PTSD trigger and ketamine

 One night I was just sitting there in the NICU pumping when my son's oxygen started to drop. It got all the way down to 65% before the nurse ever came in. I spent the whole time just staring at my sons face. I was confused because he wasn't turning blue, didn't appear to be in distress, he looked totally fine. I wondered what I was missing or not recognizing. If I hadn't been in a trauma situation before I probably would've lost it, but I completely kept it together.

A few hours later when I had a little time I laid down to close my eyes. And by laying down I really mean laying back more or less sitting up in the recliner chair. When I closed my eyes I saw the man shoot himself in the head again right in front of me. I believe they call that a flash back.

From then on whenever I would close my eyes and begin to doze off I would have a coughing fit followed by my throat feeling like it was closing in on me. I was having panic attacks. If it didn't happen right when I dozed off it would happen an hour or so later. I'd wake up in a panic and need to drink cold water and suck on a mint. Sometimes it would last 20-30 minutes, other times it would pass fairly quickly, but I never got right back to sleep.

They tried me on just about every sleeping pill possible to knock me out and have me sleep through it. Nothing worked. One night I took 10 mg Ambien and 100 mg of Seroquel at the same time. I can't remember if I when up in a panic or if I was throwing up, but regardless I only slept 2 hours 15 minutes. I woke up completely confused. I needed help walking to the bathroom step for step as if I had just given birth. My husband and I were arguing because I needed something to eat, but he wanted me to go right back to sleep. Finally I told him if he didn't wheel me over to the family room to eat something I was going to ask the nurse. He finally took me.

I ate something, came back to our son's room and was completely fine. An hour later I took 100mg more of Seroquel. Still fine. An hour after that I took a third 100 mg tablet of Seroquel. Still nothing. All in all I had taken 10mg Ambien and 300 mg Seroquel in the same night and I was up having conversations with people functioning just fine. How is that even possible?

I had at least one night with a bad nightmare. Thankfully lately I haven't had flashbacks or nightmares. Maybe it's the ketamine I restarted? The first couple ketamine sessions I felt nothing, but one did cause me to recall many events from the night of the suicide that I thought I had forgotten. I cried through nearly the whole session. Now I am going to start doing ketamine with psychotherapy at the same time so I can talk to sometime who is trained through these things rather than just the nurse, but it will be about a month before that happens.