Louise Thompson

And now we're going to try and tackle both ends because they're hugely underfunded.

Yeah.

It's a really good point.

You do have to live with it forever.

Like post-traumatic stress disorder is not something that you can treat.

And I've tried CBT, EMDR, exposure therapy, antidepressants, antipsychotics.

Like I might sit here, I mean, I'm blinking a lot, so that's a sign that my nervous system is in a funny place because I'm talking about it.

But I might present to somebody that's really on the other side of recovery saying,

but it is something that will sadly plague me for the rest of my life.

I suppose at its worst, it looks like...

traumatic flashbacks, which can be triggered by anything.

You know, January, this time of the year is really, really tricky for me because I've had so many hospital stays in January, a lot of emergency surgeries like rushing into theatre.

And so even looking out of the window, my brain knows when it's, you know, the 1st of January, the 20th of January, we're coming up to the 30th of January, which will be the two year anniversary of the surgery.

where I had to have my colon removed and was left with a stoma bag.

And these things, they're there.

It's the smells, it's the sensations, it's the condensation on the window that can trigger me into feeling really scared.

And the hypervigilance is actually a lot.

So it's lying in bed at night

And hearing the smallest sound reverberate through my entire head.

So I can be lying there and like, you know that weird like crackling behind a TV or something that like a normal person would hear?