We’ve been taught all our lives to move up, up, UP! in life. Society measures success by accomplishment. If you’re not moving onward and upward, you’re a failure!

Pretty hard-core, eh?

And UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. As young idealistic people we idolize these measuring sticks… and we think nothing of looking down on anyone who doesn’t measure up. When we’re young, so full of vigor and life and potential, we haven’t experienced enough to have the necessary perspective to know those measuring sticks are pure bullshit. But we know what we have seen, and we believe that makes us experts, so we march right along not even realizing how utterly stupid we look. :)

I decided to make a Great Downgrade a few weeks ago.

I am an EMT. I developed PTSD as a result of a bad call in July 2006. I didn’t even have patient contact that night; I was the fire dept. photographer. It was that bad. Since then, I’ve been unable to go on medical calls.

This bothered me terribly every single freaking day since July 21, 2006, but there wasn’t a doggone thing I could do about it. I was trying to fix my head. But my head wasn’t listening to me, and there was no way in hell that I could go on calls.

I’ve loved being an EMT and wanted to be out there, doing my thing, making a difference. Helping other people is what I get out of bed for. It is my purpose. And EMS has been my calling for as long as I remember. I’ve been certified for over 17 years.

But now I couldn’t do it. I won’t go into the painful scenarios here, but bottom line, every call I did try wound up badly in my head. It was obvious I was best served staying home.

I forced my utterly broken PTSD brain through EMT recert in January 2008. One word: HELL. Ugh.

But by taking recert, I bought 2 more years of licensure to heal and get back in the saddle.

Well, two more years has arrived, and I had to make the Big Decision. Sh*t, or Get Off The Pot? :)

I am at 3.5 yrs post-trauma and my symptoms are only under fair control because I moved to a new home that is a "safe place." (The old place very much wasn’t safe. At all.) I’m doing better in that general, measuring-in-millimeters way, but when I heard a multi-patient call at the big sledding hill in December, as I listened to the fire chief & medics coordinate equipment and people, all I could think was "I am SO GLAD I am not having to deal with that." I was really, really glad to be free of the stress, confusion, coordination, details, (and of course carrying a Stokes basket 100+ feet up a steep hill).

That’s when I knew. I’d been feeling an aversion to complex calls for months. But the sledding hill call crystallized it for me: if it was still this far beyond my capabilities 3.5 yrs later, it wasn’t going to be sufficiently better anytime soon. In all brutal fairness, it was Time to Get Off The Pot.

So I am letting my EMT certification expire in June.

It’s very hard, letting go of accomplishment, status, special skillz and opportunities, especially when they were damn near your inspiration for breathing for years and years.

But I tell you what. The day I decided to let it go, I slept really well that night. Peace and confidence in my decision flooded over me almost instantly. I would no longer be branded "EMT", no longer carry the burdens and responsibilities the title brings. And I was thinking, "Ahhhhhhh."

Yes, I was concurrently mourning the loss — of course!! But at long last, this was a struggle that I had finally put to rest. I have pined and obsessed and ruminated on it every hour of the day & night, every day, for 1,262 days. The Downgrade is no small thing. This Downgrade is darn near everything. It feels like it’s all I’ve got left, after everything I’ve lost… even if I’m letting go of this one willingly, rather than having it wrenched out of my hands. But it’s still a loss. I’m still sad!

I have moments of "but I can do it!" – most days I have a dream of health flash through my mind, and I get all regretful and want to rush to the tech college’s website to quickly find another recert class before it’s too late! And then I remember the other 23.98 hours of the day where I am not strong, my mind is a flurry, I trigger easily, I sink further and further……. that would not be fair to my patients and it would not be fair to me.

I will help people in other ways. I will make a difference some other way. I know that is my calling. I am not sure how, yet, but I have my heart open and am listening for God’s guidance. He is who called me to EMS so many years ago. I know He will lead me again. :)

Wishing you the peace of a downgrade. ###

Didn’t happen.

I spent the next 7 days, ’til about Nov. 6th, gaining weight. I actually gained 4 lbs. back total (so I was at a net loss of 7). Essentially, I wasted/lost a month on a plateau, then 4 lb. gain. Urrrghhh!! That was seriously maddening.

It was all food-related, of course, I was eating too much and too much of the wrong thing. Even complex carbs just stick to me if I don’t eat them at about 1:10 with protein.

I finally figured this carb thing out though. It’s not just that I "love carbs" or am a "Carbohydrate Addict" or even that I’m "pre-diabetic" (the last being my mother’s explanation for the panoply of odd symptoms).

I’m Sugar Sensitive. Sugar is a drug to my brain. Literally. This is a brain chemistry thing… low baseline serotonin and beta-endorphins, leading to more serotonin and beta-endorphin receptors in each synapse, which creates an extra-big "hit" of serotonin and its partner beta-endorphin when I eat sugar or simple carbs. I am an addict. Physically, addicted. Because of how my brain has been built from the start …….. structure which incidentally also causes depression (check), anxiety (check), and clearly contributes to my PTSD.

So now that I understand my tempestuous relationship with sugar, I’m finding it much easier not only to not eat it (I don’t want it), but when I do crave it, I’m listening to my body and just eating a little. No drama, no resisting, no struggle … just up and eat some. *shrug* This is a long-term battle, and I’m not going to be able to cut it out 100% right now. But I can slowly work in that direction. :)

Since that discovery, I’ve dropped 6 lbs in 10 days. For a net total of 13 GONE.

And I’m not hungry, and I’m not eating much at all. :) Now if I could just get rid of this damn migraine (hormones again, *sigh*) I’d be golden.

They were soooo nice. :)

We met in the food court actually (isn’t that where you meet all your internet friends for the first time?! LOL) where I got a pile of Chinese food for $5.46 … I mean like, a mountain of food. It was obscene. And incredibly beautiful. Mom and I picked at the doggone thing for over an hour — and there was still food left over!!

(There are times I seriously miss living in the city — and that was one of those moments… we have zero variety up here. It’s boring little grocery store fare, or "fancy" grocery store fare for $45 + your first-born, or it sucks to be you.)

I then struggled through 2+ hours of shoe shopping. This is the eternal ritual: finding a pair of shoes that fits right. It’s always been like climbing Mt. Rushmore in a straight-jacket. My feet are picky as hell. Now that I have these excellent arch supports from the Good Feet Store, life is better …….. but I soon discovered you can’t just chuck your arch supports in any old shoe and be able to wear it. Some were too wide, some too narrow, some too tight, one rolled outward really badly, several rolled inward really badly … and WTF is with Reebok gluing their insoles in their damn shoes anyway?! Hello?? Dear Reebok: you’ve lost a longtime loyal customer (20+ years!), because you glue in your insoles! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nobody else glues their insoles in. Just Reebok. Apparently they’re special. *roll eyes* Yeah … special enough to be left on the shelf!

So, given that I lost my hiking boots a few months ago (I think while changing out of my fire gear on the highway ……….. but I don’t know for sure??), I did at least find a pair of mens’ athletic shoes that will sufficiently substitute as hiking shoes. Didn’t find a single pair of womens’ shoes that were workable *roll eyes* but the mens’ shoes were a hit-it-out-of-the-park home run.

So the hunt for everyday shoes continues. *sigh*

I then screwed together all the bits of courage I had as we went to pick up our kitty at the vet. Our dead kitty, who’d been cremated. I was okay ’til we pulled in the parking lot. As we pulled up to the place, exactly 1 hour before the time we’d walked out when he died that night in September, those God-awful feelings all came flooding back. That horrible weekend, that horrible night. The worry, anxiousness, desperation, concern, love for my baby, frustration … and utter suffocating helplessness. The helplessness, that’s what really ripped me up. There wasn’t a single thing we could do to fix him, he just looked up at me with those sweet soul-filled eyes, trusting and loving me, looking to me for answers and security, clinging to me desperately as I held him as close as I could… broken. And I couldn’t fix him. It broke my heart. What do you do with that???? He could not be fixed. He was broken forever. As was my heart.

We had him put to sleep. It was the right thing to do, but an absolutely horrible thing to do. Even though we saved him from massive pain and suffering, I still wrestle with the simple act of taking a life — and a life I loved with all my heart, no less. I know he is happier now (I mean, I know this) but there is something in my soul that rages and reels at taking a life. Taking a life! There is no greater, purer Power that we can see with our own eyes, than life. To kill that life … that core part of me *rebukes* it. Who am I to take such a thing from someone else??? Yes, even an animal. To me, it means no less, it is no less, if it has four legs or two.

He was tucked in a little black-and-white kitty-shaped tin, in a paper bag with ribbons tied to the handle. The bag had been carefully labeled with his name. And tucked inside was a pawprint. A little print of his sweet little paw … a paw I couldn’t have back. A little paw I would never kiss again, or play with, or tickle, or gently touch. A paw that would never reach out to touch my hand again, nor cling to my shoulder for dear life as his eyes implored me to protect and love him forever. Seeing that, that’s when I really came unglued.

It all flooded back so vividly, so wholly, the emotion of it just swallowing me up. We climbed back in the car and I just sat there and cried.

But I held on. Because something I’ve learned the last few weeks, is that I can feel pain, but it won’t kill me. I can hang on and endure it, ride the wave, and push through, and it will in the very least dump me washed-up on some sh*tty abandoned shore somewhere. But it won’t carry me away forever, and it won’t kill me. It does end (or at least ebb), and I then I can crawl up to higher ground and brush myself off.

Sitting in the dark car, the parking lot illuminated by the yellowed glow of a magnesium streetlight, the same scene of that fateful night swirling and awash in my tears, I knew that I had to feel the pain and ride its wave, in order to deal with it. This part of the ride had to be ridden in order to process it and put it to rest. The rational side of me recognized that this was a normal way to feel, and so it was okay to ride it out and feel it for what it was. I didn’t die on the trail. This wouldn’t kill, or even mortally maim me, here in the car. I would be okay.

And I was. It took awhile. We shed our tears, we voiced our regrets, we mopped up our faces with paper towels, took a deep breath and pulled out of the parking lot. We had our boy back. And we brought him home where he belonged. Our baby is back home by his Mamas.

##

The car turned off in Ellison Bay. Wanting to get a good look at the (crab-fisherman-looking) driver, I knew I would have to go around the block so that our vehicles would meet driver-to-driver, and then I could get a good look at the fellow and see if it was anybody I knew.

This required I drive down The Road past the (now rebuilt) exploded duplex. However, at the chance to see Sig (LOL) or another crab fisherman that I dearly admire, I decided it was worth it. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not everybody has “AK CRAB” license plates, you know.

So I turned in at the next road, then turned left on The Road, and approached The Place where the buildings Blew Up. Every time I go through there, I view it through the lens of that night … I see trees standing in the same place they stood That Night …. I see the outdoor fireplace standing where it stood That Night … the road curves exactly like it did That Night … everything is seen through the sights burned in my brain from That Night. I don’t see it free-standing as today; I see it in comparison to That Night.

Anyway.

First I drove past the blown-up building, but I looked at the water and the boats in the harbor instead.

Next came the building next door, the one that the siding melted off of. On the far half of the duplex, a middle-aged man laid out on one of the front porch benches. He was bald, tanned, wearing just swim trunks. And he was just laying there, out on the bench.

My breath caught in my throat. Oh my God! I thought. My eyes were big and I was gaping at this guy. Doesn’t he know the danger? Doesn’t he know how he could get hurt there???

I was floored. Absolutely boggled. How could he just lay there out in the open, in the blast zone? Like nothing was going on? *blink*

Of course, the beach towels and flip-flops on all four front porches suggested that nothing was going on. People were “around” these buildings and apparently they were all blissfully unaware. But I knew what they didn’t know. I knew the danger was real, because I had seen the evidence — I had seen it exploded. For real.

* * *

Still reeling at people just milling around unprotected in the blast zone (un-freakin’-real) I rounded the corner to find Alaska crab fisherman car, and a 30-ish man had gotten out, with a cute little boy in tow. On the other side his very pretty wife was walking with an adorable little girl. I did not recognize the man as anybody from Deadliest Catch. I even tried to envision the fellow in full-length rain gear… still no dice.

Later, at home, it finally dawned on me that that man sunbathing on the porch was so relaxed and unprotected because now, today, in 2008, there is no danger there. It is safe. Nothing is exploded and nothing is going to explode. He could lay out on that bench nearly buck-naked and not worry about getting hit by flying debris, because there is no debris.

However, I have a complete and total disconnect with that concept.

I still feel acute danger — tangible, present, run-for-cover danger. I see the blast zone. I know how building parts can fly and where people would get hit (depending on where they were standing). And I get the hell out of there anytime I am anywhere near it. I’m not stupid. It blew once, I know it could blow again, at any time. With no warning. Just like last time. When it did happen.

###

I’ve been triggered several times while on Wellbutrin, but this was the first time that I’d been triggered by old family issues. I didn’t know I wasn’t King of that mountain emotionally, and I didn’t know the Same Old Crap™ could trigger me. So now I know.

The fact that it triggered me through the Wellbutrin, tells me that it is a pretty strong trigger, and I need to treat all the classic Same Old Crap™ family issues with a good dose of distance. The farther away I can stay from that B.S., the better.

The fact that it triggered me through the Wellbutrin is also another big fat sign on the wall that MY PTSD IS ALIVE AND WELL. Dammit. Why won’t it just freakin’ go away already?!?!?!?

Stupid thing.

He has, as you might expect, accumulated quite a collection of breathtaking video and still photos.

He has also developed PTSD, and is “receiving treatment” for it. The news piece cited some heart-wrenching circumstances as being difficult for him — hearing people trapped and crying for help when he physically could not help them, for instance. Completely and totally understandable; that’d screw anybody in the head for a while.

What I find odd though, is that he keeps going back.

The first tenet of treating PTSD is to remove yourself from the source. You cannot make headway on it until you have removed yourself from the threat, and are safe.

This man has PTSD and yet he keeps going back. He keeps re-exposing himself to the threat, keeps re-exposing himself to more heartbreak, more risks. It just does not compute in my head. Granted the terminology in the piece was not perfect; I am sure that the choice of words “receiving treatment” is a journalist’s way of putting things. as one does not receive treatment for PTSD, one participates in or gets treatment. It’s not something you can be given, in a receiving sense, like a fine chocolate or a glass of wine. It’s something you have to roll up your sleeves and dig around in the muck bucket to find with your own two hands.

But I am stymied how this fellow can have PTSD, and yet turn right around and get right back in that car, and go out there, and stare down the source of his stress, and function. And presumably (although this may be where I am mistaken) come out the other side a sane and functional human being.

Then again, he did say that every chase changes him… every time he comes back from a chase, he comes back a changed person. Now on one hand, this seems reasonable. But on the other hand (the one that’s laying here tossing & turning in bed, chewing on this at O-dark:30) I am thinking, if he wasn’t screwed up in the head (PTSD) each chase wouldn’t have that profound of an impact on him. Just as each ambulance call left me a bit more appreciative, or sensitive, or compassionate, I would not have said (pre-PTSD) that every call left me a “changed person,” just that every call taught me something new, about life and about myself. But monumentally changed every time? No. I was more stable than that. Now (post-PTSD) does every call leave me a “changed person?” Yes, because I am that much more open to input. I’m operating with a much thinner skin, you could say.

Which leaves me with the conclusion that despite appearances, despite the off-handed way the PTSD was mentioned, addressed and then conveniently dropped, this is a man who is chasing sick. He is not alright. He is not his normal, pre-PTSD self running around out there, chasing untamed beasts. He is out there shooting video with one hand, while straining with all his might to carry a 150 lb. backpack labeled “PTSD.” It never leaves him. He’s not normal and he’s not healthy (not in the pre-PTSD sense). When he steps back out into the eye of a storm, he is dragging a ton of baggage that surely must be threatening to swallow him whole… or in little pieces… it’ll take him however it can get him. ;)

Where I am left quizzical is: Why? and, How?

Why on earth does he keep going back out there to taunt his emotional enemy? Why does he willingly go out, surely knowing that it is going to rip open and scald old wounds?

And how does repeatedly go out and face that source of trauma over and over again? What kind of coping strategies does he use that he is able to do that? — because a lot of PTSDers simply cannot face their trauma again. And especially not in roaring, screaming, living color. It is one thing to revisit a location when it is quiet, benign and safe … but it is another thing entirely to revisit when the threat is right smack dab there in your face.

Personally, you wouldn’t catch me doing it. I can’t do it. Right now, this moment. 18 months post-trauma, I hear LP gas smell calls get paged out, and I’m thinking, no – freakin’ – way. There is not enough rice noodles in all of China to make me go within a 1/2 mile of that crap now. Me and LP gas — not so much. The old LP did not get a Christmas card from me this year…………

Call it survival instinct, whatever. It’s an aversion, plain and simple. Not only do I feel the urge to run as fast and as hard away as I possibly can, but if I stay put for more than about 3-1/2 seconds, it is all I can do to not vomit. As in, actively clamp my esophagus down and not let the puke and bile spew out. A-ver-sion.

I know better than to judge Mr. Reed on the severity or seriousness of his PTSD. I have no doubt that he stuggles with it. Obviously his trauma is of the type that he is still able to function in the general scope of extreme weather conditions without flipping out. And/or, his brain (and therefore emotions) are of such a structure, interpretation and response that he is able to continue to function through whatever triggers and experiences he is going through … otherwise he wouldn’t still be out there doing what he is doing.

Lucky fellow.

Unlucky, perhaps, in that one has to wonder just how badly he is sacrificing himself for the ‘greater good,’ however he defines it. Time will only tell that one … not even he knows, right now, this day, this moment, whether it is an ultimate sacrifice or not. It’s something that has to play out, and no one can really predict it.

What really helped me about this piece was the realization that I am not the only one who is intimidated by, frightened of, and affected by, severe weather. I love a good snowstorm… I adore a downpour… but frankly, tornadoes shake the shit out of me. I didn’t like the first tornado I saw, and yet I continue to chase them out of some freakish obligation. Yet when I picture myself chasing on the plains as many do — or actually coming face-to-face with another tornado? I ask myself, do I really want to see that? The answer is, God No. Why would I subject myself to that? Why?

And I feel ashamed and embarrassed of that answer, because I have friends who think they are just the niftiest thing ever, and I really do want to be like them! I want to measure up to them, I want to have that in common with them.

But I don’t have that in common with them. I think tornadoes are scary, vicious, shitty things that hurt people and destroy beautiful things for no good reason. And they scare the bejeezus out of me.

Not quite as bad as LP, but close.

So yes, I very muchly understand how Jim Reed has PTSD. And I am supremely grateful for his admission of the fact, because it greatly validates what I feel and fear about severe weather. Yes, it is extremely cool, I understand that side of it too … but I have marveled in the past 18 months how chasers can be out there chasing, and not feel the fear and dread and loathing that creeps over my heart like a thick, heavy mat of mud… how are they so positive when there is so much negative? How does the preponderance of negative not smother the positive they seem to thrive on?

Maybe they aren’t thriving on positive. Maybe they are scared out of their wits and they are post-traumatic too … they just don’t talk about it.

It makes me wonder how many chasers have wound up post-traumatic … is it something they just don’t talk about? Do they get bitten and simply slip silently away? Or do they keep chasing and bite their lip, just not tell anyone about it?

At any rate, I am glad it is not “just me.” It is one more frontier where I do not feel quite so f*ed up. Obviously I am not alone on this one. ##