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PTSD and Why Some Veterans Have It |
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The whole point of what I am writing is because of what happened to me many years after serving my country in the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War and why I have PTSD while many Vietnam Veterans do not. Since I was diagnosed as having PTSD from combat and was not allowed to go back to work, just what did all that mean? I know some people do not believe there is such a thing as PTSD, and I wasn’t sure I believed it or that I had it myself. I think most people feel that any veteran should not have any kind of emotional problem from serving in a war, especially many years after the war. The veteran may hear things like, “Just forget it, after all, it was 30 years ago, why should it be a problem now?”, “You must be faking it so you can go on disability!” (My boss strongly insinuated that one). “Most veterans come back from wars and lead a normal life, what is wrong, what kind of scam are you trying to pull?” By the way, when most veterans are told they have PTSD, usually the first question they ask is , “Why now, so long after the war?” When you are used to things like having the flu or colds that go away in a few days or a week, it is difficult when told the PTSD is chronic and you will have it the rest of your life. So, I do have a lot to consider and try to understand, because I never thought I would ever be disabled. It always seemed to me that I could handle anything because of having been an airmobile combat infantryman. I planned to work until I retired, most likely at the age of 65, if I was able to by then. In May of 2000, I went to the emergency room of Mercy Hospital feeling like I could not breathe and thought I was going to die. With every breath I would take, it just seemed like I was not getting any air. After close to 2 weeks in the hospital and many different tests, the doctor said I had panic disorder. When the anxiety kicks in, I start to hyperventilate, not aware of it, until I feel like I can’t breathe. In August, 2001, at a VA Outpatient Clinic in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I was diagnosed with severe PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). This is something I did not expect and really wasn’t sure if I believed it myself. I knew something was wrong because of different problems I started having. For quite a few years, I started having problems with concentrating on anything. Reading books was very difficult because I would find I had read part of a page or more and couldn’t remember anything I had read. It seemed like I was having a hard time remembering many things. I would start to cry for no reason or over something that never used to get me upset at all. Sleeping was becoming more difficult. I found I wanted to stay up later every night. I had a hard time making myself go to bed and getting to sleep was even harder. When I did get to sleep, I would have nightmares and wake up, sometimes finding my hair wet with sweat and my pillow and the sheets feeling damp. There were times my wife would wake me up because in my nightmares I was striking out at someone or something but in reality I was hitting her. Anytime I knew I had to do something the next day, like going to work, I really had trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. I would jolt upright in bed after some nightmares, or maybe because of some noise. Then I would walk around in the house looking out the windows or even get dressed and walk around in the yard. Little things would become big serious issues to me and I would get upset easily to the point of going into a rage. The difficulty with concentration and my over reaction to things were causing problems for me where I worked. After 33 years of work I started to get bad reviews and was told if things didn’t change I would be on the outside looking in. Because I knew something was wrong but really didn’t know if I believed the PTSD diagnosis, I started to see a counselor through the Employee Assistance Program where I worked. I had many sessions of seeing this counselor and she agreed with the VA doctor and counselor that I had PTSD. Still not convinced I asked to be sent to the Westwood mental health clinic at Hackley Hospital. For 2 weeks I would go Monday to Friday from about 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The psychiatrist there said I had PTSD. It was getting hard to not believe the diagnosis of PTSD. I guess I just had to accept they may be right. So this left me in a difficult position. The doctor and the counselor at the VA did not want me to go back to work. I didn’t know what to do but was sure I couldn’t afford to do that. How were we going to live? Finally it came to the point where the VA doctor said I had to make a decision and I’m sure if I didn’t agree with him, he was going to make the decision for me of not going back to work. I saw a veteran service officer from the American Legion and he helped me to file a claim for service connected PTSD from combat in Vietnam while serving in the U.S. Army as an airmobile light weapons infantryman. This service officer had been recommended to me by many veterans who said he was very good. He had a lot of cases of handling claims for veterans and didn’t have time to waste. He was a pretty good judge as to whether a vet might be faking something and he didn’t want to file any claims that he was sure the VA would deny with good reason. Even the service officer, who also was a Vietnam Veteran, said I had PTSD. I guess everyone was right. Even the psychiatrist that examined me at my compensation and pension meeting in a VA hospital said I had severe PTSD. Fifty weeks after my claim was filed for PTSD from combat the VA awarded me 100% disability. Now I try to deal with the feelings of guilt that I am not working anymore. I was surprised to find how much my job was a part of me and a source of pride in supporting myself and my family for over 30 years. While I knew other people would sometimes have to go on disability for health reasons or accidents, I always thought I had an open mind and understood until it happened to me. I never expected to be on disability. While I was thinking my problems with PTSD started in 2000, actually, I had been showing symptoms from the day I got back from Vietnam. The VA counselor said there was no reason to be ashamed, I had worked for over 30 years, served my country honorably in the Army and it was time for me to retire. Well, that is easy to say but to come to grips with it and not have guilt feelings is another thing. Maybe the most important thing the VA counselor said to help me understand PTSD, is that while those with PTSD feel they are abnormal, that is not true, they are having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. For me to understand and to help others understand, means to look at the facts. There are many facts that we overlook about veterans serving in combat or just don’t know and don’t think about. What is PTSD and can anyone have PTSD? (type PTSD into a search engine, such as Google and sort through the thousands of hits that will come up) “Post-Traumatic Stress reactions start with a traumatic stressor "outside the range of usual human experience and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone," according to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, III-R. Since it is almost impossible for a non-survivor or a numb survivor to understand or imagine what the survivor experiences at the time of the trauma, and therefore to identify what is traumatic, the DSM III-R offered four categories of traumatic stressor for diagnosticians and therapists: (1)-threat of death or loss of physical integrity to the survivor (combat, rape, incest, earthquake, etc.), (2)-death, threat of death or loss of physical integrity to family or close friends (survivor does not have to be present) (3)-sudden loss of home or community, and (4)-seeing another person who has recently been seriously injured or killed. These were derived from reality: real nurses and body-baggers had terrible PTSD just like combat vets, rape and incest survivors, and people who lost their homes in fires or floods, or lost their kids on Flight 103 over Lockerbie. As a person is traumatized, at least for the first time, (many trauma survivors have multiple traumas.) the sense of personal safety is shattered. Two things start to happen immediately. The person will strive to survive using three available systems: fight, flight or freeze. What they called the reptile brain in high school biology seems to take over and choose. Military training is designed to get soldiers to always choose fight, but they wouldn't have to train us to do that if we were natural born killers. Culture and religion often train women to freeze, to take it and endure. In nature, flight is most common. Simultaneously, while survival is at stake, feelings will shut down and information taken in and processed will become very focused so the person can do whatever it takes to survive.” Let me emphasize something: this ability to do whatever it takes to survive is God-given or evolution-given, depending on your point of view, but we all have it, and in traumatic enough situations, it will come out or we die. Extreme situations which trigger this reaction again and again may cause survivors to do things in order to survive which can be hard to look back on later. Source http://www.patiencepress.com/samples/1stIssue.html (Personal note: The above description mentions the reptile brain which to me means for those who believe the evolution theory, I believe that we were created by God and the reactions mentioned were given to us by God.) So why do some veterans come home from war and do not have any problems adjusting back into civilian life? For one thing, not every veteran actually sees combat or is exposed to a severe trauma. That is completely overlooked by almost everyone. It doesn’t mean their job isn’t important, they are in the military and serving their country and the soldiers in the field would not get food, water, ammo or other needed supplies with out them. Many veterans have jobs in the military that are basically the same as many civilian jobs. Some of these veterans who had safe rear area jobs, even had refrigerators, stereos, electricity, hot food, a nice soft bed and some even had Vietnamese girlfriends. For every veteran in the bush facing the enemy and dodging bullets, there may be 5 to 7 veterans in support jobs. Checking the statistics, during the Vietnam War there were almost 9 million people in the armed forces. Of that 9 million, only about 3.5 million served in country during the war. Taking into account that for every veteran facing the enemy and dodging bullets there are as many as 5 to 7 veterans in support jobs that may never see a shot fired in anger, means many veterans were never in harm's way. I read somewhere that only about 250,000 veterans in the Vietnam War were out in the field in firefights with the enemy. So out of the almost 9 million veterans who served during the Vietnam war, the ones most likely to have some kind of problems from combat, such as PTSD, will come from the 250,000 that were in firefights with the enemy or had some very dangerous jobs such as a helicopter pilot, door gunner, artillery, or those who served in jobs like graves registration, the medical field where they saw badly wounded or people who died on a daily basis, etc. So with well over 8 million Vietnam veterans that were not in harm’s way coming home, it is possible to think and be right that most veterans are not going to have problems going back into civilian life and holding a job. Some of them had training that would help them get a good job which would also help them to quickly readjust to civilian life. Not so for the infantryman whose DD-214 separation papers have a N/A in the box for Related Civilian Occupation. These are the reasons why some veterans come back from war with no emotional problems or scars and why some have PTSD. Somewhere I read that a person can get PTSD from one very bad car wreck and for some combat veterans, what they experienced could be like a car wreck every day. So veterans of the World Wars had it much worse and saw much more combat, right? The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. Upon returning home, most Vietnam Veterans were not treated as heroes. Many were called baby killers, spit on, had garbage thrown at them or other derogatory things. So the Vietnam Veteran was not welcomed home and felt he had to stuff it all inside and that serving his country was a waste. Many of the horrible things Vietnam Veterans were accused of doing, never happened, but were made up by the anti-war protestors who liked attacking the veterans. The lies and fabrications of some of the more famous anti-war protestors and other well known people did the most damage to the veterans. To make matters worse, are the fakes who pretend to be war heroes. It is hard to believe how many people claim to have served in the military as special forces, rangers, or some elite group, and had earned many top military medals for heroic action. The stories told by these fakes sometimes end up in books, documentaries or even movies. Many stories of war atrocities are false and were told by fakes hoping to fool the Veterans Administration to get compensation. Even the history of the Vietnam War can not be trusted due to the many falsehoods made up by antiwar protestors and fake war heroes. It is not unusual for these fabrications to end up in newspapers and even school history books or elsewhere. There are a surprising number of people who say that the fakes who claim to be war heroes, tell false war stories of their heroism, or claim to have participated in atrocities, should be left alone and that they do no harm. When you have served your country honorably it makes you wonder if those people really understand what that means. While there were many good things done by the military in Vietnam, building schools, providing medical care, etc, most of what people heard and read concentrated on anything negative or that put the military in a bad light. So while the veteran knew he served with bravery and honor, he would not be recognized that way. That made me a firm believer in the phrase, “Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better to fear the words of those who can steal your HONOR.” I knew that the reason I had PTSD came from 3 men in my platoon being KIA during my tour. Seeing many wounded and seeing many dead enemy bodies. Many times we were told when we saw anyplace that looked like something had been buried, that we needed to dig and search to see if the enemy had buried weapons or ammo. Usually, after some digging the smell indicated it was a grave for one or more bodies but that didn’t mean there weren’t weapons or ammo hidden there. One time when we had killed 3 NVA (North Vietnam Army) soldiers, we had to walk past those bodies for the next 3 days while going on patrols trying to find the recoilless rifle the enemy was using to fire on our LZs (landing zones) or other military installations. There is no way to forget the smell or sight of those bodies rotting in the tropical heat. My first day in the field we heard a slow thump sound because the enemy fired mortars at us but fortunately they missed by about 40 yards. While in Tay Ninh Province from February to April, our company strength went from around 128 to 56 men after many firefights. I don’t know how many had been killed but most of them were wounded and some returned to duty later. Some were sent home with us not knowing if they survived or not. In later years when many of us got together for reunions, some were surprised to meet someone they thought had been KIA. My tour of one year was going to end on January 22, 1971, so I had a long time to go to try to survive. Near the middle of my tour, troop withdrawals were starting and I ended up getting a 39 day drop, so I served about 10 ½ months in Vietnam. When I got home, back to the world, as the vets would call it, I planned on getting on with life and putting Vietnam way behind me. Without thinking about it or realizing, my feeling of personal safety in daily life had changed dramatically. I didn’t like to be in crowds or like people behind me. I didn’t jump at all unexpected noises but certain noises would make me jump and scare me. In Vietnam, we learned to recognize the different sounds made by the weapons, an M16 didn’t sound the same as an AK47. While new guys, cherries, would hit the deck at any sound, we could differentiate between outgoing and incoming fire and acted accordingly. I found I didn’t trust people and was always suspicious of strangers and sometimes of people I knew. While I thought of putting it all behind me and like others would say, just forget it, that would not happen. Why should I forget or want to forget the men who became closer than friends or family to me? How could I forget the men who were killed? The nights it would rain when we were in the field and our sleeping positions turned into puddles of water and picking leeches off our bodies can not be forgotten. It is interesting how something can happen to a person and they will say that will stay with them the rest of their lives, but they expect the veteran to forget something that was even more life changing than what they experienced. When we would find out someone had been killed or seriously wounded, there was no time to grieve or have any feelings. We had to get ready to be on the move again and watch out for the enemy. The packs of the dead or wounded would be stripped of water, food or ammunition to help us re-supply. It seemed barbaric in a way but to be combat ready, it was necessary. Any feelings we had could not be dealt with then. We had to learn to shut down any feelings and go on. The grunt (infantryman), in Vietnam faced dangers night and day. While setting up our night defensive perimeter, patrols would be sent out to see if their were any enemy nearby. If a trotter (trail) was found with signs it was being used by the enemy an automatic ambush would be setup. This would consist of a trip wire running across the trail with claymore mines set to blow up, down and across the trail. It wasn’t unusual to be awakened by the sound of the exploding claymores which let us know the enemy or an animal had set off the automatic. One time after the explosions of an automatic going off, we heard the enemy talking and they started shooting randomly trying to get us to fire back so they could attack us. Obviously, there was no chance of getting sleep the rest of the night. Having the enemy penetrate your night defensive perimeter was a great fear of what would be become a horrible situation. In the dark with enemy soldiers inside your perimeter, who do you shoot at? How do avoid killing your own troops? Our night defensive perimeter would be surrounded by trip flares and claymore mines. Some nights the enemy would hit a trip flare and the person on guard would have to set off the claymores in that area hoping to kill the enemy. For the grunts in the field there was no safe time, day or night for most of their whole tour. So the experiences of the Vietnam Veteran were very different depending on what they did and where they were. While many would return without any problems, emotional or physical, others had good reasons why they couldn’t leave the war behind.
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