Fighting PTSD: My Story
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There have been several news reports, and a recent spate of Hollywood movies, featuring veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As usual, they are heavy on the sensational, and light on the facts. So, what does PTSD really look like?
It looks like me.
I never once fired a round at an enemy. The only time I fired my weapon was at a target in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert while a bunch of bored wild camels looked on. But over the course of my military career, and my tour in Iraq, I saw blood, and lots of it. I saw a young man at Fort Carson, Colorado who had survived a deployment only to die a horrific death in a motorcycle wreck. Alcohol was involved, but I suspect that detachment and a feeling of invincibility [that some young men carry around after deployment], was also involved. These are all symptoms of PTSD. I saw wounded patients. I saw people literally lose their minds from being “in country” and just dealing with the crushing stress of day to day life. I saw attempted suicides, to include a few members of my unit. The one thing that sticks with me are the hands.
There are nightmares about a pair of amputated human hands. They belonged to a man not much younger than me. He was severely wounded when he was placing an IED. He had been paid by the insurgency to do it. He did not actually have much choice, however because when a man has children, and no way to find a job, he will do what he has to do to take care of them. Had he refused to do this odious job, he would most certainly have been killed.
It would have been better had he arrived at the hospital dead. Instead, he came as a screaming hunk of flesh barely recognizable as human. The surgeons were trying to save him, in part because once a wounded person comes through the hospital doors, their affiliations, intentions, and ideologies are forgotten. They are patients, and we treat them all to the best of our abilities. He had several surgeries, to include the one in which his mangled hands were amputated. They found their way into my specimen refrigerator and did not find their way out again for three months.
This is what haunts my nightmares: A pair of amputated hands in a bag. I feel guilt, anger and many other incomprehensible emotions. I know that many people would expect me to feel anger and hatred towards this man who was planning on attacking and killing Americans and their allies, but I just feel anger that he had to die. I feel anger that no one came to claim his remains.
There was also another event that gives me nightmares. A young Marine was brought in dead. He was not killed by enemy fire. He died by his own hand, after less than a week in country. He killed himself because the outgoing unit scared him so badly that he thought going off base was a virtual death sentence. I do not know what he looked like. He did not have a face.
This is the problem for those of us in POG (people other than grunt, a derogatory claim in the military for people who are not combat troops) jobs is that people seem to believe incorrectly that in order to have PTSD you must have been under direct fire and contact with the enemy. So there are many of us out there, hurting, but afraid to seek help because we are afraid of not being taken seriously. That is an additional wound for us. We waded through blood, and fought death and disease, only to come back from deployment and be treated as if our deployment is not as worthy as those who killed enemies.
I cannot speak to the issue of homelessness, but I can talk about addiction. The VA has a real problem with handing out big bags of various pills. Many veterans do not know enough about medicine to question whether or not they need all of these medications. I had the problem with having to actively fight my doctors on how much and how many different pills I was on. I had to go through very unpleasant diazepam (valium) withdrawals. Some are not as strong as me. They begin to take their prescription medications improperly and this causes the VA to cut off their pain medications, and any other habit forming drugs.
Included in this draconian policy is a trigger mechanism that cuts off medications if any illegal drugs are found in a veteran’s system, including marijuana. Oddly enough, if a veteran lives in a state with liberal medical marijuana laws, this is not an issue. It is well documented that drug addiction causes difficulty with employment and maintaining a home. When the issues of PTSD are added to the mix, that is a deadly combination indeed.
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An eye-opening piece. The awful catch-22 is that it would be a sad testament to mankind if witnessing such things didn’t have a psychological impact…and yet that very same admirable quality underlies the torment for those who bear the burden of these experiences. Thank you for your service, and for what you’re doing to raise awareness and understanding.
The fucking VA is a disgrace today and is as bad as it was during the ‘Nam era. Somebody needs to do something about it instead of just yapping.
The PTSD tag could be hung on just about everyone who was directly or remotely involved in the fighting. There are days when the nightmares follow me and I just can’t forget. I want to forget. Thanks a lot for this Robynn. I hear you. We hear you.