TIGNISH
“This is quite a stressful situation I’ve been going through,” 15-year-old Isabelle Buote says matter-of-factly.
She was recently diagnosed with a type pf post-traumatic stress disorder, called disassociation, but only the diagnosis is new; the Skinners Pond resident has been experiencing episodes triggered by stress and other emotions since turning 12.
“I usually faint and then take a seizure. And then, after that, it could be anything from loss of vision to loss of hearing to loss of memory, paralysis,” she explains. Sometimes she becomes sick to the stomach before fainting; other times episodes happen without warning.
She’s experienced memory loss and hallucinations and is prone to nightmares. She has run off during numerous episodes.
She spent five months at the IWK Children’s hospital when she was 12 and was nine months at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the past year.
“It’s whenever I get stressed out, or I don’t know how to handle my emotions. My body reacts. Instead of crying, I take an episode,” she attempts to explain what happens.
“Pretty much everything a brain can do to a person it’s done to her,” explains her father, Brian.
Search parties had to be organized after she went missing. She wore a tracking bracelet until recently and, after going missing again on Sunday she anticipates the bracelet will be going back on, for her protection.
The episodes, says her Dad, are a big worry.
Isabelle, who lost her mother to illness when she was 11, desperately wants friends, relatives and community members to understand what she’s going through.
“It is hard to do stuff, because I’m nervous people are going to judge me,” she said. “When I was taking (episodes) in school people did make fun of me, and it was just horrible.
“It made me really depressed, so I got diagnosed with depression, too, and I am on pills for that.” She also takes medication to calm her anxiety and to keep her hallucinations and nightmares in check.
That need for understanding and acceptance has Isabelle eagerly awaiting a PTSD Awareness Walk which is planned for 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 29. The walk will leave from Tignish’s Bicentennial Park and participants will continue onto the Confederation Trail.
Pets are welcome, too, and Isabelle, who is helping her tutor, Lissa Profit, and her personal in-school support worker, Carol Morgan, plan the walk, wants to set up drinking stations along the trail for the accompanying pets. Water bottles will be available for the humans.
Pamphlets on PTSD will be distributed.
While the event is largely planned for awareness, it will also serve as a starting point for a fundraising campaign to help purchase a service dog that medical professionals have been recommending for Isabelle. A trained dog could cost in excess of $20,000. Initial cost of a puppy would be less but the cost for training and the related travel costs could push the expense considerably higher.
“I like keeping my mind busy, and a service dog would definitely do that,” she said. “It will help me with my nightmares and it will pull me out of my hallucinations.”
Brian Buote said he has been unable to get any government assistance towards the cost of a service dog and, because his daughter requires 24-hour supervision, he is unable to work and cannot afford the cost. He’s pinning hopes on the July 29 event raising awareness and putting an end to suggestions that his daughter is faking the episodes. “Why would she go up a tree, 40 feet tall and then start seizuring and dropping from branch to branch, unconscious?’” he said in describing one of her episodes. “That’s not faking.”
“Awareness means a lot.”
Carol Morgan sees the awareness walk as a possible turning point. “If it can help you lead a normal life and for you to get your life back, Isabelle, it means the world to you, doesn’t it?”
Isabelle nodded in agreement.
