PTSD Vets need help fighting war in their heads

Vets need help fighting war in their heads
Chicago Sun-Times - United States

March 11, 2009

BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist
President Obama's new secretary for Veterans Affairs, retired general Eric Shinseki, is coming to town Friday to visit the VA Medical Center in North Chicago.

Here's hoping he meets Maj. Shari Johnson of the U.S. Army Reserve 452nd combat support group.


Johnson, 47, is a registered nurse. But she's not on staff at the VA hospital. She's a patient who just checked herself in on Sunday, hoping and praying that she can learn to turn down the volume on the war that's raging in her head.

Two years ago, I wrote about Johnson and her husband, Sgt. Mike Johnson, who also is a nurse.

Both were sent to Afghanistan in 2003. Both were assigned to the hospital at Bagram Air Base in Parwan province. Both suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mike had already been diagnosed with PTSD in after serving in the 1990 Gulf War -- but the Army called him up again anyway.

Duty in Afghanistan profoundly affected them both.

At Bagram, Shari treated children whom the Taliban had placed in boiling water up to their waists as their horrified parents looked on. It was a way of punishing the parents for collaborating with Americans. One of Mike's jobs, meanwhile, was to meticulously prepare dead soldiers for the trip home to grieving families, piecing them back together and dressing them with care so that if coffins were opened, they could be presented with the full dignity they deserved.

Six months after returning home to their small farm in Downstate Sheldon, the aftershocks began. Shari told me in 2005 that she started, "crying all the time . . . not wanting to go anywhere. I just wanted to hide out."