Dealing with traumatic experiences
Isaac Imasuagbon, a US-based Nigerian returnee, was involved in a road accident on a highway on his return. He said on that fateful day, November 14, 2013, all he could recall was that one of the occupants in the car shouted: ‘Thomas, are you going to allow this mad man hit us?’ According to him, […]
Isaac Imasuagbon, a US-based Nigerian returnee, was involved in a road accident on a highway on his return. He said on that fateful day, November 14, 2013, all he could recall was that one of the occupants in the car shouted: ‘Thomas, are you going to allow this mad man hit us?’
According to him, within a flicker, he heard a loud screeching sound from the rear of the car followed by a furious smash then an eerie silence.
After the near-death experience, Imasuagbon said he woke up in a noisy surrounding lying beneath his friend, Wahab, who was bent over him performing a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) first aid and shouting, ‘Isaac, come back to me!’ And he opened his eyes while lying by the roadside and tried wearily and agonizingly to move his feet and arms, but could not.
He said his ordeal started when in intensive care doctors informed him that he had serious head injuries, six broken ribs on the left side, scapular, collar bone, rotator-cuffs and blood clotting on a part of the diaphragm. As a result he was paralyzed on the left arm and suffering from excruciating pains.
Continuing the narration, he said in the Accidents and Emergency Ward of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Ekpoma, more crash victims and patients with different trauma cases were being brought in for treatment. But the mortality rate for cases with seemingly lesser severity was frightening.
“It was 12pm on November 14, 2013 but eight patients among the horde had died due to inadequate care,” he recalled.
As a result, he said, he made a decision to get his wife in the USA to arrange an air ambulance to fly him out of Nigeria. That intervention by his wife from that point was very important to his eventual survival.
So far it has been a miraculous tale of survival and recovery for Imasuagbon. But he has lived in and out of hospital since 2013. He said the major pain is his having to continue with physiotherapy, using radioactive equipment, to halt recurrent pains all over his body. He said the scans have exposed him to possible cancer-related ill-health in later life. Worse, he has to ingest powerful pain-killer drugs to calm his nerves.
“I am on constant drugs,” says the 47-year-old systems engineer and licensed liquor agent based in Atlanta, Georgia. “As a result, when I don’t take the drugs I have withdrawal symptoms.”
Imasuagbon describes his experience as the “big trauma of my life.” But his is just one of many cases of people hurting from major traumatic events.
“An experience is considered ‘traumatic’ if it has a scary effect on the individual for a long time,” says Doctor Kalu Ebe, a medical doctor at the Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, Imo State. “A traumatic event refers to extreme stress that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. It has other associated symptoms such as fear of death, or destruction.”
He added that it could be physical, psychological and emotional. He also identified two major causes of trauma in Nigeria to include physical and psychological.
Physical trauma may result from accidents, “possibly injuries depending on the degree of assault.” Physical traumas could also result from natural disasters, fires, road crashes, building collapse and criminal violence. On the other hand, psychological trauma involves “mental stress.”
Similarly, Hajiya Amina Umar Usman, a public servant, shared a traumatic experience which resulted from the loss of her mother while she was aged 12. According to her, because her mother died in child bearing, she relapsed to a state of severe trauma any time she was pregnant.
“The pain has been difficult to bear. I have inner sorrow throughout my child bearing years. Above all, I also mourn her absence to attend to me and the new born,” she said.
What practical steps are there to deal with trauma? HajiyaUsman says religion and faith in God have therapeutic effects on trauma sufferers.
“In Islam, we believe that God gives and God takes. We believe in predestination. The faith and belief in God that He alone has the power to determine what attends to one, helps the person come out of the experience,” she says.
For Dr Bridget Onochie, a gender specialist, finding something to engage the affected person, will help occupy their minds away from the immediate traumatic experience.
“For instance, a woman, who is gainfully employed, would easily come out of the trauma of loss of a husband than the one who is not,” she said.
Imasuagbon believes the individual and care-givers of trauma sufferers must cultivate a good dose of courage and willpower to overcome the challenge. He said his wife’s courage and will power in the two years he was bed-ridden and his continuing medication, have given him the strength to carry on.
Uduak John Azu, a social worker, says sufferers can be rehabilitated by relocating them from the environment associated with their condition.
“One way to treat trauma is to encourage such people to leave their immediate environment which reminds them of the experience. They are then placed on programmes and activities that divert their attention from the factor(s) responsible for their fears,” she said.
She added that medication, such as specific therapy, may not be required except where the case has degenerated to mental effects.
Issues of trauma could be a disincentive for productivity in a country like Nigeria, which has a struggling economy. Efforts must be made to raise awareness and create remedies for the condition.