The Strength of One
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009-by Janet Seahorn
It had been several months since I last saw him. The end of last semester during finals to be exact. He had been a student in one of my university classes. He was a big, strapping, young man who almost always had a smile on his face and some funny comments to amuse his table mates.
Before that semester began, I knew that several of my new students were National Guard or had served in the military; he was among them. On one occasion, he told me that he had been on active duty and had just returned from a tour in a war zone. Iraq one day, and the next day he was signed up and attending classes at the university. No transition time whatsoever. Yet, he seemed to take it all in stride. He even joined a fraternity.
A few times I had spoken with him about some of his experiences and asked if he knew anything about Post Traumatic Stress. Without much dialogue he nodded and mentioned that he had some symptoms but he was coping quite well. And by all outward appearance and on most days he was fine. Only a few times did I recognize the demons had visited him, but thankfully, they didn’t seem to stay very long.
The semester wore on without much concern until the last month when he was absent a few times - until then he attended every class and only missed on rare occasions. One absence occurred the first day of class. He had e-mailed me ahead of time to let me know he would be missing that session because he was attending the funeral of one of his best friends. Only later did I learn the funeral was a young marine who had been in our local papers and had recently died in Iraq.
The marine had been a close high school friend. They had been star players on their football team, shared Saturday night outings built on a foundation of boyhood friendship.
After our “catch-up” talk, he mentioned that the summer had been tough. He had an accident which broke some bones in his ankle. He could not participate in all of the fun activities that had anticipated during the school year. Given the pain and the down time of recuperation, the memories resurfaced; the trauma of his tour of duty in Iraq, what he saw and had to cope with, the decisions he had to make on a daily basis - returned to haunt him.
Typical of his strong personality, he downplayed most of the symptoms. Yet, this is an intelligent young man. He did not dismiss the symptoms and stated that he was getting help for his PTSD. Just knowing this put my mind at ease. I could only imagine what courage it took to take this step. Hopefully, other vets who know him will follow his example. He will get better - faster, in a healthier manner.
Just a side note: I no longer choose to call this a “disorder”. It seems to me the more I learn and understand this phenomenon, the more I believe that PTS(D) is the minds/body’s incredibly creative way to deal with an unusually horrendous life event.
Had the mind not employed the immediate reaction of numbing and stuffing the event, the person may have died. To avoid the ultimate death sentence, the mind/brain made a split second decision to unconsciously remove itself from the trauma until a later time; a time when the body was safe to explore the event without being in the line of fire.
Pretty amazing and effective when you think about it. If the brain wasn’t such a protective, innovative problem solver many of us would not be around today. Yea, for our amazing brain. Maybe it is not “disordered” at all, just creatively restructured for a bit.
In a few weeks I will attend a conference on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBIs). Of course I will be writing about this experience and sharing some of the information with our blog readers. Stay tuned.
