Wounded Wives veterans care lacking, wives care missing

PTSD
Name: Josie Salzman
Posting date: 8/13/07
Husband: returned from Iraq
Hometown: Menomenie, WI
Milblog url: lifeinacrackerbox.blogspot.com

I sit tonight in the kitchen of the Fisher House just staring at the TV while trying to collect my thoughts. The country has been informed that the Army has realized there is a need for more mental health professionals to aid soldiers returning from war with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). They claim to be adding two hundred new employees to help combat the never-ending war that remains in our loved ones' minds. I wish more than anything that tonight I could take a deep breath, relax, and fall asleep with the confidence that our military is taking the proper steps to ensure my family is able to heal from the violence we have encountered.

Unfortunately, that's not an option.

One of the first nights I had with my husband after his injury will forever be burned into my mind. He had been in an excruciating amount of pain the entire evening. It was still early in his hospital stay so the doctors had yet to find a pain cocktail that his body responded to. Just like the evening before, the nurse entered the room and handed J.R. a cup filled to the top with pills. Desperate to make the pain subside for a few hours, J.R. swallowed them in one giant mouthful. An hour later he was drifting off to sleep.

I started making my bed for the night after I was sure he was sleeping. This would be my second night of sleeping in the foldout chair that I would soon learn to hate. I had no more than crawled under the covers when J.R. sat bolt upright in bed. "Get them off me. Get them off me now. The bugs, they're all over me, get them off. They're in the bed. Make them go away."

Unsure of what he was talking about, I jumped out of bed and rushed to calm him down. After a grueling twenty minutes he was able to once again close his eyes. It didn't last. Again his mind took over in his sleep. This time he felt as if someone was in the room and he was under attack. He awoke panicked and sweat-soaked. I sat on his bed and held him in my arms. I promised him that if he just closed his eyes he would be able to sleep and that everything would be fine. I was in the room and I was going nowhere. But everything wasn't fine. No more than an hour after he closed his eyes the terror began. On this night J.R. would relive the entire accident.

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