The Calm After the Storm, or Trying to Turn the Tide of PTSD

Finding Hope in an Unwelcome Reality

It's officially monsoon season here in our little corner of the desert! Frequent rain brings the welcome, cooling relief of cloud cover, but along with the storms come muggy, humid days, constant flash-flood warnings, and items we leave outside being ruined in consistently inventive and surprising ways! 

But there's also been a storm gathering inside, as our Fearless Leader, my fiancé, Dave, and I enter a new, darker phase of his post-traumatic stress disorder.

We know that the rainfall we get from monsoon season will nourish all manner of desert life, from the mesquite, juniper, and creosote bushes to the lizards, birds, tortoises, and other animals that depend on them. But too much water can be deadly. It builds up, unable to be absorbed into the sand, and its intense force and weight crashes into structures and suffocates life. 

Similarly, every creature needs survival instincts. But when those signals are put into hyperdrive and every stimulus becomes a paralyzing flood of sensory input - when every passing thought becomes a crushing obsession - PTSD's particular brand of torture can really mess up a person's life. And this, too, can kill. 

People drown in it. 

I always knew this fact, but it seemed abstract somehow. It was always possible that Dave would drown, or that he'd float off and be carried so far away on the raging floodwaters of his mind that I couldn't get back to him. But that wouldn't really happen to us, right? To David? To me? 

No, I thought. I dismissed the very notion. Because, you see, that's not the deal that God and I have always had. The way it works is, bad things happen to other people. Not to me. Other people's fiancés might die, but certainly not mine. Other people might fall deeply, once-in-a-lifetime in love with someone, move across the country to be with that person, and begin to build a dream together, only to have that person die from a disease they thought could be cured with love. That might happen to other people, and when it did, I would feel awful for them. Who wouldn't? But I personally would be able to retreat, to sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that something like that - or exactly that - could never happen to me. 

Like I said, that just wasn't the deal that God and I have always had.

But sometime in the last week, as Dave's symptoms came rearing back, hard, much sooner than expected after a treatment that usually buys him a lot more good time, I began to realize that this deal I was banking on, relying on, didn't exist. Doesn't exist. Can't exist. The only deal I've ever had with God is the same deal He has with all of us: that He'll take care of us in life and in the afterlife.

And that means that my fiancé could die. My Dave could die of this illness. 

I lay on the couch one morning in our vacation condo, reading, when that realization zipped up the back of my spine, over my head, and landed squarely in the middle of my forehead: He could die, said my brain. The force of it made me dizzy; I swayed thinking about it.

So, to summarize a lot of crying and conference calls, we're now tentatively awaiting a period of calm after this storm! We've got a new and promising protocol to try for Dave, and we'll be starting it soon. I'll let our Fearless Leader tell you about it in more detail, but I'll say here that it's something we're really lucky to have access to. 

Part of the terrible frustration of dealing with PTSD, specifically, is that there's a real dearth of resources for it. When a patient is at his lowest, it's maddening that he's required to investigate potential medications, treatments, and wacky experimental protocols by himself, then find them and advocate for them. The treatment we'll be starting soon came from a chance recommendation, which we're very grateful for receiving. We'll be eager to share our progress and experience with it, in hopes of passing on this blessing and guiding someone else.

So we'll keep you posted! In the meantime, it seems fair to weather a flood or two in exchange for all of the dry times. Rest assured that our Fearless Leader is hanging in there, under good care, and eager to keep making and sharing great content for you. To that end, look for new discussion threads and photography to be featured, along with our growing assortment of short stories, poetry, reflective essays, podcasts, and audiocasts! 

Be gentle with yourselves,

Sally Shideler
God of the Desert Books, President, Managing Editor, Marketing Director