Nightmares after a traumatic experience

[JackJacksmummy]

Almost a month ago my son had a number of severe asthma attacks, he has never suffered with them before in his life and what we went through was really scary and very traumatic. We nearly lost him on the resusicitation table and he was admitted twice to high dependency after that.

He is much better now but on a lot of medication so in reality we dont know how he'll be once he is finally off the steroids.

Anyway, since it happened and we came out of hospital i have had real bad problems getting to sleep and then once I'm asleep i get terrible nightmares about him and various other life threatening scenarios - not even the one we was in - for example him having operations and not making it, or last night i had one where he was diagnosed with leukemia!

When he first came out i was very panicky and tearful but that has passed and now its just the dreams that i'm having.

Do you think i could have a mild form of post traumatic stress disorder?

I had that after a life threatening internal bleed and after the stillbirth of my 4th daughter (the 3rd was also stillborn). I would wake at night panicking after bad nightmares and in a state. I often rushed to check my DC were OK. It was horrid and it did go away after a few months. I did have bereavement counselling which helped. I also had sleeping pills for a while and crippling insomnia. I do believe it is a form of post traumatic stress.

It is very normal to have symptoms like this after what happened. it is your mind's way of trying to find the appropriate 'box' in which to file these really scary memories.

It is far too early to talk about Post traumatic stress - basically PTSD happens if the 'filing' doesn't work and you get stuck (ie no improvement after 2-3 months). You would also have more symptoms than nightmares.

By all means seek advice from your GP is you are worried about how you are feeling, but chances are that in time you will be ok. Do take how you feel seriously though, and talk about it as many times as you need to. Sometimes you just need to tell everyone - over and over again- how scared you were and how bad it was.