By: Nathalie Michaud, Firefighter and PTSD Sufferer
So much to say, yet so little is spoken about it openly.
I live with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and it lives with me. I got diagnosed in the Fall of 2014; it hit me like a ton of bricks and sucked the air out of me. I had no idea that all the symptoms that I had for the past 5 years were due to PTSD. I thought I was “just” depressed or “just” losing my mind.
Let me share with you what brought this on almost 6 years ago.
I am a firefighter and I worked in a part-time fire department. Sadly on January 30th 2010, my Fire Chief responded to his last call and lost the battle with undiagnosed PTSD and committed suicide in our fire station. That alone was extremely hard and traumatizing because to me, he was “rock solid.”
My now-deceased Fire Chief was also my husband. We had been married for only 6 months.
I did what I could to survive, and I made it. Or so I thought.
I had just started a new job on the 25th in another fire department and after 2 weeks off I returned to work right after Valentine’s Day. That morning, everyone was talking about their dates, evenings, etc. until the reality of my dead husband hit them and the loudest “scream of silence” took over the office.
That’s when it began: the stigma and label those others would place on me. I knew, or thought I knew, that I couldn’t show any emotions and I sure couldn’t talk about it because everyone was so uncomfortable. I was alone, isolated, and numb.
I pushed on because I was on probation and afraid of losing my job if I made a mistake. At the end of 2010, physical pain was becoming more present in my daily routines, and I started to have insomnia and decided to go to the primary care doctor Queens blvd. But I ignored all symptoms and brushed it off as “a little tired from all the changes of 2010”.
The insomnia got worse, so I was prescribed sleeping pills. I wanted to check on my snoring and health. In September 2012, after 1 ½ years of psychological harassment from a colleague, I filed a complaint. My work environment became hostile since my colleagues turned on me one by one.
I went through the HR (Human Resources) investigation and was “interviewed” 3 times; the last one wasn’t questions about events and facts, but about my personality as if they were trying to make me second guess myself. Their investigation resulted to in a determination that, “I was too sensitive.”
In addition to the lack of support from my employer, my work environment became even more hostile. I had more anxiety attacks, loss of appetite and was losing weight extremely fast. My doctor said, “Enough!” and pulled me from work.
I spent the next year fighting HR’s decision; worker’s compensation (CSST) decision for them to recognize it (PTSD) as a condition; and then I had to return in October 2014 which at that point in time my “harasser” had transferred to another city.
During that year, more physical issues came to the surface. Feeling tired, yet unable to sleep; feeling irritable, aggressive, and anxious; nightmares and night terrors were surfacing, and night sweats were now a normal nightly routine. If only I could get some sleep…but there was much more to come.
Note from Chief Avsec: In her next installment in this series of blogs, Nathalie Michaud continues her poignant and soul-baring story as she “hits rock bottom” in her struggle to live with PTSD.
About the Author
Nathalie Michaud is a PTSD Sufferer. Nathalie served for more than 15 years in a variety of Emergency Services roles
including EMS Paramedic, Firefighter, Fire Prevention Technician and Fire Investigator in the province of Quebec, Canada. She also served for 13 years with St. John’s Ambulance in positions that included: Regional Assistant Director; Provincial Training Team; and Master Instructor.
Nathalie has served for three years on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Volunteer Fire Services Association and was recently elected to the Board of Directors for FQISI (Quebec Federation of Emergency Responders).
She makes her home in Quebec where she continues her journey living with PTSD…every day.
Yea, the stuff sucks. I was 14 years into my career before I knew what all the crazy making was about. I was 11 years into the career before I even heard of a CISD. Not a positive experience for me, as a one off. I didn’t pay as high a price as Nathalie, but a high one none the less.
If we expect to start making a dent in health outcomes in first responders, stress, trauma, and PTSD should be as easy to our lips as talk about hoses, trucks, and new gear.
Couldn’t agree more, Leckey! We’re all very fortunate that someone as courageous as Nathalie Michaud has come forth to help us all better understand what PTSD means from the “inside out”, a perspective that only someone like her, or any other PTSD sufferer, can truly offer.
Thank you for writing this and sharing your story. I sorry for the loss of your husband, and the situation that you endured. A story that shares many similarities to my own. I am the one who almost met that tragic fate as a result of the same types of attacks on me by some of my collegues, HR, the departments legal team, and the justice system when I stood up to speak out against poor and discriminatory treatment of myself and others by employers and their agents. I used to think that only soldiers and people who were in “war, abuse or disasters” suffered PTSD. The one day my counselor, after having heard my story, mentioned that my story sounded as if I had been fighting a “war” of sorts for decades, and I had already offered up that I felt as if I had been in a long term abusive relationship with my employer and a handful or so of its members. It was then that I realized that not only was it possible that I could have PTSD; I finally got that I did, something I had resisted for years, because I did not want to take away from anyone being in a real military war, or living in a war torn zone. The circumstance are quite different, though many psychological tactics are similar. Just because they are not the same does not mean that the resulting damage to the heart and psyche are any less. We spend a third of our lives at the FD and to be abused while there through demeaning, outcasting, mobbing, gaslighting, manipulation, discrimination, harassment, or other tactics that seeks to make one “less than” or the use of tactics to attempt to make someone question their sanity and self certainly can predispose one to PTSD, add to that the “normal” stressors of responding to the things that firefighters and paramedics respond to, the environment is ripe for PTSD. As it turned out I lost the war, because the people who could do something about it did not care enough to look at the facts and look behind the facade of smokescreen that a few “good” men built to cover their bad behaviors.