointment with the priory to talk about emdr. I need to deal with this so I can go back to work but also I’ve accepted being signed off until march 2026. I’ve asked for a proper debrief with the clinicians in icu and the surgeons about what the hell happened in the 2nd surgery. I spoke to my husband and he said he was told I had DIC by the surgeon (Disseminated Intravascular coagulation). I was told they activated the major haemorrhage protocol so assumed they nicked a vessel and it was bad but understandable . Whereas dic is bleeding from every possible orifice because there is no clotting factors left.

I'm so glad I started this thread. Thank you all so much

I won’t go into detail as it would be a LONG post…but yes, I had sepsis earlier in the year, ambulance to hospital, in a week, it was horrendous. I don’t think I realised until quite a while after I was home how traumatised I was, tried to crack on with normal life and ended up having a ‘disassociating’ incident (I was driving and it was terrifying) I then took a step back again and had to limit myself to not doing too much too soon. It’s been tough.

Be really kind to yourself, take it easy and do relaxing things you enjoy. Rest. 💐

Absolutely yes. It is completely traumatising. Very tiring. Do reach out to those groups for help with processing it all.

I think it’s so easy to make light of things when it happens to you.. I’ve told patients I’ve operated on and things maybe got a bit hairy ( transfusions but especially sepsis) to expect the recovery to take about a year. So god knows why I’m not applying that to me!!

I’m so sorry you experienced this extreme and catastrophic event. It is far beyond the realms of what most people will ever experience.

I’m so glad you survived, but I expect it will take a very long time indeed to live with the trauma.

You sound like an amazing person and I really hope you have great people around you as you attempt to recover from this, whilst starting on a regime of cancer therapy.

Call them all in for support, please don’t be shy. I’m sure there are a lot of people who love and care for you and would be happy to support you.

Be kind and patient with yourself, as you would with one of your own patients.

Sending best wishes and un-mumsnetty hugs. 💐

I also just wanted to add the answer to your actual question: that yes, I have experienced extreme trauma in a hospital setting (although it was my child, in ICU , not me). He survived and is fit and healthy.

I’ll be honest, it was 12 years ago and very occasionally it will still affect me. But it’s not like I wasn’t able to function those first few years, after it happened (I went back to a very demanding job after a year). just that we had to make room and allowances in our lives for it.

Not many people (fortunately) will truly be able to understand, but you will meet people who do and it can be very healing, if you don’t let it become your entire identity.

Any life threatening event is traumatic. I am so sorry you went through all that. I was lucky that when I actually got to hospital I felt safe and was very well looked after. For me the trauma was the fear of dying at home, being in terrible pain and completely helpless. Knowing that if my Dh had been working away (as he often does) I would have died. It is going to take me a long time to get over that.
I had a heart attack in the early hours of the morning, no warning, no history. DH was on the 999 call for 15 minutes begging them to send an ambulance. The call handler was really rude and stroppy and refused to believe him. I have never experienced such terror. No way could he have got me to A&E any other way.
Eventually, they grudgingly sent a first responder and she, and the cardiac A&E team saved my life. I am so lucky and grateful to the cardiologists, but I am still having nightmares and flashbacks. I have lost faith in the 999 service.

I contracted bacterial meningitis and septicemia when I was 26. I was given a 30% chance of survival and placed in an induced coma in ICU for 10 days. I was in hospital for a total of 3 weeks. Yes, my situation was different but I suffered PTSD afterwards, which isn't unusual after a serious illness. You are going through an illness, and then hospital treatments, which all vary in intensity and some don't always go to plan. What you're feeling is entirely normal and to be expected. I strongly suggest having some counselling to talk through your emotions and feelings. I didn't, just simply buried everything because it was easier, and an event last year (many many years after my illness) triggered horrendous panic attacks. I had no option but to seek support and after talking to a therapist, it became apparent that I hadn't dealt with my illness at all.