EMDR Session 2

I was debating whether to share beyond the first session of my EMDR because my main objective was to share the process and now that that's been done, I was hesitant to share anymore because for the first time ever, I feel very conscious of what people think of my writing. However, despite this, based on the themes that came up in this session, I’m sure many of my fellow chronic illness kids can relate to the medical trauma, more specifically the denial and gaslighting aspect. I want to tell you that you are important, you do matter, you are capable, you do know your body better than the doctors, you do deserve exceptional care, you deserve trauma-informed care, you are not invisible, the way you're treated by hospitals is not a reflection of you, I see you and I hear you.

SO without further ado, I had my second emdr session which was processing the first surgery. I feel more comfortable sharing this a little bit more than the last one, largely because it revolves around a narrative that many people with chronic illnesses will probably relate to. And now that I’ve mentioned the surgeries to literally everyone I’ve spoken to from the postman to the dog groomer, it feels like my duty to force it on anyone in the vicinity.

I think I’ve made it fairly clear throughout this blog that not being listened to is a real grievance and pretty blood traumatising. In our session, this theme repeatedly came up, not only in terms of medical stuff but also other aspects of life (which I won’t elaborate on), and this theme unfortunately encompasses feelings of being invisible, non-existent, unworthy, uncared for, intellectually undermined, foolish, incapable.

I'm going to take this blog as an opportunity to speak my truth so I'm going to be honest about the occasions that made me really want to jump off the hospital roof. The first of the three stories was when I was admitted onto the neurology ward during covid. As this was the neuro ward where the needs are very different from respiratory patients, I appreciate the nurses wouldn't have been trained in quite the same stuff however I thought they would have a baseline of skills and knowledge but apparently not.

To set the scene, my IV machine wasn’t working, the numbers on the screen were dropping but the actual antibiotic liquid wasn’t draining so I called the nurse and tried to explain to her the issue, a pretty simple concept to grasp right? But no, she said it was working because the numbers on the machine were dropping, so I explained that it had been running for 25 minutes (out of the 30 minutes it was programmed to take) yet the bottle was still full. We had this back and forth a couple of times and I could literally see the brain cells dropping out of this womans head.

I knew she had no intention of doing anything about it, so I just let her go on her way, and set up a plan where I’d draw a line on the bottle of where the liquid was currently sitting, call her back in half an hour and physically show her it wasn’t running. So, the half an hour passed, and I called her back, presented the issue to her and this stupid woman had the audacity to say “it’s because you’re looking at it” and left. When I tell you my eyes almost popped out of my head and steam was coming out of my ears I'm not lying. I had to take it upon myself to reboot the machine because I had more knowledge as a 20 year old patient than a qualified nurse. My knowledge and my capabilities were undermined, my lived experience wasn’t respected, my several years of rotting in a hospital bed meant nothing, I did everything to make myself come across as articulate and proficient yet nobody on the ward took me seriously.

The second occasion of being treated like a bimbo was the time we had to call the ambulance. I’ve talked about this a lot, but I will tell it again for those unaware.

I had severe haemoptysis (coughing of blood) a few days before Christmas 2021. I had previously been instructed by my CF physios (you know the specialists of the specialists) to call 999 because of the risks associated with severe bleeds. My parents and I realised this blood wasn’t stopping without intervention so we called the emergency services and this cow of a dispatcher told me it wasn’t an emergency and didn’t warrant an ambulance so we had to make our own way to A&E at 3am. I was sat in this waiting room still coughing fresh blood into one of those pathetic cardboard kidney dishes in front of many other patients.

A nurse was even watching me do this as he put a cannula in, and I’m there almost begging with him to do something, but he just looked at me with lifeless eyes. At that point I had never felt so invisible, it didn’t matter how much I cried and begged, it was as if he couldn’t see me, there wasn’t a shred of empathy or compassion. And when I was eventually called by a different nurse after four hours of waiting, she flippantly apologised saying they hadn’t realised I had cystic fibrosis and if they had they would’ve seen me sooner.

The rage that coursed through my veins was white hot, my brain was thumping at my temples because I was so disgusted at the treatment, as if I was nothing, as if I was just an afterthought, nobody in that A&E listened to me, when I told the receptionist very clearly I had cystic fibrosis, when I was imploring the nurse to do something to help me, nobody heard me.

And then finally, the port surgeries. I’m not going to go into great detail about this one because it’s literally plastered all over this blog but in a nutshell, I told the nurses and the surgeons that their planned procedure wasn’t going to work because my port was so deep in my chest yet they told me “we do this all the time”, “you’ll be fine”, “you can be sedated if you think that will help”. And then what happened? I was on the table for three and a half hours, screaming and crying in pain, begging them to stop, being sent home with three inches of catheter sticking out of my neck because they had botched it so terribly. And subsequently had to undergo two more surgeries resulting in me becoming extremely unwell and being admitted to hospital for six weeks.

We’re all entitled to our own opinions of course but hopefully you can see where I’m coming from when I say these repeated instances of what is essentially gaslighting have reinforced these feelings of being invisible, non-existent, unworthy, uncared for, intellectually undermined, foolish, and incapable. It feels like little parts of me are being slowly killed off every time something of this nature comes up.

So the actual processing part of the surgery started with the memory of me telling the first nurse that I didn’t think local was going to be enough, then slowly I was working my way through the numerous conversations I had with nurses and surgeons and them repeatedly dismissing me. When I was eventually moved onto the table and when the sheet was draped over my face was when the tears started falling and the fear that consumed my body as we got closer to the ripping in my neck was almost unbearable. In between the rounds of finger waving, Kim (pseudonym for my therapist) would say a key belief of mine i.e., “I am nothing”, “they don’t see me”, “I don’t exist” and I kid you not, it was as if I was there again, being what I can only describe as violated and assaulted. I’m violently crying whilst following Kim’s fingers, reliving the emotional turmoil and physical pain that I experienced six months ago now. When we eventually came to a close after 40 minutes, I was utterly exhausted.

It becomes second nature to disassociate from traumatic things when you’re talking about them so objectively, you just become numb to it like you’re on autopilot. I think it's the brains method of avoiding the pain so until you’re actually processing it, you’ve forgotten what the emotion felt like, you know what emotions came up, but you can’t feel it anymore. So when you take a step back after going through these processings and you can't help but get hit with the realisation of “holy fuck that actually happened, that was me”.

I wasn’t entirely sure how I would know if the emdr actually worked because it’s not as if I’m around operating tables on a frequent basis, so Kim said just see where it takes me which I feel comfortable doing. It's one of those things that I’m willingly to give a go, instead of passively sitting around and letting all this baggage ruin my life.