Post traumatic stress from MRSA

[Mith]

I hope this helps someone out there!

Ten years ago, after ongoing illness and my ex-GP's incompetence, I was diagnosed with a life threatening lung infection. This led to surgery in hospital , where I contracted and almost died from the superbug MRSA. This led to more surgery & a hospital stay of many months. At the time I had a young family & my husband did not cope well, trying to run the family business as well as seeing to the kids & my needs.  My advise to anyone is: if you have any doubts about your doctor's advice, seek another opinion.

When I returned home, I was still very ill & it took almost 12 months for me to be able to function almost normally. I have not returned to work & still monitor my health carefully, although over the last few years it's been easier and I'm classed as "stable", meaning my disease has not progressed. The stress from my illness has adversely affected my marriage and family and at dark times I wondered why I bothered to fight to live at all.

It was my Specialist that insisted that I seek help for the PTSS which was impeding my recovery. He said that he wanted to see me stop crying & enjoy a full life. This was the best advice I have ever had! I was referred to a Psychologist, who I saw several times, I cried the full Ist session, weeped a bit in the 2nd & was quite upbeat at the 3rd. She gave me many strategies such as finding things to keep me busy. My new GP prescribed anti depressants which I disliked as I put on a lot of weight, but took these for 6 months. I continued to see the GP, and became involved in the kids school & sport organisations. However I found that these made me more stressed, due to the people involved. Once I distanced myself from these toxic people and found other interests, I have been much happier.

I now realise that my illness will be with me for the rest of my life, but if I look after my health I can live a "normal" lifespan. Regular Specialist, Councillor & GP visits help. Selecting who I spend my time with , not being a "people pleaser"(even if they are relatives) & deleting those negative people from social media is crucial. Finding creative activities and spending one-on-one time with each of the kids helps too. I have now embarked on study, with the purpose of securing a new career, to try & take some of the financial burden off hubby. Although I still have some down times, life is much better. 

[Neil_1]

Dear mith

Welcome to Beyond Blue and thank you so much for coming here and providing your post.  It sure sounds like it’s been one hell of a journey and that it continues to keep on as well – which is never good, but to know that in your own mind hopefully can provide you with some sort of clarity.

I must say that the psychologist that you saw must have been an amazing person and well suited to their job – as it sounded like you made remarkable advances through those sessions.

Toxic people;  recognising them and finding the appropriate ways and means to remove them from your life is also a key factor for so many of us;  it’s just so disappointing that the world has these kinds of people.  On a personal view, it’s even worse when some of them can be related to you – it just doesn’t make sense that they can be blood related.  Sorry, slight digression there.

I found your post, your attitude and your thoughts uplifting and helpful as well and would like to thank you for coming to Beyond Blue and posting, a little about your story.  I also hope that, if you feel ok to do so, that it’d be awesome if you could hang around;  and either post back here in your thread or to perhaps seek out other people’s threads and post some responses back to them.  I feel as though you’ve got a lot of positiveness to give and share, basically earned through your own experiences.

Kind regards

Neil