PTSD

Daughter was off yesterday evening. She spent much of it sleeping. I attributed it to a couple of things. She came home distressed and told me that Super Supervisor doesn't know what days she'll be there and what days she'll be gone, so she'll be spending more time with Sub. Daughter tried to explain why, but it didn't make sense.

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She overheard my phone conversations setting up an MRI for my knee and an appointment for a GI consult. She insisted on knowing what was going on, so I told her. I assured her I'd be fine, but she said she wished she hadn't asked.

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Somehow I missed a phone call yesterday afternoon from the workshop I listened to the voice mail this morning. It seems that they took a group of more seriously impaired individuals over to the gift shop for a field trip. One of the men took off his shirt (as he is prone to do). Daughter freaked out, proclaimed he was naked, covered her eyes and ran to the bathroom to hide. Sigh.

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I asked Daughter if anything had happened that had bothered her yesterday. She was tentative as she tried to figure out how much I knew. I had to ask several times, and finally she told me the story. In her version, he also took his pants off so he was just in his underwear. I was wondering how they'd managed to miss adding this detail in the account to me when she said, "Even though he's in a wheelchair he was able to do it." She also told me that Sub told her it was okay and he did it all the time.

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I see a failure to communicate. For Daughter, it was such a big thing she had to make it even bigger by having him remove his pants. For Sub, Daughter was over reacting and he does it all the time. I now have a better idea of why Daughter was not quite right yesterday evening. She told me at one point that she had too many things racing through her mind. Today I have a better idea of what some of those things are. Unfortunately, there aren't any easy answers. As Psychiatrist reminds me regularly, she has very limited coping skills. They are being stretched to the max right now.