PTSD or living with a broken brain

Improptu post. It usually takes a while for me to mull things over and then I pour it out, but I guess this is one of those days when I just go ahead and pour without filtering the sediment.

I have had four reconstructive surgeries in the past year and a half. That's another story for another day. Today's post is about what a bitch PTSD is, or, more accurately, how I am PTSD's bitch.

Here I am, going about my life, and I swear, like, I absolutely swear that it has been getting better and better, that my brain seems to be calming down and letting go. So why am I crying on my way back from the corner store to buy vapes for an upcoming trip? And I'm not just crying or hormonal. Nope. I can pretty precisely point out that I am crying because I don't want to die. Am I in any danger, you may ask? Nope. No danger. No weird bloodword. No weird symptoms. Nothing. I'm just happy.

I was on vacation in Spain with my parents two weeks ago. One afternoon, I got out of the pool and felt a burning pain on the fake boob, the one that got a new fake nipple courtesy of my inner thigh just two months ago. No change in skin color or texture, not a deep pain, intense but very superficial. Even I know that it's textbook nerve pain. But does this knowledge help? Nope. I had both my doctor parents look at it, they said it was nothing and that it's textbook nerve pain. Did I let it go? Nope. I got on their nerves every remaining day of the trip, asking if it can't be "something". I sent a photo to my plastic surgeon's medical assistant. She looked at the photo, showed it to my surgeon, they assured me that it's nothing. My worries were so alleviated that I, of course, booked an appointment to see my surgeon a couple of days after coming home.

You see, when a person with a non-broken brain feels a random pain, they go "oh, weird, well, it's not too bad, let me see if it goes away, and if it doesn't or if it's too persistent, I'll see my GP". You know where my brain goes? Directly to metastases, chemo, baldness, me dying (a little later but still) young.

I have persistent lowerback pain due to discopathy. I've had an MRI on my back, they literally know the specific disc in the specific spinal segment that is causing it. Plus, I've done a cortizone shot which made it much better, which indirectly re-confirms that it's just old school inflammation because I've got a shit disc in my back. Should be enough for me to be bothered but not worried about it, right? Nope. Every now and then I will still wonder, maybe it's a bone met. Maybe they didn't catch it during the PET scan before the chemo because I had fractured my pelvis three days before (how convenient for the cancer!). And then they didn't catch it in subsequent PET scans because the chemo made it shrink. And I stopped doing PET scans (as per protocol) two years ago. And maybe during that time, it has grown, spread fucking everywhere, but it's so sneaky, so subtle, that you can't catch it in my bloodwork, and it's not setting off any alarms, not yet, but when it does, it will be too late and I will become the tragic figure that I was always meant to be but it will be so much more tragic because I was "cured".

I literally sometimes feel that the only thing that could calm my brain is an autopsy. If every inch of my body were sliced into thin little segments and examined under a microscope and declared NED (cancer talk for "no evidence of disease").

That's the thing with PTSD, your brain doesn't react to stimuli that are there, it sees a teacup but perceives a storm. And it's really sneaky, you'll go days, months being normal, and then one day you're crying in your elevator on a rainy afternoon.

I had one of my usual night terrors last night - I am in some sort of nightmare or dream and I can't get out of it. And I scream. Not just in my head, I scream voce viva to wake up.

My surgeon's lovely assistant was so sweet. She was like - there is nothing to worry about, don't immediately think bad things, you look great, you are happy, you found the love of your life, the cancer is behind you.

And that's precisely it. Wouldn't it be so grand if I still died?

Wouldn't it make it so much sadder and more tragic?