Personal Stories of PTSD

. This page is dedicated to personal stories of PTSD and traumatic events and tesitmonies. If you would like to add to this page, send an email to tiimbuettner48@gmail.com   or call 405-900-1141

The Hidden Trauma of a Bomb Threat Lockdown- A Survivors Perspective on How Trauma Can't Be Erased or Laundered.  I wanted to share hidden story of how traumatic it is to be a survivor of a Bomb threat, and how no matter how badly the media launders the experience, nothing erases the moment and the impact on your system, the scar it leaves.  It was February 15th, 2026. I was a patient on the 10th floor of my local hospital, tethered via a surgically placed feeding tube to a pull that houses a pump that gave me 100% of my food and water. A fulltime wheelchair user, and a patient with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. That morning I had woken up and the first thing I did was check my phone and see a notification exclaiming:”Bomb threat at Saint Anthony's, live updates to follow.”  In retrospect, this was a part of a scary week in OKC, the Integris hospital just had a threat that led to the arrest of an estranged patient. And today was my turn.   Immediately after reading the news that my hospital I was at was under lockdown: 

adrenaline hits and floods my system. My first action was to gauge the gameplan. I looked out the window to gauge that I'm on the 10th story, can I survive a fall that high. What would break my fall if I jumped out? What happens if things collapse inwards? I would simply have not survived regardless of the numerous possibilities, and I had to quickly become okay with my death (at a time when I was trying to heal it). You have no choice, you either accept death in the moment or you continue to seek a way out. A lot of us would have no way out, whether you were a patient or staff.   The nurse comes in and I say to her: you know we're under a bomb threat right now? Her response was that she didn't know and well what could you do? (She couldn't just leave work or stop working, patients would be affected immediately if everyone stopped.)  I kept to myself, at this moment we ourselves had no idea what was going on but that we had to continue like it was another day. So I prayed, what else could I do but pray and wait for an inevitable explosion, or an all clear. There's no in between. You wait, all while the weight of the moment is crushing your body and brain, etching everything into memory as vivid as possible, leaving its immediate wound.  You have no agency to run down flights of stairs to run away and leave the threat. I was bound to machine, stuck to die or not die.  Everything was hazy at the moment, you have little details besides a possible bomb may change your life and everyone else's forever.  While the media and public debate your lives, will they die or not die? With little details again.  I think a brutal part is how swept everything was and laundered but I'll touch back on that.  Little media coverage and next to none: public knowledge of the moment. I promise you, you probably could've just pulled up and been none the wiser at the moment besides the sweeping police presence.  Eventually I find out from another news notification that we're in the clear, and then the laundering happens immediately:Suspect was estranged patient, no arrest known, bomb was a hoax(but I wouldn't even know that until days later)  Me at that moment? Not much relief, I was in shock! My God, I just accepted my own possible death and gauged how bad I would be injured from a 10th story drop. And what does the media use as their vernacular? 

A hoax….  So I told a few people and buried every once of trauma away immediately. The bottle was sealed tight, supposed to forever stay sealed and I put it on the shelf. Until just yesterday this September, The bottle fell off the shelf and broke to shards. Leaving me to finally confront the toll of what happened, left on my body. When you hear words like “hoax” why would you even try to think it was traumatic… that's media laundering. They are washing with semantics, which mentally diminishes the survivors of the event, those of us who had wounds we never would or will address because we compare ourselves to victims who actually had the bomb go off. But the toll is quite the same at the beginning even if there wasn't a physical scar, you still ran through the same exact emotions and moment. The gravity of others' trauma should never make you diminish your own.  I still haven't and don't plan on ever going up a tower ever again. And I feel for the staff that had to carry on the next day and to this day.   My heart aches too because the public has a hierarchy of trauma and when they gauge you and decide you shouldn't complain compared to someone else's, then you bury it forever, or in my case I also self minimize.  I bring this story out to bring attention regarding lockdowns and threats of violence: it leaves lasting scars nobody talks about. I imagine a school lockdown that winded all clear with nothing “truly” happening, have the same effects on the kids. I imagine they quickly give their survival, or accept their own death, and remain in fear until they find an exit or an all clear. And then they have to continue on because “nothing happened” or it was a “hoax”. But now those people are changed forever.  In my opinion, we need harsher judgement and penalties for those who make threats of mass violence. And we need to acknowledge the lasting harm it has on the people it was directed at. And we also need to address the public's hierarchical trauma scale. And the media's word laundering.

I bring this story out to bring attention regarding lockdowns and threats of violence: it leaves lasting scars nobody talks about. I imagine a school lockdown that winded all clear with nothing “truly” happening, have the same effects on the kids. I imagine they quickly give their survival, or accept their own death, and remain in fear until they find an exit or an all clear. And then they have to continue on because “nothing happened” or it was a “hoax”. But now those people are changed forever.  In my opinion, we need harsher judgement and penalties for those who make threats of mass violence. And we need to acknowledge the lasting harm it has on the people it was directed at. And we also need to address the public's hierarchical trauma scale. And the media's word laundering.  That is all. I have reached out to the same local stations that broadcasted live during the threat I survived, and I have also reached out to several independent journalists, and will reach out to other platformed people like podcasters. In an attempt to bring this to light. To show other survivors of threats that they're not alone and yes it is traumatic, and leaves a wound that you have to actually address. And I do this in a weird way, to heal my own trauma from that day.  I thank you for reading my hidden story that I have chosen to speak about, to show solidarity with other survivors of mass threats.  Thank you, -Dr. Nate Rose 

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