I have told my story a gazillion times. Well, okay, maybe not a gazillion. But between insurance docs, my docs, vocational and functional assessments for the insurers, therapists, new recent docs, it sure seems like it's been a gazillion. So you'd think by now it would be no big deal. I could go into some sort of auto pilot mode and recount it like some bored taped recording, disconnecting myself from the memory.
Unfortunately that doesn't work. Each doc has their own questions about the crash that injured me, their own unique angle of perception, and I have to engage. After today though, if I have to see someone new where there is a possibility of having to recount it, I think I may take a printed copy of my blog post with me, highlight the relevant bits, tell them to read it, and leave me out of it. I'll tune back in when we get to the questions about my current day problems.
It isn't just repeating the umpteenth recounting, it's the having to remember that night, and with that memory comes all the others that followed, like some sort of unstoppable neverending train.
The viciousness of post-traumatic stress disorder is the memory of the trauma coming back into consciousness over and over again. This is similar except that the medical profession is demanding you do it. Insurance companies specialize in this kind of torture.
Those bad memories of the crash and the insurance fight had faded away until these last couple of months, what with seeing new docs and having to wait forever in a waiting room seemingly filled with people recounting their nightmare insurance stories. The fact that everyone who's been injured and has had to make a claim has the same nightmare doesn't make it easier to bear -- especially when that nightmare is supposed to be over for me.
But apparently like a piece of rotten meat, it keeps coming back on me.
Unfortunately that doesn't work. Each doc has their own questions about the crash that injured me, their own unique angle of perception, and I have to engage. After today though, if I have to see someone new where there is a possibility of having to recount it, I think I may take a printed copy of my blog post with me, highlight the relevant bits, tell them to read it, and leave me out of it. I'll tune back in when we get to the questions about my current day problems.
It isn't just repeating the umpteenth recounting, it's the having to remember that night, and with that memory comes all the others that followed, like some sort of unstoppable neverending train.
The viciousness of post-traumatic stress disorder is the memory of the trauma coming back into consciousness over and over again. This is similar except that the medical profession is demanding you do it. Insurance companies specialize in this kind of torture.
Those bad memories of the crash and the insurance fight had faded away until these last couple of months, what with seeing new docs and having to wait forever in a waiting room seemingly filled with people recounting their nightmare insurance stories. The fact that everyone who's been injured and has had to make a claim has the same nightmare doesn't make it easier to bear -- especially when that nightmare is supposed to be over for me.
But apparently like a piece of rotten meat, it keeps coming back on me.
Comments