Anniversary of traumatic event & pain

[Jules]

Today is an emotinal day: 19 years ago, I gave birth to my daughter and all hell broke loose. I was 34 weeks amd went into labor with her. After a harrowing 42 hours, the nurse found she was laying sideways, her head on my bladder. They turned her ans 15 minutes later, I went from a 6-10 and she was born. Shortly afer, I felt a rip and to make a long story short, ruptured my uterus, perforating my bladder and vaginal wall. Hysterectomy, bladder repair surgery and 8 pints blood transfusion was the result. I was in the hospital a week and my daughter 8 days, due to jaundice, but otherwise, her lungs were mature and she was a healthy 5 lbs 11 oz. She's now a beautiful, grown sophomore in college.

This experience gave me a formal diagnosis of PTSD and every year, I have an emotional day, but I also get pelvic pain. I have been through therapy to process this, but the experience is what changed my brain, I believe, into TMS.

So my questions to you guys is, have any of you had something similar happen (PTSD) and on the day of the past event, TMS is worse? I know triggers can make pain worse, but I don't want to feel this way every year. My son's b-day was two weeks ago and his birth ended in an emergency c-section to save his life, so these two events have created some deep emotional issues.

I've tried to not think about or dwell on the negative events that happened and just celebrate life, since both her and I could have died, but my brain keeps going back and the pain just keeps going. I haven't had pelvic pain for months, but TMS is defintely in the area with scar tissue and such, so to have it creep up now seems more than just a coincidence.

What do you guys think?

 

[healingfromchronicpain]

I think our traumatized brains are hard nuts to crack. I suspect the pain is related to your past trauma. But maybe don't look at the anniversary as a trigger that makes you feel worse. Maybe it's a reminder to acknowledge the trauma and to remind yourself that you survived and that you don't need that pain anymore and you can let go of it.

I say this because there's a good chance that on the anniversary of my traumatic event, I ruptured the disc in my neck. I hadn't remembered my trauma, so I feel like the ruptured disc, and the years of pain that followed, was my body's way of making me acknowledge that there was trauma.

I feel like my brain still hasn't completely let go of it all, but reading your post, made me think about how our traumas/TMS are trying to tell us something. Maybe instead of thinking about gritting your teeth through the anniversary every year, befriend it. Thank it for reminding you that you were traumatized so you can also be reminded that you survived and you don't need to carry the pain anymore. (I'm thinking out loud and saying this to myself as well.) I don't have an answer, but this is what came to me at the moment. Maybe others have something more concrete to offer

Thank your pain and then let it go

For me, besides the original horrific pain on the anniversary, I haven't gotten pain spikes on the anniversary, although I still have moderate pain all the time, lol. I'm still working on changing my traumatized brain. Which reminds me, have you tried EMDR? it's a technique for addressing trauma. It helped me bring down some spikes in my pain (my website describes my journey and all the things I've tried: www.healingfromchronicpain.com).

Good luck!

 

[rmadera]

@healingfromchronicpain I just realized that I got an injury that set in motion TMS on the 25th anniversary of my parent's celebration of life service. My mom had been sick for five years before she died. I was about to turn the age she was when she died (45) and was dealing with a lot of stress in life, work, and fear of medical anything. Seeing the connections and parallels of big events/dates to symptoms starting makes me believe in TMS and the psychological. Just need to convince myself it is TMS since I still focus too much on the physical sensations and want it to go away so much I think I make it worse.