Guest Writer: PTSD, the battle after the battle

PTSD, the battle after the battle (author: Lauren K.)

Mike joined the military in 2006, not for the reasons that most people join. He did not join with the attitude of wanting to go and fight some great battle and win a courageous war. He didn’t want to travel the world, or be seen in some handsome uniform. He joined because he was grateful to be born in a country full of liberties, and he realized that those freedoms do not come free. He felt that everyone should do something with their life to benefit this great country, it is a privilege to be able to live in this country - and nobody should just take it for granted. Since he had not gone to college, and he was young and physically capable to – he joined the military. He does not see himself as some “hero”, and he is not someone who necessarily takes “pride” in being a soldier – he does it because he feels it’s his duty.


He joined the US Army, in the 11B – Army Infantry. In August 2009, the day before our 2 year wedding anniversary, and on our sons 7 month birthday he deployed to Afghanistan with the 2nd Infantry, 1st Division, in a Stryker brigade.

They knew it would not be an easy deployment, and in the second month of the deployment they already had numerous IED hits and live fire. In that second month his own Stryker vehicle was hit by an IED. He was not in it, thank the Lord! But he lost two of his team members who were also close friends. I thought that even I was going to never recover from that. How on earth could he?

Towards the end of the 12 months our FRG started making classes available for the spouses to attend on reintegration, watching for signs of PTSD, how to help your spouse cope with stress and change, ect. I went to all of them! I brought home all the pamphlets and books, looked up and bookmarked all the websites. I made myself an expert on it.

He came home, that day was THE BEST day in my life. I was so surprised at how well our now 1 ½ year old son took right to his daddy he had only ever known in pictures. I was amazed at how patient and fatherly my husband was with the son he only knew through letters and pictures. (My husbands unit moved from tent city to tent city, they rarely had phone or internet access, maybe once a month? So letters and pictures were pretty much it for us.) Everything seemed to be going SO well, but I knew that it could take a few weeks before the honeymoon was over – and that the stress and PTSD symptoms could still be ahead of us.

A few months passed, I let down my guard, and began to enjoy our family of three. I had noticed sleep walking and some personality changes – but everyone changes, so I didn’t think too much of it. He had picked up some new habits that he didn’t have before (suddenly a big video gamer and computer nerd, he was more of a social person than a video game person before).

Then we moved to a new duty station. A few weeks later he was in a behavioral hospital.
Like I had said, he did have some personality changes. He had gone from the social, fun loving, easy going, playful father and husband – to anti social, nose in his computer, antsy, fidgety, and sometimes acting very confused. He lost a lot of weight, and no longer had a sex drive (or had trouble if he tried). He also began, what I thought was, sleep walking. He would do really weird things while “sleep walking”, and fought me when I tried to reason with him and get him to bed. It was a lot like dealing with someone with Alzheimer’s. He thought for sure he knew what he was doing, and would get scared and confused when I would correct him or stop him from doing it. Microwaving our jar of pens, trying to play Xbox with the TV remote, and wondering off are just a few of the weird little things he would do on his “confused” nights when I thought he was “sleep walking”.

But one night he was very obviously confused, and having delusions that he was still in Afghanistan. He was insisting that he needed to take the Stryker (our car) to the compound for maintenance and was packing his bags for the trip. I took him to the ER. I didn’t know what else to do! They contacted the unit and his commanders he had been deployed with to get some background information, and what did his higher-ups tell the doctors?? – “oh he is fine, tell him to get over it.” So they just sent us home and said “he must just be tired.”

A few weeks later, we were back with the same level of confusion and delusions. That time I insisted on speaking with a few different doctors, and they had him admitted to a behavioral health hospital for observation. He did well there, so he was released. Two nights later, he was worse than ever. And he was having such a severe panic attack over the situation that they sedated him – which made him even worse! So they put him in the psych ward.  The psych ward doctors concluded that he was doing drugs, and sent him to the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program. The ASAP removed the mark from his record after interviewing him and agreeing that he was not doing drugs or had any type of substance abuse problem. So we were back to square one – what do we do now?
He again had a bad night, I took him to the ER again – and they decided to test him for a TBI. He was sent to a TBI clinic, and they found he was TBI free! Praise the Lord, but now what?

His weeks of confusions and delusions would come and go. Our marriage would get back on its feet and we would celebrate our days together when he was his good old self, and then the bad weeks would come again and it would feel like life is falling apart. It is so hard on all of us when the bad weeks come. I have to care for him like he is a child, he needs help with everyday life and to have someone keep an eye on him.  He uses up so much of my patience that I don’t have enough left for our kids some days. His anxiety and nervousness pulls him away from everyone, he doesn’t notice me or interact with me – and even avoids me. It is heart breaking. He also does that to the kids, which they do not understand and makes our home very tense. It makes me angry to see him treat them that way, but I have to hold the boiling anger inside realizing he isn’t doing it intentionally. I would also get so angry at him for not making a bigger effort to try and “fix” himself. If he cared about us, he would be working overtime to try and make it better right? But he is afraid that he would get kicked out of the military and not be able to keep a job to support us if his unit knew about everything. And he has been working so hard for a promotion, and he doesn’t want to deny us a better paycheck because of his “problems”.
Almost a year passed, and he had a really bad night again. I took him back to the ER, because once again I didn’t know who to contact and there was nobody following along with his case to notify. Finally, we got an ER doctor who said “This is PTSD – I am so sorry people kept turning you away and denying that it was. There is no blanket symptom or cause of PTSD, it is individual and unique for each patient.” He got Mike an appointment for the next day with a PTSD professional counselor, who then called me after his appointment and made an appointment to meet with me too! I was able to go in and sit down with several different doctors and go over our full story.

It took almost 3 years to finally get any type of help for him. Three years of feeling like our family was going to fall apart before someone finally recognized our need for help.
Do not let anyone tell you that your situation was not stressful enough to cause PTSD. Nobody has the same stress threshold. What is stressful for one, may not be stressful for the other. And do not let anyone tell you that what you have is not PTSD – if you feel like you need help with post traumatic stress, push for help! Your reaction to stress is not going to be the same as the person next to you. You are not the person next to you, you are your own individual thinking person!

I am very thankful that they now have him seeing a counselor weekly, and are putting him in group therapy with other PTSD patients. They also are going to have him take a few trips with a treatment program to help him learn to cope and relax, and to recognize what his triggers are and how to deal with them. It has only been a month, so no progress or change yet – but I am looking forward to seeing it, as slow as it may be!

Now I am looking for support groups for myself. It is exhausting taking care of two kids virtually on my own, and then having to care for him as well. I can’t leave the kids with him in fear of him having a “bad moment” while they are in his care. I never get a break! It is also depressing having him pull away from me when he is having his bad weeks. I feel really lonely most nights… he has no sex drive so I feel like he is unattractive to me, he doesn’t like people touching him so when I sit beside him he gets up and moves, he can’t hold a conversation because he gets so nervous and flustered that he can’t even finish a full sentence without stumbling over his words. I feel so alone on the bad weeks. So tired, so exhausted, so alone.

I know I should conclude this on a note of encouragement, but I really don’t have anything encouraging to say about it. It is hard to get the help needed, very hard. Most days do not hold much hope for the future. All I can tell you is DO NOT GIVE UP. Push for help. Remind your spouse that it isn’t that you don’t love him but that you miss the real him, and encourage him to ask for help. Asking for help is NOT a weakness. A weak person hides away from the world when there is a problem. A strong person admits that there is something wrong and asks for help.

**Most of the details of his symptoms and his experiences with doctors were not mentioned due to their severity.**

Disclaimer: Please do not claim photos as your own, alter them, or use them for your own purpose. They are the property of Lauren K., used with permission for this post. Thank you!

If you would like to be a guest writer, please email me at jennifer@cupcakesandcombatboots.com :) Please take a moment to thank Lauren for sharing her story and struggle with us.