
alvimann@morguefile.com
What is secondary post traumatic stress disorder? It’s a new one on me. I don’t think it’s in the DSM.
If it exists, secondary PTSD is also known as Compassion disorder. In plain English compassion burnout.
I sort of remember telling my doctor about ten years ago I thought I had the symptoms of TSD, traumatic stress disorder, because at the time it didn’t seem post it seemed current. She said something like, get over yourself. OK sure thing, no problem thanks Doc.
It’s perfectly normal to have insomnia for ten years.
I think it all started with the car accident. I got rear ended and the vertebrae in my neck got messed up so I couldn’t hold my head up. I couldn’t work so I was looking at starvation and eviction.
I was at the liquor store with a friend and I was standing at the cash register when the store was held up and brother from another mother was pointing a gun at my head. I self medicated with codeine and aspirin that I could get by just asking for it from the pharmacist at the local supermarket, because I had to work for a living, and I was in no shape. Then I got shot by somebody working a little too fast with a nailgun. I moved into an affordable tenement where everybody was dropping dead like flies from various overdoses and every night when I went to bed the cops were chasing somebody through my yard with guns drawn. When I got through with the coroner, I was driving to work and my vision seemed a little blurry, so I went to one of those dispensing opticians at the mall and he said I should run not walk to my doctor.
I asked him what was the matter and he wouldn’t tell me. Thanks a lot you prick. My doctor sends me to a specialist and, I’m going blind. Well I coulda told you that Dr. Smartypants. So here we go again can’t work, starve to death get evicted and in your spare time just for laffs go blind.
The eye operation went ok till the freezing or whatever wore off and I’m laying there looking up at Dr. Smartypants who has a needle or a knife or something in my eyeball, I must have mumbled something like you’re dead meat when I get out of these fucking restraints and she told the anesthetist to give me another shot. How generous. I know we are all cutting corners these days to save a couple of bucks but Jesus Christ can’t we afford anesthetics. Where was I?
Now I’ve got a patch. Do you think for one minute you can get a job on a construction site when you’re blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other. Not likely. Looks like I’ll be losing some more weight. I applied for every job in the paper after the patch came off.
Would you believe I got a job as a driving instructor? I didn’t believe it either. So for less than 1/3 of what I was making working construction, I get to escort a bunch of supercilious rich brats through Vancouver. I didn’t mind. I like kids and the harder they think they are, the more I like them. Bad to the bone. I’m really trying to keep a straight face here. No I’m sorry we don’t have any beemers you can practice on. Some of the kids told me they knew how to drive because they had been driving for years on the chauffeurs lap. Too much information. Shut up and look at the road. It’s ok babysitting millionaire’s kids but it doesn’t put groceries on the table, so I had to move on.
That’s when my brilliant second career got started.
Health care.
In summary we have a sleepless, blind, traumatized, self medicated burn out, Welcome we need health care workers in B.C. But first you have to pass the medical.
I went to my doctor. She said how’s it going, I said fine and I passed.
I am eminently qualified to work with mental patients. Nobody else wants the job. I’m making about half of what I used to as a wood bender. Now maybe I can afford to eat and pay rent. Things are looking up.
In retrospect, I think my doctor was right, if you don’t have some kind of stress overload you’re probably already dead. Compassion? You don’t have to look very far to find someone in worse shape than you.