It has been a nice vacation from husband and son. They will be back tomorrow morning and I’m finishing the glazing on the room right now. I didn’t realize how much I needed time to myself and I have really been able to take an inventory of the past year. I also have had more time to read and this USA Today article has helped to clarify so much for me pertaining to my husband’s stress problems and hopefully how that will all fit into the big long term picture.
When I put up the room photos you may notice that there is a lions head painted and glazed into a wall. It wasn’t there when we moved in. It was an addition that my daughter and I had requested and I found it at A Touch of Class. We both liked the shape and style. We ordered it and it came and my husband hung it up for us over a big hole that was in the wall that wasn’t there when we had moved in either.
The survey of 1,000 troops found problems including anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials. A smaller number of troops, often with more severe symptoms, were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a serious mental illness.
The 30% figure is in contrast to the 3% to 5% diagnosed with a significant mental health issues immediately after they leave the war theater, according to Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a military psychiatrist on Kiley’s staff. A study of troops who were still in the combat zone in 2004 found 13% experienced significant mental health problems.
See my husband and I had had a fight. Just your regular garden variety spousal spat, but since he had gotten back from Iraq our garden variety spats were starting to get kind of spicy. During this particular spat though it finally dawned on Tracy that maybe we had a tadbit of a problem of a yet unidentified nature. I’m not sure if it was the first time he put his own head through the wall or if it was the second time that he planted it in the same spot and made the hole bigger, it was one of those times that it finally had occurred to me that something wasn’t quite right. I have since also said a special prayer of thanks that there wasn’t a 2×4 behind that particular spot that my husband chose. Nothing like having a damn stress adjustment disorder and a concussion!
My daughter and I hadn’t been having a whole lot of fun lately with husband/dad. When whatever was going on with him began to be addressed I guess out of our anger somehow we both came up with the same idea about the lion. I remember feeling so pissed about what had happened to him and now what was happening to us and I looked at that hole and thought that a roaring lion coming out of it would be very appropriate. A few days later when my daughter was checking out the hole she said close to the same thing so that sealed the deal and we vowed to hang a lions head over the hole.
What my husband is dealing with and how it is healing has been so difficult to really put my finger on but this article has helped me understand how the terrain many of the returning combat soldiers are facing isn’t black and white and a lot of it isn’t going to be PTSD or GAD in the clinical textbook sense. They can call it this or call it that, but I haven’t been able to really get a commitment to a diagnosis on my husband. Looks like some of our guys will have PTSD and some will just be “crazy” for awhile…. EITHER WAY HOW NICE…..A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO SERVING THE CHIMP AND HALLIBURTON! I suppose that’s what the lion is about, roaring at the fuckers!
Only about 4% or 5% of troops coming home from combat actually have PTSD, but many others face problems adjusting when they come home, Kiley said.
Such problems are sometimes more acute in members of the National Guard, who return to a civilian job when they leave active military duty, Ritchie said.
Military medical officials, however, cautioned against people reading their data as suggesting the war had driven so many soldiers over the edge. Instead, they characterized the anxiety and stress as normal reactions to combat, seeing dead and mutilated bodies, and feeling helpless to stop a violent situation.
Still, such reactions can lead to problems with spouses and children, substance abuse and just day-to-day life, they said.
I didn’t realize that the first doctor to be seeing my husband was in the Guard. He was here in a private practice with a bunch of psychiatrists but Tricare had assigned him. He was somewhat reassuring at first but I found myself starting to not care for him as time wore on. I went to talk with him about the added stress of an upcoming surgery that my son was about to have and he doodled the whole time that I was there. Maybe about a month later my husband was talking about him and mentioned that the doc had told him that whenever people were talking and he felt it wasn’t of importance he blocked their talking out by doodling and saying uh huh a lot. What an asshole! My husband didn’t do very well with that particular surgery either and it isn’t as if I didn’t have enough stress all on my own then. I suppose what comes around goes around though because that doctor got called up by the Guard and he is currently in Iraq. I WONDER HOW HIS DOODLING IS GOING?
My husband’s new doctor though is a civilian doctor and I have met him and like him very much. He is very sensitive and very caring…….no doodling. Before I met him the people who knew him here kept saying He’s Pakistani, He’s Pakistani, He’s Pakistani…..like that should mean something or I suppose they were warning me so I wouldn’t pass out or anything when I met him. For crying out loud, I have been to the big town and I have actually paid people whose family origins were from Pakistan for many professional services…..what is up with that? I don’t care if he is Martian and green with purple spots. My husband looked so bad and his eyes were so black for two weeks I thought he was going to start bellowing ADRIAN any moment. He told everybody at work he fell off a ladder……what, on his face? That’s quite a fall! Is the guy a good physician people? Does he doodle?
Having spent the first 30 years of my life with military “care” in the form of hospitals… I can say this…. “RUN” don’t walk “RUN” to a private practice when it comes to needing professional care.
That is why when it was apparent my son needed real help it was one of the reason my husband left the military.
There is a grandfather clause: dependants and military can not sue the government for malapractice. We have no say when mistreated by a doctor. If they amputate our daughters leg instead of giving her a vaccinations. So sorry… you’re in the Navy. Fuck you.
I can’t begin to list the times I’ve been verbally abused by military docs. Even while recuping from a 4 inch tear from delivering my son while only 5 cm.s dialated I had a BITCH of an OBGYN at Travis tell me, “you’re lucky, some women go through real labor”. Lucky??? I almost bled to death and looked like Vaginastein. And this “woman” told me my pregnancy wasn’t real and why would I want another one anyways. I got dressed and walked out letting those in line know exactly what I thought of the bitch behind the door.
We get less than housing and less than medical care. Yes there are some fantastic medical people in the military. But they sure don’t stay long and I never had one.
My father who is truly messed up. He worked on the flight deck for most of his career. He is now 75% deaf in EACH ear. Each time the Navy wanted him for something the docs ordered him not to do – guess what… his medical records would wind up missing.
My dad didn’t even get disability when he retired. Thank you for your service and fuck you and yours.
I hope you and yours get help Tracy. Doodling… forcripessake. What an asshole he is.
The reason why me and Danni are alive. Horrendous pregnancy with my daughter. Luckily I was in Novato housing, too far away from Travis AFB hospital and I was champused out to Marin General. Great care and they kept my daughter alive. I doubt I would have gone full term or survive the “care and treatment” the Navy would have afforded me.
Okay.. done with ranting You bring out the rant in me, Tracy
Here at Rucker they don’t have much anymore for a medical facility and I’m very happy that most of the care is off post. Even the doodle doctor was off post but I think that Tricare felt better about assigning him because he was exmilitary and in the Guard. I had to laugh though because you know what happened to my medical records after having Josh at Evans Army Hospital, yup, somehow they just up and disappeared themselves. I had had a civilian doctor originally who had classified me as a high risk pregnancy but Tricare disagreed and I got herded through Evans Army Hospital’s Bride of Frankenstein Ward hatching out new soldiers daily……all born already knowing that that which does not kill you makes you stronger and pain is only weakness leaving the body! Both of my eyes had ruptured during delivery, but they couldn’t do much with my son so I was seeing civilian doctors within a week. Both of the whites of my eyes were blood red and the first pediatrician who saw my son freaked out! He told me that my blood pressure must have been off the charts when I delivered and that I obviously had had toxemia. He asked me if they had been checking my urine for proteins and I said that they had yes, but they kept telling me that I wasn’t drinking enough liquids. I suppose if I had been drinking more liquids then it would have diluted all that protein huh? I can laugh now but it has taken me a good long while and a really nice vaginal tear from hell too and I stay the fuck away from those killers unless it’s a hangnail!
I’ve heard this from other people, but my experiences with the Naval Hospital have been far superior to commercial medical. The upside of not being able to sue, is that the doctors and nurses actually talk to you. In commercial hospitals they’re so terrified of being sued, that they won’t say anything that could potentially open them up to any kind of liability. They order reams of unnecessary tests, and they condescend to you like you’re a moron. I have had nothing but nightmare experiences with commercial hospitals, and found Naval to be blissful by comparison. I’m not a fan of allopathic medicine, for the most part, and I think there are horrible experiences to be had anytime you walk into a medical office. Maybe it’s just catch as catch can, but my anecdotal evidence puts Naval way ahead of commercial treatment. The kind of verbal abuse you describe happens in commercial hospitals everyday. The last time I was in a commercial hospital, I felt about ready to commit an act of homicide.
So sorry to hear about your experience. Just wanted to let you know that you can sue the government for military medical malpractice. Here and overseas.
I have always struggled to grasp what it must be like for a solder to go from war-zone to home. To go from focusing on staying alive (by killing those who what to kill them) to focusing on loving their significant other; in the matter of a week or two.
You and your family are often in my thoughts MT. Partially because we share a name, but also because I have so many friends with DHs who have been off to Iraq in the past two years. Each of of them was scared with their DH off to war, but none even hints that they are p*ssed off in any way with the administration that is sending people off to war.
I pray for them and for you that your families can come together and stay together. That memories of war can fade and be replaced with memories of happy families.
I married my husband. The military transition didn’t come naturally for me. It is only my opinion but I believe that for many families the feelings of hurt are going to emerge a little slower. My daughter and I had lunch at Red Lobster a few days back and two young military couples sat behind us. Both husbands were just back from Iraq and some of the first that this post has seen. One was complaining about the family readiness group calling the house wanting to know if he was displaying anger or hostilities. As both of our meals went on I was very concerned though when the same husband began talking about a guy at an intersection who cursed at him and he got out of his car and punched the guy in the face, and his young wife just sat there laughing angling for that coupleness and cohesion thing while sirens are going off in my head very loudly. After reading this article it is all making more and more sense to me though.
Tracy, I don’t have any experience with the military, but in dealing with vets I’ve learned that the only person it seems that can talk to them is another vet. I would try to contact someone at Vietnam Vets Against War. http://www.vvaw.org they have a website where you can try to locate someone near you and several email addresses. Maybe those guys are too old, I imagine there’s an organization for Iraq vets too.
that deals with lots of emotional healing stuff. It was out of pocket but ask me if I care. My husband has 5 guys that he is very very close to now and he went to visit one in Florida this past week. In spite of the fact that it has been so horrible, through all of that I believe that my husband has been gifted this amazing opportunity not only to heal but to have friendships with other men that I don’t think happen too often in American culture. I could actually get jealous if the man wasn’t so damn happy and so much better equipped to deal with things. The cell phone is a fine thing and it rang off the hook at first when they all came back home, and it rang all hours but now that things have calmed I think these guys are going to make it. I think they may even have ended up better people in some ways for all of this horseshit! I don’t think my husband can do Iraq again though……I don’t see that as being even a remote possibility. He very sensitive about death and living things now and he has a very hard time even killing snakes now around our house. I don’t know how such an emotionally sensitive soul could be able to do Iraq now. Who knows……perhaps with what has happened with him they wouldn’t even dream of sending him back but you can never tell with this administration!
Tracy – I get scared when you talk about him going back. There must be a way to stop that happening. It’s his life and his decision what he does. Let him find out the consequences of deserting or applying for a CO and decide if it’s worth it. I know what I think, but it’s not up to me. and we sure as hell know what george and rummy and Dick think.
If I can take on the insurance industry and fight them down to obtain a life saving operation for my son that isn’t quite FDA approved, Bushco will only get as far as “trying” to send my husband back to Iraq. Don’t think everybody wouldn’t find out real quick what I look like in person. I would sleep on Michael Moore’s doorstep for his support and to get some air time. Every morning the CNN execs would arrive to work and have to walk around a woman on her knees praying before them to cover her story. They can see the hole in the wall, they can have the doctor’s notes, they can have this whole family’s history and come with me for the next surgery that my son will have to lengthen the rods in his back so that everybody can see what it is like and make their own personal judgments about whether or not I’m just a bawl baby and can do those surgeries alone while my husband is in Iraq AGAIN getting his noodle fried some more. Sometimes they rile me up! Sometimes the family support people say stupid retarded things and I actually believe them for a day or so!
Your doing the best thing a person can do for a vet right now. Listening, learning, and understanding. Your sympathy will go much further than a loud debate.
Peace be with you and yours always.
Wow! You want to know what pisses me off the most about this diary?
It’s the bit about the unnamed “Military medical officials”, who
How helpful is that? It’s not the WAR that makes them crazy, it’s just a NORMAL REACTION to COMBAT!!
WELL EX-CUUUUUSE ME!!! All this time I thought it was because of the WAR and now it turns out that it was really because of COMBAT!
How can they explain away the difference between war and combat? … I guess we just have to wait for the next puff-propaganda piece, and we’ll all find out together!
The disinformation, as always, is sickening…
If there had been a 2×4 behind that spot and my husband had given himself brain damage could I then read the data as suggesting the war had driven so many soldiers over the edge. If a soldier four months returning punches me in the face because he doesn’t like what I said should I characterize that as normal but if my next door neighbor does it he is sick and antisocial and gets to go to jail. It makes no fucking real sense to me either! Maybe if I doodled more.
They are trying to make the distinction between “merely” (HA!) being in a war zone and experiencing “actual” (HA!) combat. The military still hasn’t grasped, in a guerilla war the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) is the war zone.
They never learned this in Viet Nam. They won’t learn this in Iraq.
I don’t know if you saw it, but I posted a diary recently about a medication that is showing promise for treating post traumatic stress disorder. It is a common heart medication but it is still in testing for ptsd. Some researchers fear the Army could abuse the use of the drug to make our soldiers into unfeeling killing machines. I’d be interested to hear your opinion on what such a drug could mean, pro and con.
Goodness what a loaded to the gills personal noodle meltdown I’m having with the pros and cons of this drug and the military and war!
I could see the military attempting to backdoor this if they think it has teeth at all. They will do anything to avoid how sick these guys are going to be when they get home and having to deal with the consequences of their actions. They already vaccinate our soldiers with shit that the rest of us would never volunteer for! These guys and gals signed their personal rights away in the name of defending the nation and sometimes very quietly the power structure uses them as lab rats if they feel they can justify it. Do most people know that they issue speed over there to some troops? It’s so friggin not talked about though I can’t even get my husband to tell me that they do it, I read that they do it and pilots who have retired admit it and I’m sure some of the ground troops have been given it too at times since we do have accounts of troops admitting it.
After reading the info it sounds like this drug works best right after the trauma has occurred. Sounds similiar to giving an aspirin to someone suffering a heart attack before the paramedics get there…it lessens the damage and more people survive the injury. It doesn’t sound like it can make a soldier into an unfeeling killing machine…meth would probably do that much better!
We all learn from our mistakes though, so what if someone made mistake after mistake after mistake but never had to feel any of the pain of his or her consequences and deal with it? I firmly believe that it is the pain and consequences of things that are HUGE foundations for our connections to ourselves and our compassion for others and our spirituality and God as we may know him.
This drug does not sound like a free ride though to oblivion from having to deal with our sins, what if the military marketed it to its soldiers as such a thing though? My Uncle slept on wet bags of Agent Orange once too….it was prefectly safe stuff and he was perfectly exhausted!
If this drug comes out as being able to help those who suffer trauma to store the memories in functional places what a gift that would be! The people of New York City certainly deserved this kind of an aspirin after the attack if we had known about it and it was discovered to be able to do this.
It looks like they are going to study this more and I’m very grateful for that. I believe that if any of my family suffers another severe trauma I may even ask a phsysician about this. My flesh is crawling though right now when I think about a raped child being able to take this drug and store the rape memories some place that will make his or her life more liveable and successful and happy………..but the soul of a soldier who has just raped a child as part of an interogation will never have to deal with hearing the screams of that child!
My noodle is cooked. I must digest this!
Tracy, my dear, I feel for you. I have been fortunate, in that my husband returned pretty whole. Maybe it’s because he was there for the easy part — the war, not the aftermath and occupation. I’m the one in our house with the anger/PTSD problem, because of some abuse I experienced in childhood. (I hate to scare you, but this can drag on for years, and actually worsen over time, but you already knew that.) Here are some recommendations for things that may or may not be helpful. I’m inclined towards a Jungian approach, myself. I highly recommend a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves by a Jungian analyst, Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It includes a story called “Crescent Moon Bear” which is all about a wife dealing with the rage of a husband returning from war. The book is deep and seems impenetrable, until you need it. Then, magically, it’s completely lucid. It’s very strange.
Anyway, there are also a couple of therapies which can be totally self administered, which he could try. I just stumbled across something called EFT, which works with bio-electrical patterns of emotions. It’s very simple. I, personally have not found it effective, but I know people who’ve had good results with things like phobias and cravings, and they claims success with veterans. Here’s a link with all the info, and a free ebook. The other therapy, which I personally have found much more promising is called WREMS. It’s an adaptation of EMDR, that is designed to be self-administered. The woman who designed the program feels that this is more effective than going to an EMDR therapist, because the therapist’s agenda can actually be counterproductive. I tend to agree. Anyway the site is here.
I have burned up a lot of time reading about this stuff. In spite of how much it all seems to suck there is so much out there right now too. A lot of really good things. I did EMDR therapy about 2 years ago. My grandmother passed away and she was who I had bonded to after losing my mom. Two sessions and I felt really damned good, it was kind of unreal. My grandmother had helped me so much with my son too, the woman was just fearless about living so when she passed I swore that my heart was too broken and I couldn’t go on. I didn’t let it lay though, I had only been feeling like hell for about 10 days when I went in and tried it. I don’t even know how to describe it. I purchased a light and sound mind machine also that helps one get to different stages of relaxation. I bought it for my husband, but I make him share now…..it reminds me somewhat of EMDR because the lights sometimes flash back and forth during different modes from the right eye to the left. I saw it advertised though and bought it and then a week later my husbands psychiatrist started using them in his practice too (the nondoodling one)…..it wasn’t planned, it just happened that way. I have always wanted to read Women Who Run with Wolves. Can’t tell you how many times I have stood in the book store and seen it there and I always think to myself that one day I must get that because surely it is a great book. Thank you for sharing so much knowledge and the links! EFT is brand new to me.
As near as I can tell, the EMDR and WREMS work by throwing the brain into a low alpha/high theta state. I have worked with a lot of techniques to do that, but the WREMS does something that the others don’t, maybe because you have to remain actively involved by moving something back and forth. I don’t know, but it really has helped me to connect some dots that were something of a revelation. I meditate. I journey. But, the WREMS helps me to access states that I hadn’t been able to.
Women Who Run with the Wolves is a must-have. I did the same thing for years. I’d look at it, in the store, and think, I have to read that. Not today, though. I worked in publishing when it came out, so I was well aware of the phenomenon around it. It was on the bestseller list forever. Ultimately it was gifted to me, by a client, and at precisely the right moment. It’s not really a book. It’s an oracle… and an experience. You have to read it when it calls to you, and leave it on the shelf, when it doesn’t. Very strange.
The GI Rights Hotline is 800-394-9544, for anyone with issues about medical and psychological care. Also about getting discharges, and dealing with rights issues while in the military, such as sexual harrassment.
It’s time to spread this information, about the personal and family costs of this war, to people before they sign on to become a victim of it.