What Causes Medical Trauma: Medical Trauma can affect both children and adults. Common experiences include medical events (heart attack or spinal cord injury) or procedures (broken leg as a child, cesarean birth, or any surgery requiring anesthesia).

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There can be may different types of events that could cause medical trauma, but the one thing that is often shared these experiences is that there is often a perceived threat to life as a result of an event or interaction.

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• Medical Events:  Specific medical events such as birth complications, surgical procedure, being on dialysis, procedures involving anesthesia, intensive care unit stays, or experiencing other childhood complications where medical intervention were necessary can all contribute to medical trauma. Especially individuals who survive a life-threatening medical event, injury, or illness.

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• Prolonged Healing and Pain Following Surgeries/Recovery: Sometimes even after the injury healing period is over, pain and discomfort with movement can still persist. This can continue to cause undue stress on the nervous system, poor healing responses, and emotional frustration often making daily activities more challenging.

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• Negative Healthcare Encounter:​ In some instances, previous therapy or medical care could have been unsuccessful causing a prolonging of discomfort and unforeseen complications that lead to making it difficult knowing who to trust when continuing to seek the appropriate help. In other cases, high costs of treatments or out of pocket expenses despite having insurance to do the work you needed done.

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• Birth: Up to 45% of new mothers report experiencing birthing trauma.  This can affect the mother in multiple ways ranging from depression, autonomic nervous system dysfunction, triggering events with birthdays, difficulty with child rearing, and even future decision to have children. Women whom have experienced sexual abuse are also more prone to medical trauma

  • Emergency C-Section​

  • Obstetric Violence

  • Infant in newborn intensive care unit

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• Surgeries Under Anesthesia: General anesthesia uses a combination of medications that render the body immobile and unconscious as it enters into deeper levels than normal sleep. These temporarily paralyzing states share many common threads as how the body responds to intense and ongoing stress that often result in "freezing" and "shut-down" the nervous system. Often this behavior is necessary during high levels of threat however in some cases symptoms can still present even after procedures and adequate healing time is given.

  • Throat pain or voice problems​

  • Autonomic nervous system dysfunction

  • Hyperactivity in nervous system

  • Sense of nausea and dizziness

  • Digestion problems

  • Dry Mouth

  • Shivering or chills

  • Muscle aches that are not consistent

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• Autoimmune Disease & Cancer: With an illness or disease that results from challenges in the bod's immune system response, it is not uncommon to deal with post traumatic stress symptoms. Autoimmunity and cancer often create difficult and challenging circumstances for patients. Especially if there is worry about side effects with medication, treatments, or a condition returning.

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• Heart Attacks: One study showed that 8% of heart attack survivors will develop post-traumatic stress symptoms following their cardiac event. 

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• Intensive Care Unit:  Any stay at a ICU can be particularly traumatizing.  It is suggested that 25% of those who survive ICU experiences will develop post-traumatic stress symptoms.

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• COVID-19 & Long COVID: If you were infected with COVID-19, you may still be dealing with new chronic systems that affect one or more of you or your child's muscular, circulatory, immune, and/or nervous systems. These symptoms could be confusing to medical professionals and frustrating to deal with alone on a regular basis given the complexity of the virus. These newer symptoms can also be difficult to manage and as a result may make exercise difficult due to fear of worsening symptoms. In other cases, there may have been required changes in work, relationships, and other social behaviors. Some of changes in your body as a result of COVID could include things like:

  • Post-exertional malaise

  • brain fog​

  • chronic fatigue

  • dizziness

  • gastrointestinal problems

  • heart palpitations

  • issues with sexual desire or capacity

  • loss of smell or taste

  • thirst 

  • chronic cough

  • chest pain 

  • abnormal movements

  • retained reflexes​​

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