Posted on 11/14/2009 12:04:54 PM PST by oneolcop
PTSD
by J.R. 7. November 2009 03:47
I’m more than a little angry right now. Yes, I’m irate that some shitbag Major (“shitbag” is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that’s not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. You want to know what fucking PTSD is like? I'll tell you. You have nightmares that go on for weeks. Mine would always be the same. Wherever the window was in the room in which I was sleeping I would see a bright white flash. I would wake up screaming to my wife “Get up! Get the fuck up! An IED just went off!” Sometimes I would just wake up screaming in agony as I relived the moment where my right arm was ripped from my body by an Iranian shape charge. (I may not know what childbirth feels like, but I know what it's like to go an hour with my arm ripped off without painkillers (I'm allergic to morphine).) PTSD makes you paranoid as hell. “Why is that person staring at me? Are they a threat? Where is the nearest exit? Why are these people so close to me? Why is no one pulling security? What was that noise? Where is the nearest cover? I need to get out of here” You lie wide awake in bed at night wondering if it's safe to go to sleep or if you should get up and start pulling security. When I got home from Walter Reed and started college (a week later, stupid idea) I would often stay up for days at a time without sleeping. Eventually my body would completely shut down from exhaustion and I would sleep for 12 hours or more only to complete the cycle all over again. (I still cannot believe I got all As and Bs.) Since I was injured in a humvee I am especially susceptible on the road to the effects of my PTSD. I still get nervous and hold my breath every time I drive by a piece of trash or tire debris on the shoulder or median. I avoid guardrails and broken down cars on the side of the road. On a couple different occasions I yelled out “tire!” to warn my wife (who was driving) of a potential IED in the road. There was nothing there (no tire, no nothing). One late night while driving home completely exhausted on our small two lane country roads at slow speed I locked up all four tires on my car to keep from hitting a cardboard box in the middle of the road. At that moment I would have bet the contents of my bank account it was an IED. That's what fucking PTSD is like. At no point in time have I ever felt the desire or need to grab a weapon and go shoot someone or something up. At no point in time have I ever grabbed a weapon and broken a law because I felt the need to protect myself. PTSD urges you mitigate the risk of events that happened in your life. But if you've never had anything traumatic happen in your life, you can't fucking have PTSD. If you can get PTSD from treating soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center then why the hell haven't more people snapped? Why haven't all the therapists in physical therapy and occupational therapy, and all the staff on Ward 57 ran around shooting up the place? They have seen far more wounded soldiers than this piece of shit ever did. My occupational and physical therapists, like many of the civilian personnel at Walter Reed, have been there since the beginning of OEF. They have taken care of countless (probably hundreds) Soldiers with a variety of different injuries. Missing arms (like me). Missing legs.. Missing both. Missing parts of the face. Severe burns. Whole chunks of the skull missing. Missing jaws. Ears. Eyes. Severe PTSD. Severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) to the point that Soldiers would forget where they were going while walking the 50 feet from physical therapy to occupational therapy (they would be found wandering the halls unsure where they were supposed to be going. I had a buddy who used to do that walking the 20 feet to prosthetics. My TBI is bad, but not that bad). So why haven't they gone crazy? Because you don't get PTSD from sitting on your ass around Walter Reed. Not only is it not possible to “catch” secondhand PTSD, but it is not that kind of a place. I would know, I was a patient there for nine months. The place is simply not that stressful or chaotic. When I was there my PTSD got better, not worse. And I would be willing to bet my dog tags that I saw far more wounded Soldiers than shit bag major did during our overlapping time there in 2007. I regularly visited Ward 57 to give advice to the new wounded. Other Soldiers and amputees did it for me when I was there so I considered my visits “paying it forward”. I had daily physical and occupational therapy. I regularly partook in activities in and out of Walter Reed with present and past wounded Soldiers. To say that this guy got PTSD from being stationed at Walter Reed is an absolute fucking farce. The people who are making this shit up have never set foot on Walter Reed, let alone met a soldier with PTSD. In order to actually have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you have to go through some sort of traumatic event(s) to have “post stress.” Can therapists be emotionally troubled by the things they hear from patients? Yes. But you cannot catch PTSD from someone. It's not the fucking swine flu. I cannot tell you how angry I am right now as a former patient of Walter Reed. It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for people to use his time there as an excuse for what he has done. It is an absolute fucking slap in the face for all the wonderful people there who help soldiers every single day. Some of the most kind, caring, and noble people I have ever met in my entire life work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center day in and day out helping wounded Soldiers like me. To fallaciously say this guy has PTSD from his time at Walter Reed as an excuse for opening fire on a group of innocent Soldiers is beyond reckless. It's an absolute slap in the face for every caregiver and every wounded warrior who ever set foot on Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
My heart goes out to this man and I agree about the casual use of terms such as PTSD. We are truly butchering our ability to communicate with precision when we allow the media and others to water down what the true meaning is for certain things.
My uncle has PTSD - he was a green beret who fought in the early portion of Viet Nam - now in his 70s’s he suffers many health probs from Agent Orange plus the PTSD. He actually was strangling my aunt (his wife) once in his sleep and that was the beginning of separate bedrooms. He is the greatest guy and I love him dearly - it is an insult to his service and the high cost he paid to associate that scumbag at Hood with anything other than what he plainly is - an evil man with an evil ideology.
And everyone in the media said, "Mission accomplished."
If you can get PTSD from treating soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center then why the hell haven’t more people snapped? Why haven’t all the therapists in physical therapy and occupational therapy, and all the staff on Ward 57 ran around shooting up the place?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Exactly!
How many ICU, emergency room, or burn unit nurses or doctors have shot up a hoard of innocent people? Hm?..Never
I actually read it all and did not mind the punctuation. This man said it from the heart and can be excused from anything he does.
He spoke the truth.
If what I have read is true, this guy counseled people before they went overseas. He would suffer from Pretraumatic Stress Syndrome by Proxy. AKA as WTF
Speaking of the media, I sent this to FOXNews. Being the weekend, I doubt the weekend news team will do anything with it. Everybody should send it to the media. If we bomb them with multiple copies, maybe one or two will “stick”.
It breaks my heart that we have a pack of traitors running this country - private and political - who dare use our soldiers as human fodder for their political and money games.
With the democrats and rinos, we can not afford to go to war anymore. They will make sure we lose and they will hurt our soldiers as best they can. They hate patriotism and that is the only reason to go to war - for your love of your FREE country and people. That is a dying memory thanks to the Marxists who run all the vast majority of our educational and non-profit institutions, political correctness and globalism.
I recently triggered an episode in a good friend of mine. He was hit by an IED in July. He was home on convalescent leave and asked me to take him on some errands. He suffers from TBI and spinal and neck injuries plus terrible headaches. I was so careful driving because of all the pain, anyway he asked me to pull into a drive through for something to drink and I hit the curb, OMG, Bless his heart, he went white and was gasping, sweat was pouring off of him and he was shaking terribly. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I still feel terrible about it.
I’m thinking his reaction may have been more to physical pain rather than mental anguish. Nevertheless, it bears watching (as does your driving :>)
He told me afterwards that hitting that curb freaked him out, but you are right, it was probably more the pain. I hit that curb hard turning in and the truck bounced. After that episode, I drove like my grandma.
I hope your wife was forgiving. I thought about how that could have resulted in a terrible outcome but he finally was woken enough by her pleas of saying, “It’s me” and her name. I agree with you. I don’t think PTSD is that hard to develop. I have it to some degree (of course I would never, ever begin to imply anything like what one goes through in military combat) due to being beaten and abused in my first marriage. I also worked with a guy that was horribly abused by his father and walked up to him once and tapped him and he freaked out. Another co-worker told me the story. He was a lovely man and I just felt bad. Only God knows the internal demons that we deal with.
God bless you for your service esp due to the way you were treated when you guys came home. I salute you all.
Well, those curbs can be a little annoying. I am sending prayers to you and your friend. You sound like a dear and kind soul and it brings tears to my eyes. Ohio just passed a law to give more help to our Persian War and Iraq war vets and they deserve it. I, frankly, do not believe that any vet who has ever served in combat should pay another income tax ever in their life - they sacrifice so much that we should lift their burden. I have been saying this for years and I simply do not understand why we saddle our vets with taxes. They give us so much, we need to start ponying up.
Although I've never received any sort of counseling or treatment, I've had to deal with it myself. I have made adjustments in how I do things and I act in ways that are not what my impulses tell me to do. (Does that make sense?) When I want to kill someone, I have to walk away and take my mind elsewhere. When I have the dreams, i tell my wife about them. she listens and calms me.
Overall, these techniques have kept me out of trouble most of the time but not always. In the instances that my reaction to some minor aggravation has gotten me into trouble, I've tried to learn from the incident and to avoid repeating it. I can't have the window shade above the toilet open (even though we live in the woods and no one can see in) because of the sniper that exists in my mind waiting to take the shot when I'm framed by the window. It's a hell of a way to live.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.