The Blood and the PTSD

I ran frantically through the house, sweat dripping down my back and my eyes wide open with that familiar gritty I’ve-spent-all-night-awake-in-the-hospital-feeling.

I grabbed things and flung them into suitcases and yelled again for my kids to get out! No one answered and I redoubled my efforts. Piles of laundry gave way to my kick and I grabbed my son’s favorite jammies and thrust them into the outside pocke of his hospital suitcase. But this was not about hospitals. It was about life or death. Something was fast approaching our house and I dashed through the kitchen with it’s pile of dirty dishes and stack of mail to sort through.

I peered through the dirty windows and screamed, “Run! Get out, everyone’s got to get out!” Again, no one replied. “Andrew!” I screeched at the top of my lungs. I knew he wouldn’t be able to get out of the house in time, he was slow from his chemo treatments and I searched frantically for his bald head in the house.

My breath seared my lungs as I gasped and raced down the hall to the girls’ room. “Larissa, Karina!” I shrieked with everything in me, but only silence greeted my calls. My breath sobbed out my throat as I raced into my own room. “Randy!” I screamed with everything I had in me, shaking uncontrollably I looked under the bed and raced to the closet, yanking everything out in my search.

I could feel the flood reaching the house and I could smell it surrounding the house and still I had not successfully gotten my family out. As I backed out of my bedroom, whimpering in dismay, my feet sloshed through the deluge sweeping into our house. I fought my way back down the hall only to see with dismay that the front door had been swept open by the flood and the warm, thick liquid poured into our house. As it swept around my knees I staggered under the weight and the swirling red mass, “Help me!” I screamed with every fiber of my being. “Someone help me get my family to safety!” I have never worked harder in my life – not for rescue, nor safety, nor love. Where was God? Why was this blood overtaking our house and why could I not rescue my family?

I screamed again – the strongest most horrific screech of fear – it echoed and bounced into the silent, blood-filled night.

“Carol!” my husband’s warm hand found my frozen and trembling one and I grasped it like a life-line. “Carol,” Randy’s drowsy voice barely penetrated my fear, “everyone’s okay. The girls are in bed, Andrew is asleep. Nothing’s coming in the house. We’re okay.”

I stared at the ceiling in confusion. I could hear no sounds of an approaching flood and the room was dark with a sliver of moon showing out the window. My heart pounded in my chest but my feet were dry and no smell of blood hovered in the air. I clutched his hand tighter and looked at my bedside clock.

2:00 a.m. My most hated hours of the night. Either I was wide-awake or dreaming awful things – neither option was a good one for me.

“Was I screaming?” I asked, pulling his hand closer still.

“Just once.” he responded, already drifting back out, used to my nightmares and my sleeplessness.

“Is Andrew okay?” I persisted. My mind knew, without a doubt, that something was wrong. My heart-rate warned of imminent threat and my brain told me it was Andrew.

“Andrew’s fine. I just checked. No fever. Carol, go to sleep. Everything is fine.”

Everything is NOT fine. I must be dying. That’s it. I’m going crazy and I’m going to die from it. Oh boy – here goes my cycle.

With that I got up and went outside, to sit with my dog in the moonlight, pouring out my need to the God of the stars. My doctor said PTSD. I said crazy. My husband said I’d get through it.

Blood.

Really? Blood overtaking our house and flooding us out? It doesn’t take a genius to interpret my dream.

Almost three years of fighting leukemia with spinal taps, blood transfusions, plasma donations, platelet cells and the constant need for blood counts explained the dream. Almost three years of trying to let my girls live a “normal” life while juggling hospitals and treatments, work and housekeeping made the out-of-control feeling in the dream an obvious choice.

I sat on my back deck, my dog huddled at my side, staring at the moon and unconsciously I began to hum the closing-the-worship song that we sang every Vespers at the school where I taught.

When floods overwhelm us (even when it’s PTSD and in our minds), Jesus blood can get us through.

I smiled at the moon. Blood had taken over our lives, enough to permeate my dreams. Worry threatened me in constant over-loads. My feelings of inadequacy flooded me often. I sighed again.