I'm Surprised You Ain't a Drunk!

The kids across the street at the day care center are playing their 'man down' game this morning. The game is conducted in such a quiet and reserved manner that only half of my remaining hairs stand on end. The shrieking game on the other hand causes every hair to stand at attention and my buttocks to levitate above the seat a few inches. I don't much like either game, perhaps the kids could take up knitting or a rousing game of Zirkon Tank Defender III on their little computers. On second thought, knitting might cause them to grow up unacceptably violent, a real danger to society and their peers.

Somehow the subject came up at one of the counseling sessions during my first attempt to eliminate the anxiety of PTSD. Ah, those days of hope and naiveté when I thought that this could be cured with a little talking and a few pills. My counselor gave me a nice thought to go home with one day, something like: I'm surprised you ain't a drunk! Of course, Jason, my counselor during those sessions holds a master's degree and is a licensed mental health person so he said it more eloquently than that, but my version is more fun.

It isn't that I didn't give serious thought to an unauthorized form of medicinal treatment. I think that every person suffering from PTSD would try almost anything to relieve the pain and distress. Like athletes, we can be a little stupid that way when it comes to chemicals. However, at least with alcohol, God blessed me with a stomach wholly unsuited to binge drinking or long-term experimental self medication. Terrible heartburn just isn't worth adding to the pains I already endure under PTSD. Therefore I can claim no towering self-discipline or will power in this. I'll have a beer or two every now and then, but most of the time it's just easier on me to do without. Drugs are a different story, but not in the way of amateur pharmacology studies like the folks you may see laying around the streets and alleys.

My one experience with a narcotic pain reliever didn't suit me. As a part of pulling me back from the brink, morphine was administered under prescription and intense supervision. I think the intensive part of the Intensive Care floor comes from how many times they wake you up at night to check if you are sleeping. "Well, I was..." For about a week I got to enjoy what I named horizontal morphine dreams. A better term, now that years have passed and I'm trying to sound smart, would be sequential morphine dreams. I dreamed the same nightmarish dream three times in a row until I cried to wake up and didn't want to sleep again. Vertical morphine dreams are those used in the old A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, or if you need something from this century, Inception used the same method. This is a dream where the victim awakens into another dream and then another until he cannot tell what is real and what is a dream. Praise God I didn't have to deal with that! Come to think of it, nested morphine dreams might describe that better. I'm renaming Bucky's Theory of Morphine Dreams on the fly!

A good round of placebos helps some folks with their symptoms. I heartily recommend placebos; Peanut M&M's are a favorite of mine. If we must get addicted to chemicals, then placebos are a better solution than something that causes horrible side effects such as weight gain or bloating. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Miniatures are another good placebo that fits the bill. Surprisingly, Amazon lists these in Grocery when they are obviously a Health and Personal Care item. The expense of placebos is only slightly less than a cocaine habit, so be sure to take it up with your physician or counselor to get a prescription. Renting a costumed kid to walk around with on Halloween is a good way to stock up on placebos. Be sure to take an extra bag for little 'Ferdy' who is sick at home.

Chemical or drug solutions to help with the symptoms of PTSD are necessary for some folks. My first therapy round included one of the anti-depressants, Celexa, (my spelling may not be correct), that helped mute the ups and downs of emotion until cognitive behavior therapy methods combined with my faith in Christ helped get things mostly under control. I'm not just interjecting my faith here, that was noted by my counselor as well. Whether that came before or after his backhanded suggestion to get drunk, I don't recall. Until the next time, God bless you!

Bucky

The Tag Team of Personal Terror

Why, may I ask, do I come after myself with a tag team of personal terror? The characters in this tag team go by the names Shame and Self-pity. The team does have quite a bit of material to work with; we all face challenges and problems in this life, and we fail more often than we would like in new situations. The problem as it relates to PTSD begins when I bring up those past failures, beat myself with a little recalled guilt, feel shame all over again, and then inject a good dose of self-pity that I am ashamed of something long past. Guilt begets shame, and shame is what starts the fear cycle of public humiliation. If I see something shameful about myself, surely everyone else can see how worthless and weak I am as well. This kind of thinking is neither honest nor accurate, but I do it all too often.

PTSD ends in disorder for a good reason. Now, I realize there is a suggestion on the psychological table to eliminate the word 'disorder' so that someone is not offended, but I think it should remain. Letting shame and self-pity beat me down, keep me from enjoying a good meal in a restaurant with friends, or thumping me into a panic attack is a disorder of the mind, and let's call the moose a moose. We can't really change the name to Post-traumatic Lack of Happy Feelings When I Really Want to Feel Good, can we? Think of the horror of PTLOHFWIRWTFG. That's like some sort of texting nightmare. All right, I've gone right off the deep end now.

Shame and self-pity are a couple of things we just don't need to add to PTSD. The past haunts us enough as it is with combat flashbacks, accident anxieties, and other such dreadful thoughts. To bring up every mistake, faux pas, and social gaffe from the days of yore, wallow in the embarrassing memory for a while, and feel shame all over again just hurts too much. It is time we learn to forgive others of course, but also to forgive me and you, the person hurting the self with all those bad memories.

So you stomped on that girl's foot at the sophomore dance, let it go. Of course if it were just tame little memories like that few of us would have any real problem. What we tend to bring up again are those times that we really hurt someone. The events that suddenly come to mind during a dark night and we wince in shame asking, "Why did I do that? The memory may include a crime or something that got a person fired from a job. The fact that you paid the price according to the law does not mean that memory or shame go away quite so easily. With PTSD, that kind of thing just makes it all the worse. We must find a way to gain forgiveness, from the one hurt if possible, but especially from that one doing the accusing. His or her name is usually Me or I, or however you want to refer to yourself at 0300 when the thoughts won't let you sleep.

PTSD is enough of a problem without making myself miserable through shaming and self-pitying. All of us have good qualities and bad, times we performed poorly and times when we did well. What we must not do is constantly rehearse the times we fell flat on our social noses or hurt someone, and begin to look at what we can do now, today, to help others. One of the best therapies is to give. Time, money, effort, or whatever, give and seek no return for yourself. The first time you attempt something, even in helping out or volunteering, you may screw it up. Things often happen that way in a new job or task. Go at it again though; we are not trying to build up more memories for shame and self-pity to beat us with. Give and give some more, selflessly and with a good effort. Who cares what the world may say; we work to build up some good memories. Memories of good works that we can sleep on.

God bless,
Bucky

Proper Perishing

Now this is a difficult subject to inject humor into! Through religion, training, society, or whatever, we all know that suicide is not the proper way to perish. Yet, so many of those who served our nation are choosing this way as of late. Like many of you, I would like to stand forth today and state that I have the solution to this problem. Trouble is: I very much do not have a solution and would be a liar to claim that I do. People solutions are difficult because each of us is both different and similar to everyone else. Those enduring the tribulation of PTSD have similarities, but not all is the same with us either. Veterans may be a smaller subset of PTSD, but we too have differences in experience and circumstance. Then, just when we might focus in on some set of factors, people without PTSD also commit suicide.

Proper perishing might involve the sacrifice of a life to save others. This situation does not arise very often though. Certainly not enough to make some web site with a list of potential life donors for harrowing rescue operations. Besides, it just makes better news when both the rescuer and the damsel in distress come back alive. For those of the politically correctness persuasion, we can also rescue the dimsal in distress. Dimsal and damsel doesn't sound quite right, or maybe it does to you. The spell checker is telling me to quit inventing new words. Some have tried, and succeeded, in the suicide-by-cop scenario.

To involve another person, particularly one who might in turn suffer PTSD from setting me free does not seem to be proper. Through shame and self-pity PTSD can be a selfish thing, but even the possibility of spreading the sickness to someone else should make us reconsider. Those who suffer a thing generally do not want to force others to endure the same thing. Misery may like company, but it is nice when the company is in a position to help and not simply there to add to the cacophony of whining. Does saying 'No, no' work?

Some religions or denominations of religions use the Thou-shalt-not method or the eternal condemnation threat in an attempt to stop suicide. It might seem to work only because it is hard to gather witnesses to give testimony that it did not in fact work for them. I don't want to report in to God that my final act in this life was to end the life He has given me. But is that the best way to prevent suicide? I think that any method must center on life to work, much like a successful marriage is not an avoidance of divorce but a celebration of all that makes marriage good.

One day, while taking my morning stroll through this little town, I decided that offering to die for Jesus was not what He wanted most from me. By utility column 399 on the corner of Thompson Park, I decided to offer not my death, I had done that more than once, but to live for Christ. For those of us suffering from PTSD, to live is the more difficult path and thus the greater offering.

Those who suffer from combat may think that it was not proper that he or she did not perish with those mates who fell in the battle that will not allow him or her to sleep at night. Others see car accidents in their imagination (guilty). Those who suffered a crime may see stalkers, rapists, or murderers around every corner. Some may not remember what caused the PTSD due to buried childhood trauma or injury to the brain. However, somewhere within all of the pain is a reason to celebrate life. I found it in my faith in Christ. Saying 'do that' is a surefire way to cause rebellion against whatever I say, so I will simply tell what works for me.

Seeking humor in a situation helps me. I want to be in control of every situation, but PTSD says, "You ain't in control of nuttin', Jack!" Friends are a reason to live. How can I be so selfish as to deprive a friend of my life and cause him greater pain than he bears already? There is much to learn in this life. I enjoy learning, but there are those times when nothing seems worth knowing. Recognize the symptom of depression and fight back by laughing at it. Perhaps the ones to solve this suicide crisis are not the psychologists and psychiatrists who have no real stake in it save to become famous and make lots of loot, but those of us who are on the front lines. There is a joy in helping others and we stand to gain most in this. We can in fact regain our very lives.

Who knows better than us what another PTSD sufferer is feeling? God has given us understanding to use in helping one another. Want to regain some control? Set up a network through whatever means you like to others in need of help. The VA is doing this, but not all of PTSD is in the VA system. Learn from each other; learn to talk and learn to listen, often we who suffer in this thing must learn both skills. Life is not unmanageable for us, but we may need more help than some in managing it. I think that accepting help is one of the most difficult obstacles we must overcome. Having a friend who understands the experience is very helpful. The solution we seek may be within us, but we may need all of us to find it and bring it out.

Well, I haven't been very funny today, but in my defense this suicide crisis we face is not a funny subject. I fear that we are losing the best of this generation from this problem, though not all of it because if you are reading this, then I can assume that you are still here with me in the land of the living. Please stay, I want to hear from you, and so do your friends and loved ones. God loves you, and so do I!
Bucky

Digestational Difficulty

A subject in America that typically is allowed only between old folks in casual coffee conversation - to beat the alliteration thing into the ground - is the digestive tract difficulties that we face in PTSD. Now which is the cause and which the effect is what is affecting my meager miniscule mind this merely muggy morn. Some days it seems that the gut begins the grumbling which in turn leads to the anxiety that I will anti-gravitate my latest burger bomb in a public forum to my humble humiliation. Other times, the anxiety or depression seems to begin the aggressive attempt by my alimentary contents to appear in my immediate area. Many times, I just don't freakin' know what started it.

The fear of public expectoration is partially related to a hiatal hernia. This is a hernia at the other end, so to speak, wherein the stomach wants to climb up above the diaphragm. This condition usually appears at times of impending performance such as standing up to speak, addressing the judge, singing the national anthem before the Children's Patriot Day celebration or any other public trigger event that puts stress on even those without Petey Esdy as a casual friend. (As a PTSD sufferer, I of course do not actually do any of the aforementioned things.) The old stomach-in-my-throat thing is actually a diagnosed medical condition for some of us.

Other things that can pile on us along with the PTSD are chronic bowel inflammation, Crone's Disease, oops, that's Crohn's Disease,(the other one is only for certain old folks), diverticulitis, spastic colon, food allergies, ulcerative colitis, and many other things that cause the yards of tubing in the gut to swell up and complain with the pain. I enjoyed several orthopedic surgeries, but only one internal invasion, and guts I can tell you do not like to be uncomfortable, cut on, or messed with in any way. Feelings of fear rise up with the guts and you know the thoughts: 'I'm having a heart attack!' or 'Cancer! It's got to be cancer this time.' Perhaps your imagination comes up with other thoughts having to do with doom and internal destruction on a gastric scale. We the sufferers do it to ourselves too many times to count.

The purpose of this little discussion in gastric grossness is to remind us that some of the feelings we think are just the fear and anxiety are in fact rooted in physical symptoms. I once was the happiest stomach flu sufferer in the company. A silly thing to claim, but after several incidents of running for home from work only to feel better almost before I could climb in the truck, it was a relief to have an actual physical ailment to report. Bosses understand the flu, the stomach flu, gushing out both ends, hacking up a lung, and other 'real' symptoms. The pains from PTSD, though no less real to us, do not rate the same amount of belief on the ol' boss scale of perceived pain and suffering sufficient to avoid slaving away for the greater glory of the corporation.

God bless you!
Bucky

Bored or Fine? T'aint Neither!

The assault of anxiety got me yesterday. That, I think, is the assault weapon we should work harder to ban. Firearms don't frighten me; I'm familiar with them and enjoy shooting as a hobby. A restaurant - this seems to be a trigger place for me - and a growing feeling of anxiety extending even to panic slowly building up within me. Various feelings within my guts competing with anxious questions in my mind. People talking behind me or meeting new people at lunch, both can contribute to my feeling of panic. Waiting for the food, the pressure of making a choice from the menu, eating slowly in hopes of settling the stomach down, but in the end only leaving the immediate environment worked. And that, only after my friend finished his business and we left the premises. If one or two of the conditions caused my symptoms every time the anxiety arrived, I think that I could control the problem. If I had the same reaction every time I ate at a restaurant, that would also provide an obvious solution. However, as you know it just isn't that simple.

As I sat out on the back step of the restaurant, one of the kitchen employees came by and said that I looked bored. Usually, it's a comment like, 'You looked fine' after the battle is over, but this time it was the cousin - bored. Boredom of course was about as far from what was going on in my mind as could be. I prayed, talked, tried to sing (quietly, no sense in frightening the natives), stretched, tried a little muscle relaxation exercise, even tried to imagine a new start for my novel that needs a major rewrite. I heard God say, "I'm here with you." Did that mark the time I rotated fully around the bend? I don't believe so. Of course different people believe different things, and brother, am I ever different!

I gave some grunt or grimace in response, but that is one of the interesting things that goes on in PTSD. I may look normal, fine, or bored to the casual passerby, but on the inside I'm fighting an emotional rebellion. While my face maintains its emotional distance, my mind is causing pain and other uncomfortable sensations in my body. Perhaps this is payment for the years in my youth when I tried to be like Spock. Maybe I wrote that already in another blog. The Spock character dealing with PTSD after that episode, The Galileo Seven, wherein Spock made life or death decisions for a small crew marooned on a planet while the Enterprise appeared to abandon them would make some good television.

Spock was the model of self-control, something that seems to flee my grasp the harder I struggle to close my fist around it. Vulcans crushed their emotions with logic, except for Spock who being half-human, suffered occasional outbursts. In the first movie, the character seeks to quash his emotions once and for all only to be contacted by V'ger, who apparently thought he was some kind of machine. The logical priestess mind melded with Spock and then tossed him from the program in the final test. Spock didn't get to sing The Logical Song or something like that, and as a punishment had to rejoin the Enterprise. I think I'm mixing up my retro-references a bit, but doesn't that bring to mind an idea. What if we could open our minds to a doctor or therapist and let them join us for a bit in the pool of panic? Of course that might make them crazy too. Imagine the Vulcan logical priestess running off into the wilderness screaming, "Gah! The anxiety! The FEAR! My mind is broken!"

I would hate to be responsible for causing the poor old gal to suffer six months of mental traction. Imagine the delays while Vulcans waited to take their final logical test. Imagine me getting back on topic! I guess any more discussion of my self-control is kind of useless after that little journey far off the beaten path. Truth is, when my buttocks are parked out behind a restaurant or in some other odd place, I am neither bored nor fine. Getting away from the immediate situation is a temporary solution at best, though sometimes we find it necessary in our struggle with PTSD. For some this method might cause their assaults of panic. I don't have the answers to every situation. Certainly, I desire that God should take this cup from me, if you will pardon the reference. A restaurant should be a fine, social place to gather for a meal, not a test to be endured.

God's blessing to you,
Bucky

Those Devilish Details

Yes, I'll confess! The tale of my infamous truck accident is a bit lacking in detail. I learned to do this after repeating the story in perfect detail one too many times, or maybe it was one hundred too many times. The physical reaction to this post-trauma retelling began to gain notice, even in my distracted mind. To combat the stress, I began telling the story with less detail, altering the chronological order of some things, and generally staying away from a witness-stand style of recalling and reenacting. After all, I wasn't on trial, so why reinforce the PTSD! The great beyond to this life came closest when my lungs filled up with bone marrow.

Now that little detail is not often told in after-accident stories. If a bone is broken, the marrow sometimes escapes into the body. Kind of makes sense when you think about it, but more often than not only doctors think about such things. As I had no less than four long bones broken, a lot of goop entered the blood stream and began looking for a place to settle down and make a new bone, or whatever it is that bone marrow likes to do when it gains its freedom. Should the bone marrow settle out of the blood in the heart or brain, the patient is one of those who 'die of complications from injuries received in an auto accident' as the hospital spokespersons like to state. The patient may also perish if the marrow settles in the lungs; sort of a drowning in goo thing to use medical terminology. Heh, heh! I think the quack used fatty embolism, which I took personally, to describe the condition. In any case, the cure was to stick the doc's Craftsman 40-hp shop vacuum down my throat, at least that's what it felt like, and suck the gook out.

Another detail of this procedure is that the patient must be paralyzed because he will reject the schnozzle of the vacuum. Gee, da ya think? My desire to return the favor notwithstanding, the procedure worked and my condition improved quickly. I have no idea which of the docs performed the violation, so I guess their drugs had the desired effect. There you go, another detail of the recovery process. Now I'm going to run away from it again for my own sake and sanity.

Years later, details still cause trouble for me occasionally. Join any ol' line at the unemployment place without checking the little signs, as the Danny DeVito character did in Renaissance Man, and the patient, oops, we're past that now, the unemployed person may wait uselessly in the wrong line only to find out the horrible news at the front of the line. Strangely, this is one of my fears, and it is strange because it is not the end of the line that causes the anxiety, I'm okay there, but the pressure of the people waiting behind me. This is not a personal expression thing from cranky mugs or something arising from sharp-tongued loose lips of those in line, but sort of a pressure that builds in my mind. I do not know why this is, but I have felt relief in letting others go ahead of me. This can indeed cause baffled comments such as, "what a nice guy!" or "Have you gone loony?"

A detail that I relate in these blog entries may help you in your struggle. I can only hope, since telling every weakness of mine is to hand an enemy ammunition for whatever weapon he or she would use against me. Fortunately, I don't know of any enemies other than the spiritual ones. Well, there is the guy who asks after my mental health using archaic expressions, but he's just part of my inner dialogue.

God bless,
Bucky

Guarding Against Disinterest

A few days have passed since my last post. Therefore, we might ought to talk about one of the symptoms of PTSD and depression; a general lack of interest in pretty much everything. Of course, this is most noticeable in those activities that we enjoyed prior to the disinterest setting in like a cloud of gray, stifling fog. I enjoy writing, but suddenly I don't have any wind in my writing sails. A few days may pass before I realize that another foggy doldrums has arrived. Other activities may mask the lack of interest in what was a primary activity. Perhaps you love watching football games, but after a couple of weekends doing something else you realize that on the third weekend football games seem boring. You just cannot bring yourself to watch another football game, it seems like, ever again.

A change of this type may be a cause for rejoicing in a spouse, we won't say which one, but it is something we as PTSD sufferers must stand guard over. One of the first signs of full-blown depression is a lack of interest.

Now, the usual answer is that I must try the activity, to somehow force myself to be interested in what I have no desire to perform, or watch, or whatever. This comes from that old immersion therapy thing. If someone is afraid of water, the practitioner of this form of witchcraft takes the victim and tosses him into a pool of water, or hands him over to the CIA for a little waterboarding, or has him watch reruns of Waterworld, or some other torture. The final extension of this theory is that we can completely cure water phobias by drowning the phobiacs. As the corpse settles to the bottom of the river, the therapist shouts out his success at curing the malady, forever and permanently. When I have no interest in writing, staring at the computer screen for hours on end does not cure the problem, it only makes me more keenly aware of my shortcomings in fixing it. Which, makes me more depressed and causes even less interest in the activity, and so on.

Strangely perhaps, I think the best way to regain my interest and avoid the depression is to not force myself to write, for example, but to find things or activities that do interest me until the interest in writing revives. I don't have control over the when or how, at least not that I have observed, but trying to write more when I don't want to write at all does not seem to be the answer. In the football example, one may have to record several weekends of games until the interest returns. During the weekends off, take a shot at distraction much like we do for the anxiety attacks. Get away from the monitor, read a book at random, do something selfless, talk to a wall for a while, or talk to a cat (it's pretty much the same thing). Take a wild step and talk to God, that is, to pray. You might get an answer!

Bucky, your friend in post-traumatic distress