Is this what PTSD feels like?

It's been a roller coaster of an emotion this last couple of days/weeks and I'm feeling the "post treatment" anxiety and stress that I've heard other cancer parents talk about.  Where every pain, or every soreness, or anything that isn't totally right means everything is totally wrong and the cancer has come back.  I'm finding myself wanting to be distant from friends who I'm not really sure have gotten the trauma that we've been through this past year.  I think I'm just having some anxiety from G being out of treatment and wondering if this monster is going to come back.  The fear... the fear of relapse is there....it's so real and it's present.  There's nothing I can do to make that fear go away and it makes me feel out of control.  I find myself needing much reassurance for being a good parent, being a good mom... so I go to those who have been there; my cancer parent friends and I ask them, "why am I feeling so terrible, about everything....when I should be feeling so great? And back and forth.  The wounds are still there, still very fresh and they have not healed.  The pictures and the feelings are still so fresh in my memory....leaving her in the MRI department after inducing with sedation, leaving her in the PET scanners...sedated, leaving her in the OR...sedated.  My little peanut...I had to leave her so many times.   I got a whiff of something that reminded me of the toxic smell Gabriella used to emit after her long chemo's.  God, I hate that smell.  I'll never forget that smell and it will bring me back to those times in the hospital having those poisons running through my little girl's IV lines.  (And now tears are pouring down my face).  I don't know how a parent lets this happen to their child and doesn't suffer the consequences.  I don't think there are any.  We are the ones that hold our children down, sign the papers for their bodies to be cut, burned and poisoned.  Our precious little babes we held in our arms and fell in love with the day we met....equivalent to the brightest part of our life to the darkest of moments having to walk away from our child while strangers "fixed" them.  And after all of that....there are NO guarantees.  None.

I met a friend the other day.  She said so casually, that I was doing the right thing.  We've been through a ton this past year and I was feeling like a guilty run down mom who couldn't do everything I needed to do for my children...but that it was ok.  That's all I needed.  All I needed to hear.

I know its temporary and the feelings will pass.  It's just part of the ride.