Jan 27, 2020
And I think that was when I really learned that, you know, all our healing doesn't happen at the same time. I think I was very impatient to just get better. I just wanted everything to go away. And I didn't realize that, you know, I had accumulated trauma from some past events and then from this event. And there was so many different aspects to healing.
INTRO
Today, we are talking about post-traumatic-stress disorder: what it looks like in the life of one woman after a medical accident AND how you can help someone that has lived through something awful, and it still bearing the effects.
We are sponsored, today, by FullStack PEO. FullStack PEO is company devoted to small businesses. FullStack offers turnkey HR for emerging companies. And we are sponsored by Handle with Care HR Consulting, helping you support your people when they need it most.
I first met my guest, Elsie Iudicello, in college. Elsie has an infectious laugh that bubbles over. She traveled to Honduras, digging wells for impoverished people. And she was a great dancer. These days, Elsie can be found in Florida where she homeschools her four boys. And you might have a pre-conceived notion of what that looks like. But you would probably be wrong.
Liesel Mertes
You make homeschooling look really cool. You have like homeschooling alligators and crawdads. It's like it's very intense looking homeschooling. Tell me a little bit about your boys.
Elsie Iudicello
So, I have four boys. The eldest is about to turn twelve and my youngest is seven, and we homeschool all of them. They are. They all have very different personalities, but they all have a beautiful wildness about them, about their childhood. That is really precious. It's interesting to see how long their innocence has been sustained throughout their growing years just by virtue of being home schooled, spending a lot of time in nature.
Elsie Iudicello
And yeah, it's I always feel like as they're growing up like a big treasure hunter, they're just I'm seeing things and they're also slowly revealing things about themselves. And it's a real gift to be their mom.
Liesel Mertes
What was one of the most impactful moments of today for you?
Elsie Iudicello
Well, it's gorgeous in Florida right now. It's truly beautiful. I'm sorry for anyone that is buried in snow right now, but it is beautiful here right now. We wait for it all year. And, you know, my boys are outside all day building forts and making weapons out of sticks. And at one point, my son, my youngest, called me out there. He is not neurotypical. So, it's always interesting what kinds of insights he has and what moments he chooses to deliver them in this afternoon. He called me out there and we made a fort together and. He kept saying it's so important for moms to build forts with their boys. He kept saying that over and over again, and I asked him why is it so important for mothers to build forts with their boys? And he said, so they can play so their heart, so their hearts can play together, so they can play together in their hearts. And he started talking about something we talk a lot about as a family, which is the idea of fullness vs. busyness. And he started saying how much he loves the fullness of his life and that any time I feel like I'm getting too busy, busy, I should come outside and enjoy the fullness of life with him. And that was a pretty big moment in my day. It kind of turned it around, actually.
In addition to their four boys, Elsie cares for a host of chickens, some goats, a few cats, a dog, and a pig.
She is a writer, contributing monthly to the Wild and Free magazine. And, although she hates flying, Elsie also travels, speaking at conferences and events that reach mothers, regardless of school choice.
Elsie Iudicello
I think it's important to realize that, you know, different kinds of schooling work for different kinds of kids and that children can still have a really wonderful, wild and preserved childhood even if they are going to traditional schools. And that's been really encouraging to see to just moms that really love their kids and want to fight for their childhoods.
Liesel Mertes
Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. We wanted to discuss some disruption that happened as you were in the midst of your childbearing years. Could you set the scene as to where you were in life when you had this accident that it happened?
Elsie Iudicello
Sure. So, we were living in Miami at the time my husband was a grad student. He was earning his Ph.D. And I had a two-year-old and a 1 year old and we were living in a small house just off of campus. My whole family is in Miami. My four grandparents, my parents, several aunts, uncles, cousins, and a very robust church family. So thankfully, we were not in a position of isolation or loneliness. We were just newlyweds with a lot of babies.
Elsie was pregnant with her third son at the time of the accident, when a brand-new doctor botched her care. Elsie was exhausted. She did not know that she was carrying twins and had just miscarried one of the children. Her doctor didn’t realize either and said that she was, maybe, suffering from lymphoma.
Elsie Iudicello
And I was very taken aback by that. And I had mentioned at the start of the visit that I had an allergy to a certain kind of medication. And for whatever reason, she chose to prescribe that medication to me. And I was in such a state of grief and bewilderment. And because I don't have a pharmacology license. I did not understand what the label said. It didn't say the name of the drug I was allergic to. It had another name, but it was in that family. And so, I took that medication.
Elsie Iudicello
And very quickly, my body started to shut down and I went into complete anaphylaxis. Jeff drove me to the hospital. We called family that were able to get to our house very quickly. And if you've ever had the experience of going to the E.R. and waiting hours and hours to be seen, that is great, because it means it's not super urgent. I just remember walking in through the doors and it just being absolute chaos. They had to get me back there, start all kinds of intravenous lines, pump all kinds of drugs, and I could feel my body shutting down.
Elsie Iudicello
So, having that experience of, you know, feeling yourself dying is, is a very, very, very vivid and painful and surreal thing to experience. And unfortunately, thankfully, they were able to save me. Unfortunately, it took a long time for the anaphylaxis process to resolve because I had they put me on steroids, which suppressed the reactions. But every time I ran out of steroid medication, the anaphylaxis would flare up again and I would end up in the hospital and stuff.
So, Elsie has the awful, traumatic experience of anaphylactic shock. And then she keeps dealing with flare-ups.
Elsie Iudicello
I remember one day my college roommate, Jocelyn, who had moved to Miami, was over for dinner with a colleague of hers. And it was that day my steroid had run out and I walked to the kitchen to get something in. My heart started racing and it was incredibly painful, and I collapsed. And the next thing I knew, I was on a gurney in the ambulance on my way to the hospital again.
Elsie Iudicello
And they started checking for pulmonary embolisms and oh, my goodness, all confusing.
Elsie Iudicello
I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and there were many sights and sounds and smells that became embedded in my cellular memory and began triggering panic attacks. So, I do remember that by the fourth and fifth visits and this was to the same hospital. So of course, they had thorough records of what was happening. They realized that there was probably something else going on because my body would start mimicking an anaphylactic reaction even though I wasn't having one. So, by the end, by the last visit, I was no longer anaphylactic. But because the steroids would run out, any little sensation that felt akin to the anaphylactic reaction would have caused my body to imitate one. So, my skin, for example, when I got home after the first hospital visit, I was covered inside and outside with hives, and my digestive system had been burned really badly. So, I couldn't sleep for many, many days. I would sleep maybe 30 minutes at a time and then be awake for hours and hours and hours because my heart was racing or because I was just so uncomfortable for all from all of the hives. And I was also afraid to eat anything lest I have another anaphylactic reaction.
Liesel Mertes
You're the mom of two small children. At the same time, which sounds really totalizing. What? So, for someone who has not dealt with up to this point PTSD, what, what are some of the things that you feel like are really important to be understood that like the average person doesn't get?
Elsie Iudicello
I don't think I realized how all-consuming it is. Some my very limited experience with PTSD was. Was probably just in the realm of film and TV where someone would hear some little thing and, you know, have a panic attack or something. And that was it. I didn't realize all the things that can come with it.
Elsie Iudicello
I didn't realize that it's almost like another person living in the house all of a sudden tell me that I didn't realize the.
Elsie Iudicello
I just mean that it's, it's like this new entity that you have to get to know and understand and figure out, but you hate them, and you don't want them there. So, it's difficult to get to know something that you hate so much.
Elsie Iudicello
I didn't really understand all of my different triggers, all of the things that would send me into a panic attack. I don't think I was prepared for the deep level of exhaustion that comes with it. And I know I was newly pregnant, so I think at first, I had a tendency to write off any exhaustion to the pregnancy, but it was a kind of exhaustion that I'd never known before. And I see now that a lot of that was the PTSD. And at times my brain would be very foggy. So, there would be people trying to reason with me about things, not understanding that.
Elsie Iudicello
It has nothing to do with logic, but it could clearly communicate that because I was so tired, I was so sleep deprived, my brain was so foggy, I was so malnourished, all these other things that it's really not a logic issue. And that was not something that I could clearly describe at all,
Liesel Mertes
What were some of the ways that people made you feel most supported in those early days of dealing with PTSD? And I a phrase that purposefully, because I imagine there are aspects where support looks a little bit different in the seasons that come after, but in those early days, how are you best supported by the people around you?
Elsie Iudicello
It was the friends that didn't try to fix the situation because we definitely had some well-meaning people that came over and just thought, you just need to be cheered up. You just need to get over it. Or saying things like, remember your babies, you should be happy that you have all these babies. You're so blessed. You should be happy and strong for them. So, the people that helped you were the ones that didn't try to fix things, that didn't try to hurry us out of grief or sadness. The friends that would come and just sit next to the gurney in the hospital and hold my hand. The people that, you know, would say I had one friend in particular that just she was like, I heard you had really bad hives and that you were uncomfortable.
Elsie Iudicello
And I know you love P.G. Woodhouse. So, here is a book and some Benadryl and I love you. And that was that was so gracious and so good because she wasn't trying to rush me out of anything.
Elsie Iudicello
And of course, we had a lot of friends that would just show up with meals or come and play with our kids. It was really difficult to not be able to play with my children at that time because their desire to play did not decrease when my ability to play decreased. So, it was really good to have friends that would just come over and throw themselves on the floor with my boys and play with them.
Liesel Mertes
I imagine, I mean, birth is no small thing also. And to be pregnant and going through all of this upheaval, then you have bringing a child into world and especially, especially the infants. They're pretty unrelenting. What did that look like as a chapter in your journey with PTSD? Was there a particular anxiety or apprehension that you felt heightened as you approached your due date?
Elsie Iudicello
Sure. Well, I was on bed rest for the last eight weeks of my pregnancy, which was very difficult because I could hear my little boys playing in the house. My mom would come over every day and watch them and I could hear them, and I was stuck in bed with a lot of fear. So, I think I wrestled with a lot of that stuff while I was on bed rest.
Elsie Iudicello
But the other side of this whole coin is that when I was in the hospital, I can't remember which visit it was, but they looked at my blood levels and realized I was still pregnant, and they advised me to terminate. Kind of gently advised that I consider that due to my health, due to the amount of medications that had been pumped into me, the radiation, all these other things, and I said no. And I always saw my son as a fighter. And I could not believe that he survived all of that with me. And so, in a lot of ways, I felt less alone. I felt like he was my teammate. Like he was my my brother in arms. You know, he, he fought every step of the way with me. And I felt like. It was not birthing him alone. It really felt like something we would be doing together.
Elsie Iudicello
And it's really interesting how he was born at home. They had kind of said always going to have all these issues. And I saw my midwife and, you know, we went for the extra ultrasounds and everything looked good. And I went into labor in Florida. You are legally not allowed to give birth at home before thirty-seven weeks and thirty-six weeks. In a couple of days, I went into labor. So, we went to the hospital and my midwife said, I don't want to be insulting, but you kind of remind me of those of those, those faithful lovely dog moms that are about to give birth to puppies. And then a storm comes, and they hide, and they wait until the storm is over and then they give birth. And it was very much like that.
Elsie Iudicello
I was actually in labor for seventy-seven hours. And I think a lot of that. And it was, you know, contractions every ten minutes. It was it was labor, and it was seventy-seven hours. And it was. Oh, it was terrible. It's terrible, but that. That last day I was able to go home because I hit thirty seven days and I worked in my garden and I have a very visceral memory of being on my hands and knees with my fingers in the dirt and my belly, like just kissing the earth a little bit because I was extremely large and, and feeling the contractions and then going inside and a couple of hours later giving birth in our living room. And there were in something very redeeming and very fitting. It felt like a like a victory for both of us to have come that far together.
Liesel Mertes
That's a beautiful story and a very long labor. I hear you. That's a long, year long as you think about how PTSD, because I imagine it's not it's not tidy. It's like, well, that that is a beautiful and poetically told moment and that it wasn't like, OK, so now you've had the baby and that chapter's done now and you move on to the next thing and taking on the next challenges. How has the shadow of that medical accident and your journey afterwards, how does that continue to play itself out?
Elsie Iudicello
I think in the in the first year, it was obviously. It was horrible. I mean, there's no way to sugar coat it. I became intensely afraid of doctors. And even when I went to the hospital with my initial labor, I just remember the poor nurse trying to put trying to give me an I.V., which is saline. And I kept having her read the label to me over and over and over. And I think she had read it like eight times before I let her hook it up and then taking my kids to the pediatrician. You know, if they needed to get the shot or any kind of medication, just, you know, compulsively calling over and over again. And interestingly enough, that never left me. And just last year, my son had a prescription filled out and it seemed like a very strange amount of medication. And I called and sure enough, they had made a very big mistake with the dosage. And I'm glad I checked because that would have been horrible. So, you know, that mistrust of, of doctors was something very profound that followed for a long time.
Elsie Iudicello
I did suffer from severe panic attacks. I think the best way to describe it is that. You know, if you have something that triggers your adrenaline, a car backfire or something like that, and your adrenaline starts moving. Once you recognize that it was just a car backfire, you can get yourself to calm down. It took me years to get to a place where I could calm down once my adrenaline started going. Once it started, it would just keep going and going and going and going and going. And then, you know, an hour later I would just feel like I had run a marathon. And I didn't realize over the years that I was suffering from adrenal fatigue. That was a big piece in figuring out my health. Part of the reason I didn't know about it is because not a lot of people talk about it. But then also I was really reluctant to actually see a doctor that was not a midwife or a dentist.
Elsie Iudicello
So, you know, having those panic, panic attacks in front of my children because we are home all day and I know a lot of people would ask, why on earth are you home schooling if you have a mental illness? And. I never really knew what to say to people when they would say that because even though I had a mental illness. I also had a life and I also had dreams for my children and a lot of love for them. And I had a lot of passion for education and for home schooling. And yes, it was hard. Having panic attacks in front of my children was a hard and brutal thing. But you know what? In many ways and they'll, they'll speak to this today, the ones that remember them more vividly. My oldest said maybe a couple years ago that when he would see me have those. And he is a very sensitive, empathetic person. He's one of the most empathetic people I know. He says that watching that from a young age taught him how to sit in sadness with someone, how to just be present with someone that is sad and to. Not feel uncomfortable and not feel like you need to fill the silence. But to just be beside someone and love them through whatever it is that they're going through.
Elsie Iudicello
And I've realized that I think sharing openly with my kids in age appropriate ways. They were able to grow in their empathy and in their care for people that are hurting, and there's a lot of adults I know that don't know how to do that. So, I'm really thankful that we've had the opportunity as a family to grow in that area, even though it's come at a tremendous cost
Liesel Mertes
For someone who has not experienced a panic attack. What did that what did that feel like in your body and what did that look like to other people?
Elsie Iudicello
They changed a little over the years. There was one day when Jeff dropped a fork and it hit another stack of silverware, I think from the little caddy that inserts into the dishwasher and they clattered to the floor and the noise startled me and I fell to my knees and ended up in the fetal position on the floor. You know, breathing heavily and it's, it's hard because I knew it was just forks and I kept telling myself, it's just forks, it's just forks, it's just forks, what my adrenaline kept running away and I started shaking. And it's sometimes it's painful. It's always exhausting.
Elsie Iudicello
There have been times where I've had the type of panic attack, where it's out of body and I'm somewhere else entirely. And that usually happened early on. If I heard a siren at the wrong moment, I was more prone to panic attacks. If I hadn't slept well, if I hadn't had enough to eat. If I hadn't been drinking well.
Liesel Mertes
But, you know, when you're when you have a newborn, you're always well rested and well-fed. So always.
Elsie Iudicello
So that first year was particularly brutal. I've had I did go to counselling and went through EMDR sessions with my therapist. And that was tremendously helpful to sort through, to revisit and sort through the trauma and put everything. In its place, and I think that was when I really learned that, you know, all our healing doesn't happen at the same time. I think I was very impatient to just get better. I just wanted everything to go away. And I didn't realize that, you know, I had accumulated trauma from some past events and then from this event. And there was so many different aspects to healing. There was the physical healing, the emotional healing, the relationship healing. I mean, Jeff was in grad school and this happened, and he had to carry the load in our home for a long time. And there was a lot that we had to work, work through in that regard. There were a lot of relationships that I handled badly because my perceptions were just off. There were a lot of friendships that I lost simply because especially college friendships, simply because I lost touch.
Elsie Iudicello
I fell off the radar and I missed weddings and I missed birthdays and I missed babies being born. And that was that was hard. It was hard to have that moment. I think when I kind of I think I needed to give all of myself to my immediate circle as much as I could to my immediate circle. I didn't have a lot left for the outer rings. And when I was finally able to turn my head and look at the outer rings of my life, all those people that were on those other planes, I had missed so much. It was really hard. It was really hard reconnecting those as you were feeling.
Liesel Mertes
I mean, I hear in that the sense of. Yeah. I mean, I was consumed with what was right in front of me. Who were who are the people that were really able to press in to that messiness in a way that was meaningful and supportive. And what did that look like from them?
Elsie Iudicello
I would say that the first one was Jeff, the first one was my husband. He would get up early to grade papers. He was a T.A. at the time and then he would go and again, I wasn't sleeping a lot at night. So, you would let me sleep in and he would go wake up all the boys. We had all three kids still in diapers. At this point. So, he would change three different diapers. Feed the older two breakfasts. After the baby was born, he would bring me the baby so that I could nurse him. And then he would go to school and then he would check in throughout the day. And thankfully he was close by. But. Sometimes would drop everything and come home to support me. He built me that beautiful garden in front of our house because he knew that, that it would be a good place for me to heal. And he also didn't discredit me just because I was battling a mental illness. I think sometimes there is that temptation to think that we no longer know ourselves just because we're going through that mental struggle. But Jeff never did that to me. He always listened and he always took what I said seriously. And if he felt that maybe there was another perspective I needed to hear, he found ways to, to introduce that topic and to speak gently about it. He was always very gracious.
Elsie Iudicello
There were friends at church to. Again, that. Didn't forget who I was before the accident, but also appreciated that some pretty. Pretty big things had changed in my life that left me changed. It was always really hard when someone would say something like, well, why don't you do this with us? Used to always love doing that. And.
Elsie Iudicello
And it was it was good to have friends that just recognized that there were certain things I had to set aside because I just wasn't capable of doing them anymore. But at the same time that I was still myself, if that makes any sense. They were just. I think they were just very sensitive in the way that they loved me. Part of it was that they listened, I think was the big thing. We had a lot of people that stopped by with their mouths full of advice and. Didn't maybe have ears that were ready to listen to what was going on. So, I think people that came over ready to just listen was really, really nice.
Liesel Mertes
As someone who has had some years of experience of, you know, living and walking with this, what whether it's a word of hope or insight, what would you or or maybe just commiserating, what would you say to someone who's listening?
Elsie Iudicello
I was going to say, can the first words be, I'm so sorry. I think I would say. Firstly, don't wait to get help. Don't wait to find someone that you can share your story with. And fight. Do whatever you can to get in to be seen by someone that can walk you through everything. Because it's not something that you have to battle alone. It doesn't have to be a shameful secret.
Elsie Iudicello
Get in to see someone soon and also know that. You know, there are. That there are many facets to the body and that there are many different approaches to healing. And I think when I first was diagnosed with PTSD, I just assumed that that would mean a lifetime of hard-core medication. And that has not been my particular story. There have been a lot of I. And I want to be clear, I did go on medication. That was absolutely something that I thought I had to do at the time. But it was certainly not something that I had to engage with for the rest of my life. There were other. Alternatives that I was able to go after and incorporate. And then I would also say to just.
Elsie Iudicello
To just be prepared to persevere. You know, I don't I don't think I quite realized that this would be something that I would carry for such a long amount of time. And I'm really thankful that I have people around me to support me, I know you asked a lot about initial relationships, but even now in my life I have. A lot of really wonderful support, and that's not something that I ever take for granted.
Elsie Iudicello
And I know that there are a number of PTSD support groups out there for different people. So, if you are someone that is a little more isolated or just does not have a good community and reach out to one of those groups, it may feel awkward at first, but honestly, having. Someone just acknowledge what you're going through or to say I have those same symptoms or that happened to me as well. There, there is something, something is the right word, but I guess it just throws the light on everything and it makes it feel less dark and manly.
Liesel Mertes
Do you have any words for someone who they would say someone that I love, or a friend or coworker is dealing with PTSD and I have no idea what to do?
Elsie Iudicello
I think there's a lot to be said for picking your moment to be firm about something. I know that I had some well-meaning people in my life that wanted to push me in certain areas really, really, really quickly or that fought me on things that, looking back now, we're not really that important. And it just added a lot of mental strain and frustration.
Elsie Iudicello
So, I know it's annoying sometimes to have someone that is all of a sudden afraid of so many things or that is struggling through something that feels very small. I still remember being afraid of shampoo. I was really afraid that there was a chemical in the shampoo that was going to trigger or something. I had a lot of irrational fears and I and I get that that was, you know, nonsensical to people that had an experience, what I experience. But, you know, that was maybe not something that needed to be the hill anyone needed to die on that day to try to figure out how to move forward. So, I think, you know, certainly there is a time, especially if someone is not wanting to get help or is. Maybe struggling with a lot of darker thoughts, even if you're just suspecting it and they haven't even said it out loud yet. You know, really choose your moment to be firm.
Elsie Iudicello
Well, and just keep loving them. Keep loving them, because ultimately that's what we really, really need is to know that we're still loved even though we have been so radically changed.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
Here are three reflections from my conversation with Elsie
- If you care for someone that is living with PTSD, choose carefully where you want to push them.There are concerns, fears, and reactions that will not make logical sense to you. As Elsie shared, love, listening and support is oftentimes what is needed most
- In Elsie’s words, is your mouth full of advice or are you ready to listen?People who were quick to give answers were rarely comforting. Instead, bring a meal or a book by a favorite author. Play on the floor with children or just sit in silence. Laugh with them about old jokes, all of this can be much more meaningful than giving advice.
- Elsie talked about how important it was that Jeff did not discount her, even though she was living within a mental struggle.When you interact with someone living with PTSD, be careful not to quickly write them off, minimizing their concerns with your words or actions. Remember, someone that is living with PTSD is still themselves, even if they are changed. What does it look like for you to live within the tension of the person being the same but different?
As we close our time, I want to take a moment to thank our sponsors. FullStack PEO is a company that I love here in town; they are committed to providing employee benefits so you can focus on what matters most: growing your business. And Handle with Care HR Consulting, empowering forward-thinking companies to come alongside their people with empathy and compassion. With engaging workshops and keynote sessions, Handle with Care helps you put empathy to work.
OUTRO