Max Cleland faced PTSD from Vietnam

Decades later, Max Cleland faced PTSD from Vietnam
By DEBORAH CIRCELLI, Staff Writer

The unwavering voice of a U.S. senator echoed through the halls of Walter Reed Army Medical Center from a video. The senator encouraged the newly wounded soldiers to "get strong at the broken places" and "turn their scars into stars."

Max Cleland, the former senator and Stetson University alumnus, should know. He survived the unthinkable, losing his legs and right arm in a grenade explosion in Vietnam.

And at the same time the video of him played on that day four years ago, Cleland was in another office receiving counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) -- about 36 years after first being saved in the same hospital and patched together from his physical war injuries.

"It's like the flip side of my life. On one side of the wall, there I was on the video saying how you can overcome and on the other side of the wall, I'm crying like a baby," Cleland, 67, said in a phone interview.

He shared insight into his experience in his book, "Heart of a Patriot," which includes his struggle with PTSD. The pain and depression of losing his legs and right arm in Vietnam in 1968 was something he buried deep inside. It came to the surface when his life went awry after losing his Senate re-election bid in a bitter battle in 2002.
read more here
Max Cleland faced PTSD from Vietnam