PTSD:War turns life 'upside-down'

War turns life 'upside-down'

By JARED MILLER
Star-Tribune staff writer



[oas:casperstartribune.net/news/wyoming:Middle1]


RIVERTON -- Robert Niezwaag Jr., an Army commander with a laid-back leadership style, suddenly found himself yelling at his men.

The tiniest annoyance could send him into a rage, and he felt as if he hated "everything and everybody."

"I didn’t know if I was getting tired of getting shot at or what," said Niezwaag, 34, a native of Riverton. "I just knew it was happening."

Niezwaag would learn later that the anger was a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that probably resulted from spending 13 months in the war zone in Iraq.

Military medics tried to ease the symptoms in the field with a prescription of the anti-depressant Prozac, but Niezwaag noticed no improvement and stopped taking the medication.

He found temporary relief when he left Iraq and retired from the Army in October 2004. During his final months of service in Fort Hood, Texas, he was on a "pink cloud."

"Things seemed fine," Niezwaag said.

But his anger -- a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD -- followed him from the deserts of the Middle East to his home in central Wyoming, where he had hoped to start fresh after 14 years in the Army.

He quickly found that he was unable to communicate with his wife. Everything she did seemed wrong, and he sometimes got angry.

Why were the bills unpaid? Why hadn’t their son played Little League baseball last season?

Then the fight was on.

"War takes your life and flips it upside-down," said Niezwaag, who has been in therapy for two years for his PTSD symptoms. "You try to piece it back together, but it’s hard, especially if you are married. You start arguing and you start fighting, and pretty soon ..."

Divorce was the next step for Niezwaag and his wife.

"I’m going through a divorce because of Iraq, because I changed," Niezwaag said.

click post title for more