Now for PTSD. Here's some things you don't hear talked about. WW2 Vets came back with likely the highest percentage of disability pensions. Their also was based on percentage but no one made them run through a red tape gauntlet. It was called doing the right thing by giving them justified compensation for injuries and disabilities suffered in the line of duty.
Korean War Vets faired close to the same but things changed drastically with Nam because civilians with cushy government jobs began using their official capacity to lash out against the war and what better way than to in their eyes take it out on the vets. WW2 and Korean vets got treated good by society many Nam Vets got shammed for acts our cowardly presidents and congress did.
Now why the increase in PTSD cases? It's really fairly simple. A Korean War Vet and Nam Vet saw a set time that they would be in country {meaning deployed in the nation we were at war with} and rotated home. Typically that was less than a year and a half per enlistment. Enlistment obligation for draftee was four years active duty and when you did that four years you went home and never heard from Uncle again.
Today a twenty year Lifer has likely not served in peace time. Although undeclared by congress our troops have been deployed into combat zones since Gulf War One almost non stop. The Iraqi War vets are seeing much more combat zone time per enlistment than even WW2 Vets saw. Enlistment obligations are eight years now not six. Meaning a typical first time enlistee may see a year or longer deployment to Iraq, returned to the states and in a few months deployed to Afghanistan or they were sent right back to Iraq. Some went as many as four or five times and again I'm talking first enlistment times. Worse was the fact our own government lied about certain things. For example the chemical attacks some were exposed too in Gulf War One.
The human mind can only handle so much carnage in a set amount of time without damage occurring. Each person is different in their own threshold as too what they can handle before PTSD becomes an issue. PTSD is not just a combat related disorder it can hit anyone.
You just don't walk into a Shrinks office, be given a bottle of pills, and be over it. It takes years in therapy to heal and that is if you get help. Pills treat the symptoms not the disorder. PTSD to be cured if a cure can be obtained takes one on one therapy with someone qualified to help the person put the events in the mind where they need to be.
So RF what could you handle? Be honest. Being in a wreck with fatalities and someone dismembered laying beside you? Thank GOD I never had that one. But what about your family? What about seeing your kid severely injured in a wreck and you think the kid died when you get there? How long do you think you would have that on your mind?
Death? One minute you are happily married and kissing your wife good bye as you leave for work. You get to work and suddenly a couple of co-workers come up and say hey you need to call home. They get you down from the roof first then tell you call home. You call home expecting your wife to say something like the car won't start but it's not your wife on the other end. It's a distraught family member who found her dead.
Yes death is a part of living. You go through the hurt and you try and move on. You meet another and get to know the woman. You go on a few dates and start realizing it's deeper than a friendship. Everything's going fine & you start talking about a future together and suddenly out of the blue the person collapses to the floor before your very eyes. You put her in a car and take off for the ER.
On the way there two kids are screaming because their Mom is dieing. The woman is giving you details to you as to what they are seeing. It's Death & the beyond! The process of passing from this world into the next and the person is a healthcare worker knowing what is happening to her and has sat with many dieing patients. But miracles happen you get to the ER on time and the doctor give a 50/50 chance for survival but they can't say what happened because they don't know. Her arms are locked to her chest and if you try to pull them down they fold back up to the chest.
Hours turn into days and days turn into weeks and weeks to months with no answers but some improvements in arms and hands. In the mean time you go back to work. Finally a doctor tells both of you that there is an issue in the spinal cord in the upper C section which controls limb movements from the neck down as well as breathing. Anything below C-5 and some function comes back usually. This was at C-5 & C-6 level. The prognoses if a five year life expectancy. BTW that was by 1985 medical standards and still is true today.
What do you do? Run away? Try to deal with a sudden onset of loss of any feelings for anyone? Pray, then pray many times more? What about the love? What about the life you spoke about together? What about more questions to answer and consider than you'd answer in decades of life? Do you think both persons would have some issues start showing up? Life goes on. Decisions are made and together you decide to put a life back together and work with what you are given.
Fact: most marriages where a spouse becomes seriously disabled have a high failure rate. The uninjured spouse places an unrealistic demand that the other heal themselves and they demand life as before. A MD told us that not a shrink. It was the spinal rehab medical director. We married after the fact and he said we'd likely be OK because the issue of the spouses disability was accepted.
With spinal issues comes health issues. Urinary Tract Infections for a healthy person means some antibiotics. For a spinal cord patient it can mean pneumonia and CHF in a matter of hours. You adjust and go back to work after family is trained to assist in care. Then more life events.
One of your teenage kids calls and is hysterical. She saw her sister in the car in front of her get hit T-Boned and she's not sure if she's alive. You run out the door to get there and seeing whats going on assume the worst because a blanket is covering the body. But although it she is in serious condition they extract her and later that evening the surgeon says she's not going to have use of her leg. You now have two too care for plus your full time job.
The kid is tough and after almost a year is walking on the leg again. Things are looking up. You and your wife take a long weekend away and have a good time. Driving home out of the blue suddenly you have no idea where you are, how you got there, where you were going, how long you'd been there, and you're doing 70 MPH on the interstate. You've worked in medical facilities and seen it all. You say to yourself I'm having a Stroke or this is MS.
Your helpless wife looks over at you and screams what's wrong with you? Although you've done nothing to get her attention. It's on your face. You can muster a Nothing! reply and keep driving. About 25 minutes later things start getting back to normal sorta. Your exhausted though and scared $&%^*&^^.
You shrug it off and go to work the next evening. Only you're weak. You go to the doctor and he can't find anything wrong. You'd been having some problems the past couple months but this is different. After a month you go back to work and then on a family vacation you'd been planning.
On the vacation you have a very, very, close call with two tractor trailers who nearly sandwich you because you had no way out. Yeah I know happens all the time. But before you left on vacation your wife tells you about her nightmare. There was a wreck and we were laying on the interstate. Two weeks later you're back at work and go to a trouble call. It's a large complex so you drive. You stop at a red light because well Duh it's red but the person behind you doesn't. A 78 Chevy K-5 vs a late 80's Honda Accord who won that one? You get out and check on the other person and it's a woman with a baby. You look in the car and the baby isn't moving. Her car is totaled and the kid is in the front seat airbags deployed. You assume the worst then the kid wakes up. But the damage is implanted in your brain.
A week later you go on a routine trouble call about a noise in a residents apartment. Thirty minutes after that you aren't able to function as describe in another post I made on this thread. All of this happened from 1985-1994.
I tried three times to return to work. The Social Security Examiners two different ones said I could never work. There wasn't even a name for it at first because they couldn't separate symptoms as they overlapped. A disabled person may be able to function at home but not in a workplace. That tends to make persons suspicious of the disability thus they say fraud many times without any knowledge of their condition.
Certain noises through out the hearing frequency spectrum can put me into seizures. So can some optical events. Xanax helps control it. It's not all frequencies. Fireworks don't bother me but a car with the sub woofers blaring away that you can hear two blocks away does. The human skull is part of your hearing. That is why the Audiologist places a speaker on your skull when testing. It's like some persons can not tolerate being within a couple miles of a wind turbine due to the noise it makes. Same cause.
Vets who have severe startle reactions to fireworks most likely also have severe Vestibular Damage and they can also have PTSD or have both disorders at the same time. The problem is Mental Health doesn't take into consideration Vestibular Disorders or damage in diagnosing PTSD and it gets overlooked. The Vestibular Damage is the likely culprit but it triggers or compounds the PTSD symptoms and vise versa. It's two conflicting disorders triggering each other. Common Sense says if a large artillery round went off and a Vet was injured he would have Vestibular issues also.
How tough a man are you anyway? What could you endure? Do you believe being tough makes you Immune to PTSD? How much can you handle? What if you managed to finally put the PTSD behind you then when life is going OK all hell breaks loose ll over again. Your sister {only sibling} dies, your aunt dies, your second wife dies, and your best friend dies all within a six week period. That is real life. How tough do you think you are?
I'm likely real soon headed back into therapy. Those events I just posted happened from Feb 24 - March 31 of this year. My sister, my aunt, my second wife, and my longtime Navy Buddy died in that timeframe.
PTSD is very real as real as cancer. it's not a matter of how tough a man or woman you are. It's not something most can ever get over alone. The tendency for many is what is referred to as self medication usually by alcohol sometimes illicit drugs to give a brief reprieve from the beast.
Yes I'm on Social Security Disability. Have been since 1994. BTW I could also probably file with VA on my hearing loss as I do have my service record and medical files as proof. I use VA services for Hearing Aids a cost my insurance won't cover but VA will.
My wife and I combined drew $1500 a month total. I draw $900 she drew $600. When she passed my income became $900 a month. No other supplemental income help available I've tried. Right now I've filed Chapter 13 and made a $280 payment. This is my second bankruptcy the first was 28 years ago Chapter 7 on a six figure hospital bill because her insurance company considered a transfer to a spinal rehab center Located in a hospital as a release and canceled her.
Disability is not the Gold Mine Bonanza many like to say it is. My wife was turned down first time and so was I. Family helped us meet bills but still there were expenses I did not put on the family and I owe $12K. Not a lot for many I suppose but it may as well be $120K to me.
I was a caregiver for 29 years. My body shows it that's just the reality of it. I worked till my body and mind said I could do so no more.
I sure won't question a combat Vets PTSD. A typical enlistee now may see as much as three years plus of their first enlistment deployed in a war zone. Some see five years. A much different war than WW2. This one our enemies wrote the ROE's and the enemy isn't wearing a uniform.
You return fire into an area where artillery or sniper fire is coming from it will most likely take out a lot of civilians. Despite the fact their uncle Mohamad was a soldier hiding among the civilians in civilian clothes and they knew it they will use our lawmakers like the late Dirtbag Murtha to persecute our troops.
Too more serious injuries are now being survived thanks to medical technological advances. But with severe injuries and I consider loss of limb such comes cognitive issues. I question many expenses and excesses of government agencies and their abuses. But I'm damned sick and tired of seeing troops taking the brunt of the blame as the so called abusers and fraudsters.
Civilian Soc Security is a lot easier and SSI real easy. IOW military related disability abuse what very few cases manage to get through is a pinhead in a swimming pool in fraud. IMO the bureaucratic nightmare of hoops & red tape service members have to go through to get justifiable compensation for injuries physical or mental is a disgrace upon this nation.
You’re a good man, cva66snipe. Wish there were more with your strength and wisdom.
“Getting a service related disability is the most difficult disability to get “
Yes, it requires a wink-and-a-nod with the separation doctor. The percentage declared, as you know, results in tax-free compensation. It not only is not difficult, it is routine. It is a lie (most of the time) and takes away from folks who have demonstrable combat wounds.
PTSD will only see significant cure rates when there is no longer a monetary incentive to have it. Until then, it will remain incurable, with vets receiving an ongoing revenue stream.
Rent-seeking veterans is nothing new, it’s just taken an outrageous turn with this (subject of the thread) organization putting signs discouraging fireworks because someone may not like it.
Whenever the government hands out money, fraud goes hand-in-hand, as does indignation towards people who point it out, whether it’s SSDI, SS, Welfare, EBT, Obamaphones, etc....
PTSD is just the bucket with which any veteran who wishes to can get money from the government.
It’s the way it is, until the money runs out. Everyone can’t live off of government checks.