Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: My Personal Journey

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been in the news many times in the recent years since 9/11 and soldiers coming back from the war in Iraq. The thing is you do not have to have been in a situation such as 9/11 or the Iraq war to develop PTSD. Many people have it and have not been diagnosed. I am such a person who was lucky enough to be diagnosed.

I probably started developing PTSD as a child due to an abusive and neglected childhood. Though my psychiatrist and psychologist both agree that there was one specific trigger that caused me to develop PTSD. This is from what I have researched is a very common occurrence.

In 1988, I was working in a very small town in Mississippi as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for a hospital on their ambulance service. It was a small ambulance service so there were no more than eight of us there. So we are were very close working long shifts of 24 hours and then being on call.

One early morning we received an ambulance call to respond to a motor vehicle accident (MVA). My partner and I responded we were both wearing scrubs as we had spent the night at the hospital. The scene of the MVA was about seven miles from the hospital. We pulled up to the scene to find two vehicles involved.

One vehicle was still on the road with a small dent in the left front fender the other car was rolled over onto its top off the left side of the road into a ditch. We could see that the victim from the car was standing by her car, she seemed uninjured. We also saw a person lying in the grass about 75 feet from the overturned vehicle.

We decided my partner would take the patient on the road and I would take the victim in the grass. It was apparent to me that the person was dead on arrival (DOA). As I came up to the patient, I saw that it was a male. Then I noticed that he was wearing a uniform. Then what hit me as if a ton of bricks was the nametag above his shirt pocket. It read, " Terry Morrison" (real name not used) Ambulance Service."

Terry was a fellow EMT and good friend. I knelt done in the grass beside him to be sure there were no vital signs. I knew there would not be because there was a large laceration on the right side of his neck across his carotid artery, he was almost decapitated. Wetness pressed against my knees and legs, as I stayed kneeled down. I thought it was the early morning dew on the grass until I stood up. I then discovered that the grass was saturated with Terry's blood and now so was I.

We transported him to the hospital as protocol called for. I radioed ahead for them to have the emergency room closed off. This was due to the fact Terry's mother worked in admissions no far from the ER. Our ambulance director sent my partner and I home because we were both shook up. A day later Terry's mother called me and asked me to be a pallbearer for Terry's funeral. I really did not want to but could not refuse. To me this was irony I had picked him up were he had died and now I was going to assist carrying him to his grave.

To ad more irony to the situation the date was June 10, 1988. My daughter was born two years later on June 10, 1990. The most traumatic day of my life and the happiest day of my life shared the same date. I still have vivid dreams of the situation a couple of times a month. I figure I always will.