A war that won't let go: Decorated veteran recovers

Pay special attention to this part

That paranoia is part of the Thurin who came back from Iraq. Carla Thurin notices other changes, too. Her son is angrier, is not as committed to his faith as he used to be, and is less compassionate toward other people. That, more than anything, disappoints Carla.

A war that won't let go: Decorated veteran recovers from more than physical wounds
By KRISTY GRAY
Star-Tribune staff writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008 10:21 AM MDT

PINE BLUFFS -- It should have been a fairy-tale homecoming for Marine Cpl. Jay Thurin.

And for a time, it was.

Thurin, 23, returned to Pine Bluffs in March 2006 to grateful friends and relatives who shook his hand and thanked him for his service. Newspapers featured the stories of his two Purple Hearts. Pine Bluffs Elementary School invited him to speak to wide-eyed kids who wanted to know everything about being a Marine in Iraq. He found a good job in a field he loved -- farming.

On July 27, 2006, he married Ashley Knaub, a girl he'd met in 4-H. Then came baby MaKenna, a beautiful daughter born on March 31 this year.

On the outside, Thurin looks strong, healthy and every bit like a young man building a life for his family. His right arm -- nearly ripped apart by shrapnel from an anti-tank mine bomb near Fallujah -- is healing after five surgeries and two years of physical therapy.

But inside -- and in the nightmares -- Thurin is still fighting the war. And he struggles to find his footing in a world that seems to be crumbling around him.

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It was important for you to notice the first part because this is something we all need to pay attention to. For over 30 years scientists and psychiatrists have been trying to understand the wound of PTSD. For just as long, they have been looking in part, in the wrong places. PTSD does not begin with changes in the brain. That comes after the trauma. So why is it they are only looking at the brain instead of where the wound originates from?

Yesterday during the radio interview I was called a PTSD expert. That still has a hard time of resonating in my brain along with being called Chaplain. While I may be both, I have grown so accustomed to being ignored that when people pay attention to what I have to say, I'm shocked. Considering I've been at this since the age of 23 and heading into my 26th year of this work, (gee I'm getting old) there is a lot more knowledge of this wound in my ever crowded head than there is in the minds of people who just started working on PTSD. While I've learned a great deal reading about PTSD in clinic books as well as just about every news report that has come out since the Vietnam War, (thanking God for library achieves) the biggest source of knowledge came from living with one of them and talking to a lot of others.

Cpl. Jay Thurin is showing classic signs of PTSD not often enough addressed in media accounts. The paranoia of thinking the worst could happen at any moment as he guards the crib of his young baby. The nightly ritual of patrolling the perimeter of the home replacing the base, checking doors and windows obsessively, making sure weapons are in reach, because they think someone is always out there to get them and the enemy followed them home. That comes from the enemy hitching a ride back implanted in their memories. It also comes from a lack of faith that someone is watching over them.

We all feel that way when traumatic things shake our lives. We either walk away thinking God watched over us and protected us or God condemned us and like Job, has begun to take things away from us. Every detail of our lives is dissected looking for all the wrong things we've done up to that point when it feels as if God is fed up with us. We figure if God knows everything then there has to be something wrong with us, the way we lived our lives and the way we treated other people. Facts really don't play into this at all if our understanding of God is so simplistic that the real message from the Bibles we read remains hidden. If we think He's out to get us, then what's the point? We then lose faith, trust, love, joy while believing we have been cursed. Nothing noble or righteous means anything any more.

This is what most PTSD veterans face, as well as anyone who has suffered from traumatic events. It begins with the event itself and then penetrates the soul, traveling into the mind when the memories, nightmares and flashbacks come and then penetrates the body when the organs are attacked, the immune system breaks down and the heart is under assault from the stress. This is why there are miracles happening everyday when PTSD is addressed for the whole person and not just the mind, but the body and the spirit are included in the healing. If scientists would come to the point where they truly understand what a role faith plays in our lives, they will be a lot closer to understanding how to heal the whole person. They have not been able to find the answers by looking at the mind alone after all these years. You'd think they would have learned something else by now. They are still asking the same questions they've been asking since the beginning of man on the planet. Time for them to take a look at another part of the wounded and then maybe, just maybe they will begin to treat it the way it should have been treated all along.



Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington