PTSD:S.O.S.

PTSD SOS
by
Chaplain Kathie

When it comes down to living with PTSD, the SOS should actually be, Save Our Souls, since PTSD is a wound to the soul of veterans. There is only one way to have PTSD and that is after surviving a traumatic event, but there are many different kinds of traumatic events. As such, there are many different levels of PTSD, depth of cuts depending on the numbers of traumatic events to heal, but the hardest to heal from is combat.

While combat is not the most common cause of PTSD that is only because there are less combat veterans in this country. That in now way should indicate this is not the most serious one to focus on.

We all know that PTSD can strike anyone after a natural disaster. That one is a bit easier to recover from but depending on how fast the survivors are helped to return to "normal" living conditions, that is a predictor of how much they will be affected by the event itself. Once man is involved, there can be more "salt poured into the wound" adding to the aftermath. We know crime victims can end up with PTSD, as well as survivors of car accidents and fires. We also know that when they happen to a person more than once, it is harder and harder to recover from.

Then we have those who put themselves in between the harm and the helpless. Firefighters, EMT's, police officers, National Guards, all willing to put themselves in danger for the sake of someone else, exposing themselves to traumatic events over and over again. The same holds true for active military members. For them, it is not just one time out of their lives they face death or the fear of it, it is time after time.

Returning home from combat, they bring with them all the events as well as the time in between the events when they had the constant fear hanging over them.

With the practice of redeploying the forces continuing, there is no time for them to just breathe. They know they will have to go back instead of working on recovering, settling back into the "normal" world they left for a time. This is why redeployments increase the risk of PTSD.


It is also something that history has proven will be with us for decades. Vietnam veterans are still going to the VA for the first time even though they knew they needed help. They were just unaware of what they needed help for and what kind of help was available.

Vietnam Veteran talks about life with PTSD
By Rachel Welte
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 2:30 p.m.

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- It is hard for civilians to imagine what a soldier goes through when at war, and it is even harder to imagine what they feel after returning home.

Experts say many combat veterans will suffer from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in their lifetimes and added the key to dealing with and overcoming PTSD is talking with people who understand.

"When I returned I realized things were different, although I could not put my finger on it," Vietnam veteran Donald Griggs said.

Griggs spent one year in Vietnam, from 1966 to 1967. He said after returning home he sought help from the Army for his PTSD, but was told to just shake it off -- so Griggs said he turned to alcohol.

"That went on for around nine solid years, everyday, and then someone said to me, 'You are going to kill yourself,' so I decided to just stop drinking," Griggs said.

But his PTSD got worse. In fact, he said he spent 43 years alon dealing with his symptoms.

Then, two years ago, he decided to open up to his wife, and with her help, he went to a Veterans Administration (VA) clinic in Denver for PTSD.

That is when the Faith Community Education Collaborative began, an initiative among faith-based communities to help soldiers suffering from PTSD.

"We are trying to teach faith leaders, or members of the church, to be open, and once the veteran comes to them they can then direct the veteran to help in the community," Griggs said.

The faith leaders are not expected to be medical professionals, but rather tools to lead veterans and their families in the right direction.

read more here
http://www.coloradoconnection.com/news/story.aspx?id=403936

Keep in mind that for most Vietnam veterans, it was one deployment and they didn't have to worry about going back for more exposures. Today, they don't have that sense of hope with the prospect of being deployed, even with PTSD already harming them, they know within a year or so, they will be training for another deployment.

We have female soldiers exposed to the same dangers because there are no "safe" zones where they can remain out of harms way. They know they better be able to use their weapons with deadly aim. They know an IED or RPG can take them out as easily as any male soldier they are with, no matter what MOS they were assigned. They also have the additional threat of physical attacks from within their own units.

When people are aware of what PTSD is, they acknowledge that it is a wound to their souls, all that they always knew is no longer carved in stone. All they believed in becomes a mountain of questions. All they felt is just one more open door to pain they do not want to carry and they freeze out all emotions except one, anger. Anger is safe. Anger is tough. Anger kept them alive. Anger keeps people from getting too close.

Just as important as it is to have a great psychiatrist to give the right medication in the right strength with the right combinations, therapy is vital with the right therapist. The key here is specially trained ones able to diagnose and treat PTSD properly. Without that extra education, without the awareness of the cause, it is easy to misdiagnose and impede healing.

The other, perhaps the most important area to treat, is the soul/spiritual factor. Without addressing this part of the human, all else takes longer, does not go far enough and misses the part of the mind needing the healing the most. Members of the clergy and especially military chaplains must be experts on PTSD in order to address it properly. There are many military chaplains with no training or understanding of PTSD at all. With all the advances in treating PTSD, it is beyond reason why this has not been taken seriously enough to have been training chaplains all along.

In the civilian world, chaplains are fully trained to respond to traumatic events for the responders as well as the survivors. Why hasn't the military done the same? How can there be only some and not all ready to respond? What good does it do to have them in combat areas ready to address what is in the Bible while they miss what else is in the Bible? It is filled with account after account dealing with what comes after combat for the ancient warriors. What good does it do to have them tell a soldier how much God or Christ loved them when they feel as if they have just been condemned by them because they do not understand what is happening inside of their own skin?

Clergy back home are just as important as the military chaplains. They do play an important role in the healing once the veterans are back in the civilian world. Families need just as much support and help to heal as the veteran because how they react either hurts or helps to heal the veteran. If members of the clergy are dismissing PTSD or ignoring it, they are not serving God because they are not healing the sick, allowing the veteran to sink into deeper depression, turn further way from God and taking the family down with them.

Not addressing the spiritual needs of the PTSD wounded is missing the origin of the wound itself. PTSD comes only after trauma, attacks the emotional part of the brain, the place where the soul lives. If the clergy, trained in dealing with the soul of man ignore this, they are ignoring the greatest mission of their ministries.

What good does it do to know God forgives if they will not hear about the things the soldiers feel they need forgiveness for? What good does it do to know that God created a warrior before He created man, the Archangel Michael, if they do not understand that Christ said the greatest act a man could do is to be willing to lay down his life for the sake of his friends? What good does it do to know the accounts of every person in the Bible if they do not speak of the failings each of the heroes of the Bible faced as well as their own failures or the fact that warfare has caused spiritual pain in every man in the Bible?

There is so much that can be accomplished if they become involved in helping these veterans heal far beyond the scientific if they get specific and address the spiritual as well as the psychological.

Suicides and attempted suicides increase as we fail to address their needs. Along with the numbers we read, there is also a family not being counted or helped. What does the avoidance of the clergy do to them? It pushes them away from God when they need God in their lives the most. Wouldn't it be serving God more if they helped heal instead? Wouldn't restoring faith in God add more to the flock for generations to come instead of pushing away generations because they would not help when they could?

We could very well decrease suicides, decrease divorce, homelessness, domestic violence and abuse simply by addressing the route PTSD takes to invade the lives of the veterans and their families.

Don't we owe them that much?

Healing PTSD and "the ultimate spiritual crisis"

I have not been posting as much lately because I've been researching more material for a new book about combat trauma and faith. One of my friends, who is an ordained pastor, and I have begun to work on this after many conversations about faith after trauma. I came across this and thought it was worth re-posting from last year. It is right on the mark when it comes to the spiritual connection and healing PTSD.

If you want to share your story about faith and healing for this book, just email me at namguardianangel@aol.com.

As for this article, after you read it, you may want to watch my video on PTSD Not God's Judgment. It may help you understand that God did not abandon you.

EXCLUSIVE:Healing the Wounds of War

November 30, 2007

Healing the Wounds of War
by Benedicta Cipolla

Photos by Suzanne Opton

War is, in some ways, the ultimate spiritual crisis.

By its very nature, it requires participants to perform acts that would be considered legally and morally wrong in civilian life. "Your whole life, regardless of religion, you're told, 'Don't kill, don't kill, don't kill.' Then all of a sudden it's, 'Here's a gun.' It's hard to reconcile that," says Linda McClenahan, a Dominican nun, trauma counselor, and former Vietnam Army sergeant who lives in Racine, Wisconsin.

In a 1995 study, 51 percent of veterans in residential post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment in a Veterans Affairs facility said they had abandoned their religious faith during the war in which they fought. In the same study, 74 percent of respondents said they had difficulty reconciling their religious beliefs with traumatic war-zone events. Battle creates moral confusion, and it can leave a soldier spiritually as well as physically wounded.

Unlike many other traumatic experiences, combat can cause "moral pain" arising from "the realization that one has committed acts with real and terrible consequences," according to a seminal 1981 article in PSYCHOLOGY TODAY by Peter Marin. He was writing about Vietnam, but his overarching thesis could be applied to any military conflict. Profound moral distress is the "real horror" of war, yet its effect on those who fight is rarely discussed.

The difficulty of talking about the spiritual wounds of war was apparent in October when the Episcopal Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Mass., announced a four-day retreat at its monastery called "Binding Up Our Wounds," for men and women returning from places of war. Nobody showed up.

A November report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association underscores the magnitude of the problem. After they return from combat in Iraq, one-in-five active-duty soldiers need mental health care. For reservists, the numbers were even higher: Two out of five need treatment. And one 2004 study concluded that veterans who avail themselves of mental health services appear to be driven more by guilt and the weakening of their religious faith than by the severity of their PTSD symptoms.

"In a war, in a firefight, you're both victim and perpetrator at the same time," says the Rev. Alan Cutter, general presbyter of southern Louisiana for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a former Navy officer who served in Vietnam. "At its heart, a trauma, and especially a war trauma, leaves a wound to the human spirit. When I came back, my spirit was pretty well shredded and ripped."

Marin wrote that moral pain or guilt erroneously remained a form of psychological neurosis or pathological symptom, "something to escape rather than learn from," and he alleged that therapy failed to take moral experience into account. More than a quarter-century later, many experts feel little has changed.

"Once the category of PTSD was established in the early '80s, that swallowed the veteran whole," says William Mahedy, an Episcopal priest and former Army chaplain who has spent 33 years working with veterans in southern California. "Combat creates far more wide-ranging problems than stress."

It's not just the act of taking a life that raises the kinds of questions Mahedy says can only be addressed spiritually and philosophically. Witnessing death and suffering also goes to the heart of life's meaning: Why did God, if there is a God, allow this? Why is killing the enemy not a sin? How can I be forgiven? Why couldn't I save my comrade? Why am I alive when I don't deserve to be? Psychology isn't always equipped to answer such questions.

"Trauma can be characterized as a sense of betrayal of one's experiences: life wasn't supposed to be this way," says the Rev. Jackson Day, an Army chaplain in the central highlands of Vietnam from 1968 to 1969 and now the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Upperco, Maryland. "The faith parallel to that would be the statement, 'God has let me down. I did my part, and God didn't do his.'"

In his book ACHILLES IN VIETNAM (1995), clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay explored combat trauma through a close reading of the ancient text of the Iliad and his own experiences treating Vietnam veterans with chronic PTSD. Those with lifelong psychological injury, he argued, had suffered a betrayal of "what's right" -- of leadership, trust, the dead, the social and moral order -- above and beyond war's "usual" horror and grief. Those whose belief in God's love was shattered by war suffered another betrayal: their worldview and sense of virtue were obliterated.
go here for more
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1113/exclusive.html

Another PTSD soldier with "less than honorable" discharge

Ex-soldier fights for normal life
The Post-Standard - Syracuse.com - Syracuse,NY,USA
Sunday, August 31, 2008
DICK CASE
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST

David Marr is coming out of a closet filled with demons.

He's talking about being messed up on drugs, being homeless, being divorced from his wife and losing custody of his children. He's also talking about his 20 years of experience in the military and how he turned his life around, finally.

David credits the Rescue Mission and the Department of Veterans Affairs with giving him the help he needed.

"My heart went out to him." Randy Crichlow explains. Randy manages the Mission's independent living program. "We watched him stay with us and stabilize. I'd say he had plenty of issues and a low level of trust when he came to us in November 2007. Now we're fast friends."

David and Randy have an ongoing pingpong tournament at the Mission, even though he checked out in May. David's ahead, 20 to 16 games.

David says he came to the Rescue Mission a broken man, unable to admit it. He'd been kicked out of the Army, after 20 years, because of a cocaine habit. His wife of 17 years, Laura, divorced him. She has custody of their three children - David III, 17, Valerie, 13, and Lauren, 10.

Now he's off drugs, although still taking medication, after a successful rehabilitation program at Canandaigua Veterans Hospital. He's got a place to live, with his girlfriend in Mattydale. His ex lives on the same street and he sees the kids often. His son, David, just started as a freshman at State University College at Oneonta.

And David's a college student himself, about to start the third semester of a program in emergency management at Onondaga Community Collge. He talks about working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and running for office.

We sat under a tree in the front yard of the home where he lives on a quiet street off Malden Road. The tranquility is interrupted occasionally by a speeding car and the roar of a plane out of Hancock Field nearby.

I ask David if the aircraft noise brings back memories of his service in civil affairs (in the 403rd Civil Affairs unit) in Bosnia, North Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.
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PTSD Final battle of war

After war, the price they pay goes on. They gave their best to us. Isn't it time to return the favor and do our best for them?

PTSD Final battle of war

This is the newest video I did on PTSD. Aside from these faces, there are more who are still alive, still fighting the battle to stay alive. They are the reason I do what I do. They are the reason thousands of others do what they do. Their lives are worth saving no matter what it takes and it's about time we did it. Vietnam veterans still lose their battles with PTSD and so do Gulf War veterans, just as the Korean veterans and all other veterans before them did. We have no excuses left. We've been at this for too many years to excuse the failures of this country when it comes to those who serve it. Everyday more veterans take their own lives.

As you watch the video, remember the stories behind the faces of just some of the warriors we've lost that should still be here.

The tragic death earlier this month of a 26-year-old Navy veteran who hung himself with an electrical cord while under the care of a Spokane, Washington Veterans Administration hospital depression underscores what veterans advocacy groups say is evidence of an epidemic of suicides due failures by the VA to identify and treat war veterans afflicted with severe mental health problems.

Lucas Senescall, who suffered from severe depression, was the sixth veteran who committed suicide this year after seeking treatment at the Spokane VA, according to a report published last weekend in the Spokesman Review.

Senescall’s father said his son was “begging for help and [the VA] kicked him to the curb,” according to the July 20 report in the Spokesman Review.
go here for more
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4525&Itemid=81

Marine Chad Oligschlaeger lost fight against PTSD
At Memorial Day: Another Iraq Vet, With PTSD, Suicide

Posted May 25, 2008 09:01 AM (EST)On Memorial Day weekend, yet another American family is mourning the death of son who survived the war in Iraq -- only to fall victim at home from post traumatic shock disorder.The family lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Marine was Chad Oligschlaeger, age 21, who committed suicide this week at the Twenty Nine Palms base in California.While the cause of his death is still being investigated, family members say he was taking eight different types of medications to deal with post traumatic stress disorder after serving two tours in Iraq.

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

From Queens to Kuwait, Where a Life Was Ended
Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman fatally shot herself in Kuwait last year.From Queens to Kuwait, Where a Life Was Ended

In the space of three months last year, three members of the U.S. Army who had been part of a logistics group in Kuwait committed suicide. Two of them — a colonel and a major — had power over contract awards and had been accused of taking bribes just before they killed themselves.The third was Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman of Queens. In a war that has cost the lives of more than 3,700 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, the death of one woman by her own hand has attracted little attention beyond the circle of shattered family and friends.Yet those who know her say that questions about Sergeant Lannaman’s death remain unsettled, and go well beyond psychic agonies that she struggled with her entire life. “From the day she was born, she was different,” Barbara Lannaman, her mother, said. “Life was just not satisfactory to her.”

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Saturday, September 1, 2007

WOUNDS OF WAR Mental troubles plagued man before suicide

WOUNDS OF WAR

For one veteran, struggle didn't end

Mental troubles plagued man before suicide

By Laura Ungarlungar@courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal

RELATED VIDEO: Derek Henderson Interviews

Derek Henderson's hands shook as he held the railing on the Clark Memorial Bridge and stared down at the dark waters of the Ohio River.A few feet away stood Aisha "Nikki" McGuire and her boyfriend, Patrick Craig, who had spotted Henderson while driving by. They begged him not to jump -- "It's not worth it," they said.Henderson wouldn't say what brought him there. "I don't want to talk about it," he told Craig, before climbing over the railing and hanging for a moment off the other side.

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Jason Cooper

When he went to the VA, they didn't have room to treat him that day," said the mother of Jason Cooper, an Army reservist in the Iraq war. Jason hung himself four months after coming back to Iowa. He was 23
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/49226/

Joshua Omvig

After a long-fought battle, the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act (H.R. 327) overcame its last congressional hurdle Tuesday when it passed in the House for the second time by a vote of 417-0.
Introduced by Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-3rd District, the bill directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop and implement a comprehensive program addressing suicide prevention. The bill is named after Joshua Omvig, from Grundy Center, Iowa, an Iraq War veteran who served in the Army Reserve and took his own life in December 2005 after an 11-month deployment.
http://iowaindependent.com/1324/after-long-fought-battle-veterans-suicide-prevention-bill-passes

Army Reservist Lance Waldorf totes a child while serving in Afghanistan in 2004. The financial consultant was expecting orders for a third tour. (Waldorf family photo)

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Major Lance Waldorf, suicide spotlights toll of repeated deployments

Michigan veteran's suicide spotlights toll of repeated deployments

Oralandar Brand-Williams / The Detroit News

HOLLY TOWNSHIP -- Lana Waldorf took calls from concerned family and friends Wednesday evening and tried to make sense of her husband's apparent suicide in a military cemetery in Oakland County.

Lance Waldorf, a 40-year-old major in the U.S. Army Reserve and a resident of Bingham Farms, was found dead Monday afternoon of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly Township."The war had a great deal to do with this," said Lana Waldorf, about her husband's death.Waldorf said her husband suffered from post-traumatic stress and increasing depression after returning home from serving as a civil affairs specialist in Afghanistan.

go here for more

http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2008/06/major-lance-waldorf-suicide-spotlights.html

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sgt. Brian Rand worth training but not worth saving

Since the start of the Iraq war, Fort Campbell, a sprawling installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, has seen a spike in the number of suicides and soldiers suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Sgt. Brian Rand, shown here grilling chicken in Iraq, killed himself a few months after being discharged from his second tour of duty in Iraq. Rand believe he was being haunted by the ghost of the Iraqi man he killed.

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Camp Pendleton 80% PTSD at Wounded Warrior Battalion
"Eighty percent of our residents have some degree of PTSD," Lawhorne said, referring to the disorder that requires counseling and group therapy in mild cases and more intensive psychiatric treatment and medications in its more severe form. "At the same time, we're seeing a lot more TBI cases."
MILITARY: Treating the troopsWounded Warrior Battalion focuses on injured Marines and sailorsBy MARK WALKER - Staff Writer Friday, June 20, 2008 5:13 PM PDTCAMP PENDLETON ---- Nearly three years and 14 surgeries after the right side of his body was torn apart by shrapnel in a roadside bombing in Iraq, Marine Sgt. Sean Webster is working to save his military career.After he was injured, he had visions of becoming a drill instructor; now, he'd be grateful for a job training fellow Marines in some less-intensive discipline."My goal is to stay in the Marine Corps on limited duty," the 23-year-old Virginia native said during a Wednesday interview at the base. "What I'd really like to do is stay as a staff member here."
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Borne on the 4th of July: Wounded Iraq Vet Who Helped Others a Likely Suicide

By Greg Mitchell Published: July 04, 2008 12:10 PM ET
NEW YORK Sean Webster was helping other severely wounded Iraq vets cope with their injuries but, in the end, apparently could not quite save himself. For the past year, Sgt. Sean Webster, 23, had worked in Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Pendleton, aiding sailors and Marines wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan get much-needed medical and psychological care. Just two weeks ago he was featured in a front-page story on this effort in the local North County Times newspaper. "I'm a wounded Marine and I know what these guys are going through,'" he said.Webster had been severely injured by an anti-tank mine explosion in September 2005 and underwent 14 surgeries on an arm and a leg. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday: "At the Wounded Warrior Battalion, he felt at home. He was the barracks manager and provided encouragement to the other guys, urging them not to get despondent. Forty-one troops live at the barracks. Staffers are tracking another 600 to make sure they're getting appropriate help."Like many wounded Marines, Webster wanted to remain in the Corps. 'What I'd really like to do is stay as a staff member here,' he told the newspaper."On June 23, Webster's body was found in an isolated part of the base. It was quickly ruled not an accident and homicide was not immediately ruled out. But now the Naval Criminal Investigate Service is probing the death as a "probable" suicide. There is a veritable epidemic of suicides among Iraq vets these days.
go here for more
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003824506

Story from Vietnam Veteran's Wife for the sake of the new PTSD wives

I get a lot of email. Some of them are simple and some are complicated. Some of them break my heart and others warm my heart. I suppose it comes with doing this as long as I have. A woman named Pat emailed me the other day and told me how much we had in common. She shared part of her life with me and in the process of wanting to help the other families going through all of this, she wrote the following. Pat wants all of you to know that you are not alone and don't have to suffer in silence or go through any of this alone. We've been where you are and know the pain all too well. We also know what it's like to have them still reach out to take our hand and know there is still love that lives on. This is Pat's story.

At the age of 32, I met a man who wasn’t intimidated by my independence or education. A man who made me laugh, introduced spontaneity into my life and who cherished me. He was a 30 year old Nam vet...and twice divorced. But we shared the same family values and dreams for the future. When he proposed, I told him that I was not going to be his third wife; I would be his LAST wife. I only intended to get married once.

He told me that he had a dark side. I had no idea what he meant. I was to find out within months of our marriage. He was driven at work. Always put in more than was required. Naively, I just assumed he had a strong work ethic. I didn’t realize he was trying to escape demons. He had warned me about nightmares; told me how to wake him so he wouldn’t inadvertently hurt me. As a GI Brat growing up in a family with a strong, military tradition, I didn’t think it that unusual since I had several uncles with the same problem.

3 months after we married, however, his behavior began to change noticeably. He began “self-medicating” with alcohol. And he began seeing things that weren’t there. Hearing people calling him for help. Sometimes hearing a child cry would make him jumpy. The smell of urine would bring flashbacks. He had to sit with his back to the walls in restaurants. Anxiety attacks in crowded places. Sudden noises, like party balloons popping or a car back-firing would make him jump or even “hit the deck”. He would be embarassed and apologetic, telling me it sounded like small arms fire.

I was to learn that he had entered a 6 month period of “anniversary dates”. Not pleasant anniversaries. Anniversaries of the Tet Offensive, of being left for dead under a pile of bodies, of being a VC POW (until he managed to escape), of ambushes, being overrun, of being shot down, wounded and crawling and hiding for 7 days until he reached a friendly LZ. All of them crashing down on him like an avalanche of horror.

One day he came home from work and instead of coming into the kitchen where I was washing baby bottles, he went downstairs to the basement. That was unusual but I didn’t think too much about it. Then suddenly I felt an overwhelming sense of panic. I dropped the baby bottle and ran down the stairs. He was standing under them, in the dark, with a pistol in his hand. He was exhausted and terrified of going to sleep because at least when he was awake, he could see what was happening around him as well as the “film” his mind was playing. But he couldn’t make himself blow his brains out because he didn’t want me to have to live with that image forever burned in my brain.

The term PTSD wasn’t known then, or at least not known by many. But I knew my husband was suffering from “Combat Fatigue”. He didn’t want to believe that. Hell, he was a Hillbilly. A rough, tough coal miner. A combat hardened Marine. A third generation Marine... But one who’d been on Valium (through a civilian doctor) since he finished his second tour of duty.

He ended up starting therapy before our first anniversary. The man I had fallen in love with was slowly disappearing, being overshadowed by an often cold, uncommunicative loner. Sometimes I felt like a Life Guard, hanging on to a drowning man, refusing to let him go under.

But I had an advantage that many of the younger wives of combat vets didn’t have. Growing up on military bases. A brother and friends who’d gone to Vietnam while I was in college. I was 33 years old. And I had enough psych courses under my belt that I was able to "deal" with the nightmares, hallucinations, rages, and suicidal ideations as well as monitor and administer the massive quantities of anti-psychotic medications the VA was doling out... (and to eventually question the efficacy of most). Even so, the pain of seeing him look at me, with total confusion in his eyes - knowing he doesn’t know who I am but thinks he should... the pain and sorrow was indescribable.

His cup of stress was full to the brim from memories alone. Anything at all, no matter how minor, was like that one extra drop that causes the cup to overflow. Every car “accident” - always single car accidents, one near fatal - happened immediately following his 6 months of anniversary dates, when he had reached the limits of his endurance.

At one point, we lived on the Texas coast. Driving to the Houston VA was a challenge. It’s a nice, straight highway but for long stretches, it has rice paddies on both sides. He drove hunched over the steering wheel , knuckles white. Eyes darting constantly left and right. Muttering about damn rice paddies. I knew what he was doing and finally told him “I’ll drive. You watch for Gooks.” After that, I always drove that stretch.

I found myself “interpreting” other people’s actions and comments to my husband so he wouldn’t deck someone who had merely glanced our way but whom he thought was challenging him. He was quick to anger and quick to fight. But he was mostly able to keep his promise not to get in fights after I told him I knew he could take care of himself but no matter how the other guy looked, it hurt me to see him with scraped and swollen knuckles.

It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t fun. But the man I loved was still in there and I was determined to beat back the demons that were dragging him down. We lost some friends who just saw him as crazy or irrational or scary. I remember once asking “Who are we not friends with this week?” His head kind of jerked, he looked at me for a moment and then he laughed. It stopped another rampage over an imagined insult or slight.

He had no patience at all. If we decided to go somewhere, the girls and I had to be ready to go the second he was. I’d remind him that no one’s life was in jeopardy if we were slower than he wanted. The thing that did the trick, though, was the time I finally took the car keys from him, handed over our two small daughters and told him that this time, HE could get them ready to go. I’D sit in the car and honk the horn.

He started group therapy and we found friends who understood because they were going through the same thing with minor variations. Almost all had done the “geographical tour”, moving from job to job or state to state as they tried to escape what was inside them. Some had used alcohol, prescription drugs or even street drugs to escape the psychological pain. And, like so many of the guys, his previous marriages didn't last simply because he couldn't let himself care that much and did everything he could to protect his fragile emotions from being fully engaged. A lesson he learned too well from losses in combat.

For some reason, he trusted me enough to open up about a few things that happened in Nam - things that clawed and burned in his mind. Which was both a good and a bad thing for him. He knew he had a safety net but letting those painful memories out (those he hadn't completely blocked, anyway) ripped the scabs off some horrendous memories.

Our two daughters were old enough to know that their Daddy was different from most of their friends’ daddies. But our daughters maintain that the thing that helped them understand their dad the most was that I always explained his behavior to them in terms that were age appropriate. One thing I'm especially proud of was when a VA Therapist asked me how I'd managed to raise such normal kids. While they didn't always LIKE him or what he was doing, they always loved him and knew that he loved them in return, even when he would "go bush", miss out on important events in their lives, or self medicate to excess.

And yes... he went to counseling and group therapies. We went through marital counseling and family counseling as well after one particularly rough patch. All of which were extremely helpful only because he was able to get outside his comfort zone, accept the validity of our feelings and make the effort to change certain behaviors.

When his PTSD, appointments and hospitalizations began to interfere with his ability to support his family, we began the torturous process of applying for disability. And we had to do it all over again for Social Security. Writing to every doctor he’d ever seen, every hospital he’d ever been in and trying to locate witnesses who had made it home, up to ten years after the fact.

I had to help him with the VA claim statement. I remember sitting, after the girls were in bed, writing down what he said as he spilled his guts and his pain all over the dining room table. Crying inside because of the horrors he went through and yet not daring to show any emotion on my face because it would have made him stop talking - for fear of upsetting me, disgusting me, or making me think less of him. And then having to sort through the jumble and make complete, intelligible sentences out of it.

I am eternally grateful to the PVA (Paralyzed Veterans of America) service rep who took the 13” thick stack of documents covering 10 years and went to bat for my husband.

In spite of one VA doctor who attempted to keep me out, I sat in on every appointment with my husband after I realized that the doctor didn’t know half of what was going on. This was something I felt very strongly about. I had to play an active role in his treatment. No one knew him better than I did.

The doctor would ask “How have you been since I last saw you?” And my husband would reply “Fine.” Then I’d jump in and tell the doctor what I’d observed. He WASN’T “fine”. And the fact that he couldn’t recognize his actions as irrational proved my point! Reactions that can keep you alive in combat are not always appropriate Stateside. Asking some of these guys how they are is like trying to get a blind person to describe the color yellow.

And I remember the anger I would feel each time a new doctor was assigned to my husband. The dreaded First Three Questions: Have you ever seen anyone killed? Have you ever been in fear of your life? Have you ever killed anyone? Check his records! 3 Purple Hearts. Siver Star. Bronze Star. Presidential Unit Citation. Combat Air Crew Wings with 3 or 4 devices. You don’t get those sitting behind a desk!

We've had our share of difficulties and I've often been asked why or how I stuck it out with him. My answer was always very simple: He's a good, kind, and decent man with serious problems. I wouldn't leave him if he had Cancer; I won't leave him because he's got emotional or mental problems. With close friends, I laugh and say "Because I'm strong, stupid or stubborn. Haven't figured out which yet!"

After almost 30 years, we're still married. Our family is stronger and closer than ever. The grandchildren all love their Pa-Pa and he adores them. Both daughters have chosen careers in medical fields where they can help others and are totally comfortable dealing with what some of their co - workers call "crazy Nam vets". And they're quite vocal in the defense of these guys. I'm proud of them. But then, almost all of our best friends are men (and their families) that we met while they were in the “Nuts and Flakes” wards at various VA Hospitals.

And I'm proud of my Marine, a crew chief and door gunner on med-evac choppers who served two tours (during which he endured being shot down 13 times, left for dead 3 times and 58 days as a POW of the VC). Once, he apologized to me for "being so weak". I told him he was the strongest man I'd ever met and that I would never want to be with a man who saw and went through what he did... without it bothering him.

My husband is worth the effort it’s taken and the rewards are immeasurable. He’s not “well” by any means, and he may never be because serious help came too late. But we have a good marriage filled with humor, love, respect and trust that goes both ways. Even with the problems, that’s still more than many have.

I have hope for our new Walking Wounded. No one questions the reality of PTSD anymore. More help is out there. I just hope that those who need it are informed that it is available... without the stigma my generation had to fight and without the delays that make it less successful.

Pat Kemm Mann
Fruitland Mesa
Crawford, CO 81415


Support our Troops. Then remember that Veterans are Troops who have already served. SUPPORT OUR VETERANS.

Army finally understands mind-body-spirit connection

Army to Revolutionize Healthcare with Whole-Person Concept
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 29, 2008) - A change in healthcare begins March 1 across the Army, the Department of Defense and the nation, said the executive officer for the assistant surgeon general for warrior care and transition.



Phase 2: Assessment

Next comes the assessment phase when doctors, physical and vocational therapists, mental-health workers, social workers and others will evaluate the Soldiers in the four areas of body, mind, heart and spirit.

Physical well-being not only means the Soldiers are healing and going to physical therapy, it can mean they need to get back into shape or start weight-loss programs, Dominguez said, especially if they want to return to duty.

In the area of the mind, Dominguez said, the Army will pay close attention to Soldiers who have traumatic brain injuries and provide neurocognitive testing, and check for speech and language problems, problem-solving skills and concentration skills.

Experts will take a close look at Soldiers’ abilities and interests, what kind of jobs they want to do and what they can do. Most importantly, the Army is going to provide educational and vocational training for Soldiers in WTUs, and Soldiers will be required to participate as much as they are physically and mentally able.

Heart and Soul

In the area of the heart, medical officials will examine Soldiers’ relationships, how they are able to resolve conflicts and any socially unacceptable behaviors.

Col. David Reese, director for ministry initiatives at the Office of the Chief of Chaplains, said the Strong Bonds program of marriage retreats is being expanded to meet the specific needs of wounded Soldiers and their Families. In addition to the regular curriculum focusing on communication skills, the program will be handicapped accessible and provide forums on challenges specific to them, such as grief and loss. Some chaplains have already begun offering specific weekends to wounded warriors and their Families on an informal basis.

Dominguez said that spirit can include anything from religious support — Reese said chaplains will be assigned to all WTUs at the battalion level — to hobbies Soldiers’ enjoy. She said officials are especially concerned when Soldiers’ injuries make their previous hobbies impossible. What would a Soldier who liked to paint but has been blinded do for a hobby? Dominguez said they might help him or her learn to sculpt, for example.

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It's about time! Now if they can get the rest of the jackasses still thinking PTSD is a crock, we'll be that much closer to taking care of our veterans for real.

Fresh from Iraq, Fort Hood soldiers cope with life back home

Fresh from Iraq, Fort Hood soldiers cope with life back home
Newly returned soldiers get counseling to make transition from battlefield.
By Robert W. Gee

INTERNATIONAL STAFF


Thursday, December 13, 2007

NOLANVILLE — The nightmare is usually the same. First, an explosion. He is thrown across the room. The walls and ceiling collapse on top of him. His mouth fills with dust. Then, silence.

Staff Sgt. Steven Johnson escaped that day in February with a Purple Heart and returned to combat. Three of his comrades died.


"Ever since that happened, I've just wanted to be home with my family," Johnson, 29, of Spring said late last month, near the end of his 14-month tour of duty in Iraq.

Now that he's home, he has found that the war followed him.

As in Iraq, he sleeps in fits and starts. His nightmare revisits him as he sleeps beside his wife. Once since his return Dec. 1, he was strangling her as they slept until she pushed him away.

"It's scary to be in bed with him," said Sarah Johnson, 26.

Like many of his fellow returning soldiers from the Fort Hood-based 1st Battalion, 12th Regiment, Johnson has symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to psychological trauma, which affects as many as one in five soldiers returning from Iraq, according to the Veterans Affairs Department.

It's one piece of an often difficult transition from combat to everyday life in America.

"It's not the same when you come home. It's never the same," said Maj. Leslie Ann Parrish, who oversees a clinical review at Fort Hood of soldiers returning from war zones.

About 60 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq to Fort Hood, the largest military base in the United States, are required to seek mental health treatment, and an additional 20 percent are recommended for treatment, according to Army officials. In extreme cases, soldiers are escorted to an Army hospital because they are considered to be suicidal or homicidal.
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