Funny that (PTSD related shit... trigger warning, I guess)

[pecunium]

I went to the VA a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know... I'm not as well as I might like. Quite apart from the Reiter's Syndrome, I have symptoms of some mild PTSD. Is it PTSD? I don't know. But when I look at the list of symptoms... well it's not hard to see a lot of them which fit.

Am I a gibbering wreck, hiding in the basement and waking with night horrors? No. I am more reclusive. I've been pulling back from people, and from things I used to enjoy. I have less motivation than I used to. I am moody, irritable and prone to some sorts of being more emotional, and some sorts of less.

I don't sleep much.

It's been progressive (when I first got back from theater.... I was a mess. Were it not for the love of my friends, Maia's support and the suppport network offered up by Seattle fandom... who knows how I'd have ended up.

PTSD, even the mild stuff, is insidious. It's like a subtle filter on a photograph. You don't see it, in any one place, but it colors the whole thing. My war was "easy" (for such values of easy as apply only in a war zone. I am unaware of anyone who tried to me specifically. That doesn't mean no one tried to kill me generally, nor that I wasn't nervous, tense, on-edge, and looking over my shoulder for the guy who decided to go for killing me retail instead of wholesale).

Then I got sick. Really sick. Life-alteringly sick. That got me sent back to Kuwait, and Germany, thence to Walter Reed (where I got life threateningly ill: because my treatment regimen and I didn't get along), before being warehoused at Madigan Army Medical Center at Ft. Lewis.

Which is when my war got hard. I was 1,300 miles from home. I was 11,000 miles from my comrades. I was in charge of a squad of people who were all in, roughly the same boat. All of them had their own problems. All of them had people in theater they were worried about, and all of them had the hospital, the GTSB and fate to contend with.

The kid with narcolepsy wasn't too bad. Narcolepsy sucks, don't get me wrong, but as problems go it wasn't that bad. The PV2 who was forced to choose between rear-ending the supply truck in front of her, or going off a drop of more than 30 feet; she took the wreck. The private in the right seat... well she didn't make it out, and it wasn't pretty. To add to things... her husband was one of the people who cut her out of the wreck. He came home on leave, she got pregnant. When he redeployed, he fell into the bottle. They got the divorce a couple of weeks before she had the kid.

So I spent eight months worrying about my health, their health (and the health of other people. There was an SFC who killed himself in Mologne House, two days after I got there, and the Major who tried to kill herself in the barracks at Ft. Lewis. I got to lead the detail cleaning her room out.... she used some of her blood to damn the GTSB for not helping people).

There was the kid whose gear I had to box up for storage while he was in the brig. He'd used his charm to play on the sympathy of locals to get about $5,000 in aid; aid he didn't need. He got 90 days, a bad conduct discharge, and a ride home when he got released.

The news... a horror. Every week ArmyTimes lists the names of the dead. Every week we looked at it, hoping it didn't have anyone we knew. I had to worry it might have someone one of my troops knew.

All that shit grinds you down. You suppress it. You drink. You buy things for people (what the fuck does money matter?). You bottle it up until it's safe to look at; but you know what... it's never safe to look at.

I blogged about it.

But I didn't. I talked about things that mattered, but not about any of that shit. What was I gonna do... wax all melodramatic about how tough it was? Shit. It wasn't tough. Some mortar rounds here and there. The siren screaming we were being gassed (it was a false alarm). Driving 800 miles just behind the expanding front, and intervierwing the EPWs. Eating MREs and taking baths out of water bottles.

No mail.

So what? I was in one piece. My guys... they were still in it. Day to day I didn't know if they were alive or dead. E-mail (when I got it) could only let me know that some hours ago they weren't dead. One of them got a piece of shrapnel in the eye. Fuck. No permanent damage... good.

Another one shows up on the way to a Hardship Discharge... and they make him fly back to Baghdad to get a fucking signature... Christ!

But is this something to go all weak in the head about? Is this the sort of thing which makes PTSD? Maybe.

I don't know.

Here's the thing... I don't want PTSD. Who does? That's part of the nature of the beast. It's invidious. The diagnoses means you are broken. If you have it because of weak asssed shit like being scared for four months straight that you might be killed; but no scars or battle stories to show for it.

WEAK.

If you have it because you got sick and thought you might end up a cripple for the rest of your days (even if you spent two-weeks not dying in hospital)....

WEAK.

And worrying about other peoples problems... if you get PTSD from that...

UBER-WEAK.

Ok.... so We got that out of the way. I am weak. Weak enough so all that combined to screw me up. If it's not PTSD, it's still done a damned fine job of putting a monkey wrench in my life; trust me on that one, ok.

None of which is why I'm writing this.

I'm writig this because there are people who are worse off than I am (seems to be my refrain... I can't be sick, there are people who need more help than I do... part of the problem that is).

Those people, are being screwed. Remember where I said I went to the VA a couple weeks ago...

They were kind enough to tell me I don't have PTSD. A consummation devoutly to be wished, right?

Maybe not. I, you see, am having "trouble readjusting." It seems a lot of Iraq vets are having the same sorts of troubles. Five years since I got back, you'd think I'd be pretty much readjusted.

Seems there's a reason so many of us are having trouble "readjusting"... It's cheaper than PTSD.

So the VA has issued directives telling doctors to not diagnose, nor test for, PTSD

Way to support the troops, eh?

On March 20, 2008 a VA hospital's PTSD program coordinator sent an e-mail to a number of VA employees, including psychologists, social workers, and a psychiatrist stating that due to an increased number of "compensation seeking veterans," the staff should "refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out" and they should "R/O [rule out] PTSD" and consider a diagnosis of "Adjustment Disorder" instead.

So there you go. I went to the VA, wondering if I had some PTSD. Now that they've seen me.... I have a shiny new diagnosis, and I still don't know.

Fuckers.

Comments

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Look, Mister, that "weak" business better be sarcasm.

As for the VA, well, not a big surprise--anyone who watched their efforts to hide the results of the Vietnam War under the carpet, to say nothing of the "totally not happening" reaction over Gulf War syndrome, was ready to predict this. Get the best help you can and let us know if we can do anything to help make this possible.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

That whole 'weak' thing totally enrages me- it's bad enough being considered 'weak' by default because I am female, but to add the stigma of any sort of mental problem on it is totally outrageous, and it doesn't matter what gender you are. It isn't weakness- it's a serious psychic injury.

The VA totally blew me off, Terry- and I have a physical injury that is starting to come back to haunt me. But on top of that, there is the PTSD/MST that I have to cope with, which had a major flare last night because of an incident yesterday in my neigborhood. I had nightmares all night when I slept and could not go back to sleep when I woke up.

I know what you are going through, and can sing harmony with you on this. I've been working on coming out of my own shell- to actually get out of the house and out of town to do stuff- and it's a struggle. My civillian friends don't have a clue. They think I am strong- but there is something broken inside my soul- something that can be mended, but not entirely fixed. It's corroding my soul and I can't run on nothing but rage and fury- something is going to give someday. Right now, I am using the white-hot fire of my own fury to motivate my neighbors and do something more than hole up in my house. Fear might be the mind-killer, but I transmute it into anger, and anger is the motivator.

If we can hold each other up, we might find some healing in that support. But the VA are fuckers. I totally agree with you there.

[rawbery79.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I'm sorry. Why do things have to be so fucked up for the people that the government SHOULD really be looking out for? Argh.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Regretfully, I have to say that I can't help with your personal problem/PTSD, beyond expressing the hope that you'll be able to cope well & triumph over it.

On the more general aspect you've brought up, Kung Fu Tzu nailed it about 2,500 years ago: If the government is to expect virtue and rectitude from the common people, it must exert virtue and rectitude in its government of them. (Other moral philosophers, more recently, put it as "As you sow, so shall you reap" and "What you send around comes back around".)

It's blindingly obvious that an Official would never have even _thought_ of sending a memo/directive like that in an atmosphere of governmental virtue -- just as one would not (in my memory) have advocated using anything even remotely resembling torture on captured enemies, or have taken lightly the concept of "collateral damage". (Not that the Governments I can remember -- over the past c. 70 years -- consistently exhibited anything like Perfect Virtue, but it's discouraging to see things getting worse rather than better.)

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

You have my sympathy. The world seems to be run by idiots.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Here via... wow. It seems a lot of my friends list has read this, so via many people.

I wish so badly that there was something I could do for you. My intentions don't change anything, but still, I wish they could.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

I know this feeling.

Of being weak, broken, flawed, because of emotional/mental trauma. Mine was sexual/emotional abuse.

And I do the same thing. I sit there and think 'But so many people have it worse. I didn't get raped. I didn't get beaten. It only lasted a few months, really. I shouldn't be this bent out of shape over it.'

Pain is pain, Terry. We aren't in some kind of race to the bottom where only the most badly injured people deserve to have their wounds recognized. You hurt. Isn't that enough to make it valid?

You are a very strong person to recognize what you're dealing with, honestly. Most people who have this kind of injury can't see themselves withdrawing, can't see the damage it is doing to them. It is only through seeing it that you can begin to address it and...hopefully...begin to heal.

The healing process sucks to an extent that I do not have words to describe. It made me feel raw and torn open, far worse than I felt before I started that route. I felt like an exposed bundle of nerves, all my alarm bells screaming over minor things. It takes pulling out all of these things and examining them, breaking them down, and making them have less effect on your life...which at least for me meant re-living a lot of it. In a way, it was worse than suffering through it - at least then, I was not having to fight the urge to blame myself for everything that had happened to me.

But now, 3 years after I started the process of healing, I am in a much better place. The intimacy I have with my boyfriend - the trust - I could not have had without that work. Yes, there are still things that trigger me. I occasionally have problems with being in confined spaces with people, or with someone reaching past or over me. I couldn't nail down for certain for you why these things get me, they just do. But I don't have the severe panic attacks anymore.

Be kinder to yourself, Terry. No one has a right to call you weak...not even yourself. You are wounded, that is true, but it does not make you weak. It is another kind of surviving, another kind of injury that needs time and the right kind of treatment to heal.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry and so angry. I have friends with PTSD from Vietnam, and I am horrified, sickened, that we haven't learned anything, and another generation of military folks are going through this.

And as someone refers to up above, regarding "weak," to quote a wonderful film: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I barely know you, but that doesn't mean I can shrug this off. What the VA is doing to you and others is inhuman. I can't begin to express just how horrified and how angry I am. I haven't been this angry in a long, long time.

Don't ever, ever think weakness has anything to do with this. It's always the strongest who patch up the cracks and keep going. It's always the strongest who help others not as strong, even if that helping causes them more pain.

You're still helping people by putting this out into the world. There is nothing weak about that.

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

I am more reclusive. I've been pulling back from people, and from things I used to enjoy. I have less motivation than I used to. I am moody, irritable and prone to some sorts of being more emotional, and some sorts of less. I don't sleep much.

For what it's worth, I could describe myself the same way and the most traumatic event I've witnessed lately is the officemate buying me the wrong kind of donuts.

(This comment is intended to add some levity, not belittle your condition.)

My brother was totally

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

f@cked over by the VA after he got out of Viet Nam and discharged (laid off, once the war was over he was a surplus captain).

He rode down a long broken road that caused a divorce, alienation from his children, and ended up with his incarceration in a mental hospital where you don't get out until a judge says you are well enough to do so. He got better one day at a time but I still curse the Army for taking the big brother I loved and had fun with and respected and ruining him.

I think his wife now ( a school teacher) has managed to get him on her insurance because the VA is so crappy in Oklahoma. (well, everywhere) He has significant hearing loss from the helicopters, but the VA denies any claims he makes as 'you listened to too much rock and roll as a kid' (he didn't, he was a folk fan) and I'm not sure how they respond to any other of his claims.

You are honored and respected here, and I feel I can call you a friend even though we've never met in person.

Take care of yourself and hugs across the e-ways. I wish I could do more but I'm in KC, MO, which is a long way off.

Re: My brother was totally

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I hope Terry doesn't mind my making a side comment here--you're on my f-list and I don't think I ever heard about your brother before. I have a similar brother-story, with a worse ending.

[gracemcfee.livejournal.com]

That is so fucking disgusting that they (government) is doing that. Shameful. I hope you can find some healing and peace.

[gracemcfee.livejournal.com]

apparently I can't speak..that should be "are doing that".

[ctahmase.livejournal.com]

I'm coming in late here, but wanted you to know I'm reading you, hearing you, and wishing I could do something to change things.

Charity

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

A number of other matters aside: I have a lot of physical experiences consonant with what gets called "complex PTSD" - which means what? Nothing but that there's a constellation of physical symptoms that can at times be really intrusive.

I have spent a fair amount of time - and some amount of self-injurious time - wrestling over whether I deserve to have it.

I decided to change my opinion about that when I realized how many people in similar situations I'd come into contact with. When it was another person, and not myself, the most obvious thing was to address the visible symptoms. A person can't sleep? They're panicking? They're forgetting things? They are, in various ways, negligently -to-actively endangering themselves? As soon as it was someone else, "merit" ceased to be a determinant of whether the situation was in fact going on.

Maybe what helped me finally chuck it - the tortuous self-loathing - was that I'd spent almost a decade working in tv. And my search for some final arbitration of the merit of my situation (which would be, of course, the prerequisite to my addressing it with anything other than self-punishment) starting to sound kind of like the bullshit of pitching. Where you take some actual situation that real people live through and then deceptively distort it so that even the "average person" (who, by the way, you've imagined, and not charitably) would believe it and care. I was like, "what? in order to admit I'm experiencing what I'm experiencing does it need to get GOOD RATINGS ON LAW AND ORDER?" Who was I trying to defend my experience to, exactly? To what end? I was living the result of my experience, as I was watching other people live the results of theirs.

And so! That seems basically to be a bout of venting.

If you're smarter than the therapist, it's hard not to play the game of being smarter than the therapist. But there's also been a great deal of material written on the issue by people who are very smart, and who run the gamut from ice-veined scientist to fuzzy-sweatered empathist. It can be useful to find an author who approaches the issue in an acceptable tone and see what they're got to say about it. I'm sure you've done a great deal of reading, but for what little it may be worth I tend to find that just when I think I know something, someone's gone and published something else that's like "what? you mean they're gotten past saying it's shellshock and they're all fakers?" all over again.

[mesoterica.livejournal.com]

First off: PTSD, even the mild stuff, is insidious. It's like a subtle filter on a photograph. You don't see it, in any one place, but it colors the whole thing. - Thank you for this. In a strange way I feel like I can suddenly understand my father and his experience so much better, being able to read this from your perspective.

"Trouble readjusting". Jesus. I just don't even-- I am sick at even the idea of sidestepping the best interests of our veterans for political or fiscal reasons, I can't even wrap my head around what it would be like to deal with it myself. For what admittedly little it's worth, I offer my fervent admiration and heartfelt support, TK.