PTSD and FMLA

[OnlySunshine]

Last night, we had an awful severe thunderstorm with lots of lightening and LOUD thunderclaps.  I went to bed around midnight and our dog, who hates the thunder, kept waking me up.  She usually sleeps in my mom's room, but she kept coming out the living room since I have the fan on when I'm sleeping.  She woke me up about 3 times.  Then, about 3am, there was a LOUD thunderclap that jolted me out of sleep - I literally woke up and screamed.  The lightening lit up the whole living room and I swear the thunder sounded similar to the tree hitting our roof.  I don't think I'm over that event at all.  My bedroom hasn't been fixed, so I'm still having to live with the aftermath 2 months later.  Due to lack of sleep and the terrifying thunder, I woke up with a severe anxiety attack and I ended up telling my boss that I would need to use my FMLA - at least for the morning.  I was in no shape to go to work at all.  I slept another 3 hours and then got up to just watch some TV to try to get my mind on more positive things.  By about 11:30am, I started feeling better, so I decided to go into work since I knew I needed to get some things done before tomorrow.

I've had experience with PTSD before and I believe that I might be experiencing it again - I am very avoidant of my bedroom since it makes me nervous/depressed, I hate anything that sounds really loud since the tree made a loud cracking noise when it hit our roof, and I am experiencing anxiety on a regular basis.  I have an appointment with my therapist tomorrow around 4pm and I plan to discuss this with her.  I have an appointment with my GP on the 11th and I plan to ask her for something to help with the anxiety.  I stopped taking the mood stabilizer after 2 days, which I'm glad I did because it turned out to be related to my hormone patch for my ovarian cysts (once the patch was removed, the moods evened out).  The anxiety is, sometimes, more than I can bear and it's very intense.  I plan to ask about Buspar since it is an anxiolytic medication with no addiction problems (unlike the Ativan I've been using).  This is the first time I've used my intermittent FMLA since it was approved last week.

Please say some prayers.  I've been saying the rosary daily to try to get some peace, which helps, but I'm still struggling.