WARNING...SENSITIVE CONTENT. Trigger warning!
Why write about the past they say. Can't you just move on? You just want attention.
Actually I'm currently in a program for C-PTSD and this is actually part of the program.
I had an emergency c-section in 2019. This was due to many months of poor pre-natal care. It was avoidable.
Every time I administer #therapeutictouch it is like one more second of that event is replaced with healing. It’s like I’m rewiring my subconscious/brain.
A few days after the c-section I developed a life threatening infection and blood clot in my right ovarian vein. I was re-hospitalized twice. I had to leave my new born baby each time while establishing nursing/pumping because, get this, she was "contaminated." Yes, that is the exact word they used. Never mind that I wasn't in the neonatal unit but a private room within a private clinic on the other side of the maternity ward. Let's not forget that every person who visits in a maternity ward is "contaminated." It was agony leaving my baby at home and I was very, very lucky that I had a huge amount of milk and was able to pump and send my milk home.
The second event was when a section of my incision that was “healing” exploded. It exploded with such force and in such an amount that blood sprayed out all over my dressing table in my bathroom. My family was three floors away downstairs.
It took all of my will power not to panic and instead to assess, pack the wound and apply pressure while reaching for a bathrobe and getting down two flights of stairs.
I didn’t know if I was bleeding out because I was on blood thinners and the emergency c section had left me with a 13cm hematoma in between the fascia transversalis and some lower subcutaneous layers. Was it the hematoma bleeding or an artery like the #epigastic or #perforator under stress of the #anticoagulants
To this day I don’t know. I don’t know because my gynaecologist at the time literally didn’t care. She barely wanted to admit me to hospital. I had become a burden of care to her. I was bleeding while lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance. Once I was stable and discharged from hospital, she decided to refuse to continue caring for me and dumped me into nursing/community wound care within the village I was living in at the time. From that point on I saw the head of wound care once and then had a different nurse each time that never seemed to carry my clinical notes and didn't know my "story." At this point I had been searching for a new gynaecologist and mercifully he was amazing and I was able to heal a little better. He was also shocked at the terrible level of care I had received and the PTSD I was clearly presenting with.
For many, many months afterwards I wanted to physically hurt her for the pain, suffering and life altering injuries (to this day I have #chronicpain) she had caused me.
In the end I had to leave the country for my mental health.
It’s been four years since these traumatic events. My trauma is what lead me to opening my practice. When I care for women who have or are suffering trauma I am in turn made whole. Therapeutic Touch heals my core wounds. It heals the powerlessness I felt. It heals the pain that despite there being no linguistic barrier to my care I suffered discrimination and racism. I can only imagine the level of care given to those who are not white and look like them and who cannot speak one of the official languages of the country.
Today I choose to live with forgiveness and peace. TT got me there. It is an almost daily practice. It, along with my herbal practice is a way of life. I have the privilege (education) to articulate my pain and learn how to navigate the medical jargon and gatekeeping. Others do not and my work helps with that. Especially when I volunteer out in the community and help women who are currently living their trauma and actively trying to achieve wholeness again.
These pictures were taken after 48h in hospital. I could not take pictures of the floor and walls because they had been scrubbed in my absence. Until recently I held onto the bathrobe that had received a few splatters and still used it. I don't know why. Trauma alters you profoundly. I've since bought a new one which my eldest daughter says makes me look like a sorceress! I love it.