June of last year I was injured pretty badly while performing my duties as a pediatric psychiatric nurse. I’m still not back to work because my eyes are messed up and I can’t walk without a walker. My concussion symptoms are still very acute and impact my day to day life.

Long story short, I’m also dealing with many mental health side effects. I’m lucky though, because the concussion clinic hooked me up with a wonderful psychologist who I’m working with to try to get back on track mentally. I’m not a new psych nurse, I’ve been around the block a time or two, and something I used to tell my patients is that it can get worse before it gets better. I heard those words echoed back at me by my psychologist and now I’m experiencing it in real life.

Today I was given the assignment to write in full a detailed account of my assault. I was told to write everything I could remember down - thoughts, feelings, smells, sounds, whatever sensory information I could accurately remember, and to let myself feel whatever my body decided to feel while writing this. Whew. 7 single spaced pages and 6 hours later, I finally finished and sent my assignment off.

I’m now experiencing the result of that work - it’s 1 in the morning and I scared the crap out of my husband when I woke up from an intense nightmare screaming and somehow managed to fall out of bed for the first time since I was a little girl. I’ve been having nightmares but nothing like this. I have to remind myself that it can get worse before it gets better.

I think I’m ready to sleep again. I just wanted to reach out and let anyone else who is going through something similar know that they’re not alone.

Take care, friends.