The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

The Department of Veterans Affairs defines Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, as a mental health problem that can occur after someone goes through a traumatic event like war, assault, or disaster. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, PTSD was first brought to public attention in relation to war veterans, but it can result from a variety of traumatic incidents, such as mugging, rape, torture, being kidnapped or held captive, child abuse, car accidents, train wrecks, plane crashes, bombings, or natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes.

People suffering from PTSD can experience flashbacks and nightmares. They are likely to suffer from depression, avoiding reminders of their trauma, perhaps going so far as being unable to recall the event. They are easily startled, struggle with sleep and anger, and thus, they are frequently tense.

Two local veterans stepped forward to share their experience, their struggles, and their treatment.

Both were articulate and well informed, and both asked to remain anonymous. Despite the growing conversation in the media in recent years about veterans suffering with PTSD, the stigma remains.

“The cumulative effect of Vietnam, plus,” said one veteran, “the one counselor I had, said, I probably had PTSD before I joined the corps. Any add on after that wasn’t helping. For so many years they just ignored the problem. That didn’t help either. Half of the veterans from Vietnam found a way to kill themselves. You could drink yourself to death, or drug yourself to death, or work yourself to death. Doesn’t matter, it all comes out the same.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs reported recently that about 22 veterans committed suicide each day in 2010. The highest percentage of those suicides was committed by veterans over the age of 50.

He was having a recurring nightmare every night. “It was a North Vietnamese in full uniform carrying an AK-47 with a bayonet coming at you and you froze.” A kind of dream state paralysis would set in and he would be unable to move, unable to react until he said, “your heart rate came to a certain level, then you woke up. It’s like you’ve been running a sprint. You wake up in a panic, unsure where you are. Are you there? Are you here?"

It went on for a long time and it only happened when he was trying to sleep at night. He had tried drinking, but gave that up. For a time he thought the answer was to work to the point of exhaustion.

“I could work twenty hours a day and still not be caught up. I thought that was good because I thought I could get some deep sleep.”

He never did.

“I couldn’t function any more. I was getting sick all the time. You might as well be on drugs, it has the same effect. You’re body is slowly dying. There is no outward evidence of abuse like drugs or alcohol or overworking, which is kind of what I used to do. It just eats away at you and kills you. It’s a form of torture. I finally went in and they started sorting it out.”

He’d sought help once before, but seeing two guards with duty belts, mace and night sticks walking through the lobby gave him pause. It wasn’t until he walked in the VA hospital in Portland that things began to get a little better. He got into a group therapy program and he was retrained on how to get deep sleep.

“The military trains sleep out of you. You’re trained to stay in a place of awareness that is not really normal. The combat adds to it. Where you are at in the combat adds to it. In a firefight, it was almost like you could relax. This is what we were there for.”

It took three 15-week group sessions before he finally broke down and began to grieve.

The Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy or EMDR, was a great deal of help to him as well. The patient remembers a traumatic event while the eye is focused in quick lateral movements, in hopes that the therapy will make the memory benign.

“It’s like taking the explosive out of a hand grenade. Now you know it’s not going to go off. You still have the memory, but they take the emotion out of the memory. At the same time you are getting your deep sleep so you are healing.”

With one session of EMDR, he noticed a difference and was thrilled.

“That’s an answer to prayer because these people know something and they are doing something that is positive and they don’t need drugs and containment.”

He’s got his sleep back, and he’s regaining his health, one day at a time.

He knows that other veterans are suffering. He tries to talk to them, but the subject is frequently taboo. He remembers the men who are gone now.

“A lot of those guys are already in their grave, for whatever reason. They couldn’t get their health back, they gave up.” He doesn’t want to see that happen to those who remain.

The other veteran has gone a different way on his quest for peace.

On the day he got hurt he was responsible for a lot of people. His physical wounds are healed, but the memory of that day is branded on his skin and in his mind.

When he got home, he went to work. He raised a family. He stayed busy.

“What happened in my life, I was so busy, so my mind was always occupied. At the end of the day I would be mentally exhausted. I was able to sleep for the most part.”

“They say a lot of them don’t exhibit it until they retire,” said his wife.

“That’s very true,” he said. “Well you’ve got to work, you’re raising a family, you don’t have time for that stuff.”

He did wonder, “Why is this happening to me now?”

So things changed when he retired. He had more time on his hands and his mind was free to wander. Thoughts of his days in Vietnam, memories of that horrific day began to return to the space in his mind that was no longer taken up by work and family stresses.

“I was always short tempered; that may be a function of what happened to me early on. I noticed I was getting short too often with my wife. After a while, I started to have periods of pretty extreme depression.”

Not knowing how to handle it, he began to withdraw, sometimes for a couple days, finding work to do, avoiding his wife.

“I couldn’t sleep at night. I was having the same recurring flashbacks and nightmares. It would always be at the same time. 12:17. I would spend weeks waking up at 12:17. Then it would be 1:15. There was no getting back to sleep. The recurring nightmares happened to be specifically around the day I got hurt. I always felt like I was responsible, that’s what haunted me.”

One day he went to the VA to visit with his physician. In the middle of it he had what he described as a “spell.” His eyes were glassy, he was mute, unable to communicate and he began to shake. Fortunately, the physician knew what was going on. He also knew a little of his history.

“So they got me set up with mental health, and I spent a long time with them. Initially I met with a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I had a counselor I saw every week. Nice guy. He really helped me with the anger.”

Not only was he not sleeping, he was “hyper-vigilant.” He said, “Part of the waking up at night is that I wasn’t sleep sound to begin with. Anything would wake me up and I’d be up. Initially it was firecrackers. I’d roll out of bed and be on the floor. I had guns everywhere and they were all loaded.”

The treatment program has prescribed him some medications. He’s got something to help him sleep and another one for depression.

“I don’t have that particular nightmare any more. I have a good nightmare about the nurse coming along saying, I think we can do something with him.”

He still doesn’t sleep as well as he’d like, but he meets with the psychiatric nurse practitioner every three months. He’s been given the tools to deal with his anger, but he still doesn’t have a lot of patience with people. He doesn’t go to reunions and he doesn’t watch shows about Vietnam, for fear they will send his mind down that unwelcome path.

“The VA program is probably the best around for dealing with this kind of problem," said his wife. “They understand it. They have programs in place, and once you get into the program, it’s so smooth. They do the medication, the counseling, the follow up. We used to even get phone calls. ‘How is he doing today?’ That is good.”

However, she notes, “It would be really nice if they had a program for the family. What we deal with, I mean. You might think I’m not sympathetic, but if you get too involved, it just sucks you in. I make sure he takes his medications and goes to his appointments.”

They simply take it one step at a time, to try and move through it.

“It’s a long process, it’s that process that a lot of the veterans don’t want to go through,” she said. “They really resist it because it comes under mental health. That’s such a stigma.”

He, too, wants other veterans to know there is hope, but knows that we have a long way to go to move past the stigma that remains.