by Meghan R. Coleman

Created on: September 21, 2008

The best advice that I can give to someone who has survived a shooting is to rely on your self for recovery. It sounds stupid even to me to even be writing that statement. But it is true.
There are three factors that people can turn to for help after being involved in something as harsh as a shooting; family and friends, the medical field or self medication.

I myself, have had the luxury of a good family to help support me through the after math of being shot at. My mother cleaned the blood that didn't belong to me that covered two seats of a couch, the white kitchen floor that had an inch thick of it and she threw away all the glass items that had been broken through out the tri-level house. That was just the beginning of the help that my parents have given me. Because I lost my job of five years, they have also financially supported my act of running away from the town that I had lived in for twenty years of my life. They have also listened to many of my woes after the fact and eventually coerced me into counseling because of it.

The other option that I had tried to use to better my mental health was with in the medical feild. Counseling. The therapist that had been assigned to me diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She was experienced in her field and I consider myself lucky to have met some one like her that could actually do the job that she was being paid for. I could only afford it because the state granted me money for mental health expenses because of the crime. After finding out that my two step-children were not privy to money that I was entitled and the bills started to come to my mail box, I dismantled the idea of believing that the state could pay for what they said they could. The money that I fought for the children would have to used to cover the medical bills that my youngest child spent in the hospital to have his finger reattached.

The third option is a sad option used by many because the cost of health care is unreasonably high, especially in a country such as the United States, self medication. While the medication that I was prescribed cost three hundred dollars a month, economically buying almost any kind of street drug or alcohol for that much a month would actually be cheaper monthly. Although street drugs were a teenager thing for me, alcohol is actually a staple in my household. Nights are not spent being intoxicated for me, but I drink enough to be able to go to sleep like most normal people.

It has been a little over a

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