Lost and isolated

Hi everyone, I thought since I have been replying to some of the posts in this forum I should share my experiences. I was a firefighter and did 5 tours to Victoria to fight the Black Saturday fires.

I was part of the first responders from out of state and some of thing I saw still haunt me now. On the 5th deployment, a tree fell on my fire truck and I was on the back of the truck doing spoting. The tree crushed the truck and I was centermeters away from being dead. the week before a fellow firefighter was killed by a tree crushing his truck and for a long time and still now I feel guilty that he died and I lived.

The attitude of the fire service at that time was to be a man and suck it up, I tried this for near on 6 months until I had to admit to my wife I have a problem. 1 month later I was diagnosed with complex PTSD and Depression. I have tried to take my life twice and lost my job and became very angry, I felt that I had nothing to live for, but my saving grace was my wife who has been through the bad and really bad times and has never given up on me.

I have been admitted to hospital in the psych ward once and I hope I never do again. In the beginning of my MI, I was negative about everything, non emotional, angry, isolated and lost. I had no idea of where I fitted in to society. The Brigade I belong to ostrasized me and made me feel isolated, which brought out anger so that was the end of that.

Reading some of the posts, I relate to them in many ways as I have been through all the emotions they describe. It has been a hard slog to get medications, Doctors, Psychiartrists and Psychologists to all work together to get me into the state I am currently. The state I am in now is I am coping with my MI but it never goes completely away, certain triggers bring me back down, but I have to work my way back up.

This MI has destroyed alot, most of my adult children do not speak to me or my wife and have not for 8 years, I had a complete breakdown which lost me my job and developed the symptoms of a stroke and spent 10 days in hospital.

The positive side to this is that I have been improving albeit at a slow pace, my wife gets to see a glimpse of her old husband on the odd occasion and sometimes now I even laugh.

This MI is like a rollercoaster, every morning I wake up, take my meds, the day could be good or a disaster, or my meds put me in a stuper where I don't react to anything.

Well that just about sums everything up, please feel free to comment

Regards Rexy