PTSD After Combat.

I wrote Combat Medic to show how life is like for combat soldiers with PTSD and veteran suicide risks in hopes to help families who are struggling like me. It wasn’t easy sitting down every day for four months to write down my most dreadful memories. The only way I was able to bear it was to keep in mind that writing my story wasn’t just going to help me understand what happened to me, it was going to educate the world  so people can start getting the treatment that they need.

I took the time to write about PTSD at the end of my book to draw the reader’s attention back into the main focus of my story. If you would like more information on PTSD you can find it on wikipedia.

COMBAT MEDIC: A soldier’s story of the Iraq war and PTSD (Excerpt)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder develops in people that have seen or lived through a scary or dangerous events. It causes people to isolate themselves from things that remind them of the experience.

It makes a person feel numb and void, forcing them to be less interested in things they used to enjoy.

People  hear and see things that aren’t around in the form of a flashback making it feel as real as the first time.

Recurring nightmares won’t allow a person to forget what happened. It’s a tough fight to go through on your own.

Do you know someone who’s currently struggling with PTSD? Be there for them no matter what. Even if they push you away because they think you won’t understand, be there with open arms to catch them when they fall, even if you don’t understand, because no one else will.

Well over 22 veterans commit suicide each day in America, proof that war never ends; even after you’re safe at home. I almost became a statistic, but by the grace of God I was given the strength to fight and go after a better life.

In time I’ve found that talking to counselors has helped with sorting through the pain and darkness I’m feeling. It also helped that I had a loving girlfriend who was willing to listen and try to make things work as best as possible. I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have her.

If you’re a veteran and need help, go talk to someone. If you can be seen at the Veterans Hospital, talk to a counselor. Find out if they can get you help. When that doesn’t work, try talking to family or friends, anyone you can to get whatever you have trapped inside, out. Find God as well. Try to build a strong relationship with Him because with His help you can make it through the impossible.

Need to talk to someone because you’re in a crisis, do what I did and call the Veterans Crisis line: 1-800-273-8255″

Click here to order on Amazon

A soldier’s story of the Iraq war and PTSD

Defeated, But Still Victorious

I’ve been through a lot in my life. So much so that I’m worn out mentally and physically. I’ve had long talks with God about why bad thing happen to me and he’s taught me a few things that I want to share.

Chronic pain has always been a major thorn in my side since coming home from the Iraq war in 2005. Over the past thirteen years the pain has only gotten worse, not better. It started out with the occasional  pain in my mid- back and then my knees. Over time it’s progressed and after extensive tests the VA Hospital diagnosed me with deteriorating disc disease with mild scoliosis in my lower spin as well as osteoarthritis in my knees.

For the past few months my knees have hurt so bad that I can only take the stairs one at a time because of the crunching pain that shoots through my knees when I bend them.

I’m thirty-four with the knees of a 60 year old.

I can’t run or work out anymore. The less I move throughout the day, the less burning I have to deal with inside my knee. It feels like an itchy, burning scab over a wound. I can barely walk. I wear knee braces every time I leave the house or I’ll end up having to take baby steps from the agonizing pain.

Last night, after a very active day, I had to crawl up and down the stairs. After doing this twice I started to feel depressed. I gave in to the pain and sat down on the stair in defeat. I started having memories of me at my best running and lifting weights. I used to be able to march, jump and bound while carrying 100+ pounds of gear easily.

“How did I get here?” I asked silently, tears from defeat and pain swelled up within my eyes.

After a few minutes of being in darkness, a scripture from the old testament in The Bible came to mind that helped snap me back to reality.  In Genesis 32 verses 22-29 after Jacob wrestles with God all night, God touched Jacobs hip, permanently crippling him.

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³ After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. ²⁴ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. ²⁵ When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. ²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

²⁷ The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

²⁸ Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,^[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

²⁹ Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

Even after all his fighting with God, God still blessed him because Jacob had all faith in God even after he crippled him. God even gave Jacob the name Israel because he was an overcomer of Gods and humans.

I began to realize that the pain I have came from my unwillingness to give up on what I wanted in life and not doing what I was created to do. I’ve fought God my whole life, the enemy has constantly attacked  me since I was born.

“Maybe going into the military wasn’t what God wanted for me and my fight with him was being on the front line. All of my ailments stem from the war in Iraq.”

I still have faith in God that life will get better. Even through all the pain, he has systematically surrounded me with love so that I won’t lose my faith in him and that love pushes me to be my best at all times just as he did for Jacob.

I might not be able to walk right because of painful knees, but I know that God has blessed me because of the calm in my life. He is literally polishing me, making me better so that I can shine to be a guiding light for others.

 

 

Polish

Project-Delta Interviews Combat Medic

Project-Delta Interview

This is the interview I did with project-delta. They have helped me come a long way with understanding how PTSD effects my everyday life. Please share!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FTA9J7K

Interview with Project-Delta

Catapulting Through Life

“Training a service dog is like…”

While walking Tank this morning, I thought of how to best describe service dog training to people who’ve never experienced it. The closest thing I can compare it to is a maze.

Just think about it, your view of the maze is like life with PTSD. You try your hardest to navigate the many jagged, twisty paths to get through to the finish but the tools you have just won’t work. You end up getting worried, bad anxiety attacks, and flashbacks just thinking about trying it on your own. There needs to be a new tool to help you navigate through the complicated maze.

Stick with me now, here is where it gets interesting.

Someone very kind walks up and hands you a pen, a new tool to help you achieve your goals of navigating through the maze. I’d like to think of a service dog as the pen, a companion that keeps you calm and focused on achieving your life goals.

Instead of getting freaked when thinking about the maze, you are able to calmly use your new tool to start navigating through the many different obstacles.

Tank

When I think about Tank, he did just that. I was practically a hermit, not leaving the house unless I needed to because of flashbacks. Just thinking about going out would be a struggle because I kept thinking of all the obstacles that may present themselves while out. When I received Tank from Project Delta and we were able to start public training, I felt better about going out. I actually wanted to.

I was able to use my pen and focus on calmly navigating through life. I got further with the pen than I did trying to depend on the tools I had.

But like the maze, training a service dog can usually lead to a dead-end. You have the right tool, but you can’t get past the road block because the tool ended up malfunctioning.

In my case, Tank ended up being way too overprotective. At home I couldn’t get him to stop barking at neighbors and dogs that walked by. Out in public I couldn’t sit down without Tank freaking out on people walking by, barking and snapping his jaws at them.

It was a side of Tank that I never saw coming. It’s a trait that’s hard to break, I would never be able to get him certified as a service dog. I love Tank to death, but I still had goals to accomplish, I still need to get to the finish.

Just like starting over on a maze, I have to try to find a different dog to help me finish my goal. I’m starting down the same path with the same tool hoping for a different outcome.

That’s just what it’s like, ask anyone and they’ll agree.

Three more days until Tank goes to his new home. He’s helped me overcome a lot of obstacles I would have never been able to do on my own. It’s hard letting him go, but he’s served his purpose.

Maze

Forgive! Don’t Be Bitter.

I remember how messed up I was back in 2011, living day by day thinking death was right around the corner. Seven years after war and it felt like I was stuck in hell. One moment I’d be fighting in a cemetery taking mortar rounds, the next moment I’m driving to work with chronic back pain speeding through traffic having flashbacks. Some days I just called into work because I was, quite frankly, scared to open the door because it might blow up.

In those dark moments my mind led me to believe that nothing in life was real. For some reason I believed that I had died back in Iraq and that I was in hell. That’s the reason that suicide was constantly running through my head.

“You’re never getting better, just let go of the steering wheel and it’ll all be over.”

I hated the military for making me this way. I hated my parents for how I was raised. I wanted to seriously hurt my ex-step-father for the years of abuse he put me through. He once beat me so hard, an ink pen somehow got stabbed through my ankle. I had this overwhelming urge to kill because of the random flashbacks I was pushed and pulled from.

I wouldn’t sleep for days at a time. I was used to it you know, from the 24-48 hours duties in the Army. I wished I was back in the Army in Iraq fighting on the front line again so I could feel normal, Someone important again.

My anger turned into bitterness which always led me back to suicidal thoughts, descending down a dark path.

I’m lucky that I found Jesus Christ or I would have followed through with something I could never come back from. I was saved by the scriptures I read day in and day out. The subject of bitterness  is all throughout the bible and the answer to finding peace is so simple, but so hard to grasp.

Forgivness

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6: 14-15 ESV

As soon as I softened my heart to the people that hurt me the most and tried my best to move on, life started getting better. I started talking to loved ones again and I served in my church as much as I could. I started slowly remembering the person I was before the war.

Things didn’t miraculously change in a week or even a month. I had to learn how to live with my pain as well as my PTSD symptoms. Since I started actively working on re-building my life in 2014, I’ve become happier with the fact that I’m alive and I have a loving family that gives me support and things to look forward to every day.

Bitter

Descend

Panicked – Not in My Vocabulary

It took awhile for me to adjust to civilian life after the Army. The whole world seamed to be out of place. There wasn’t an order to everything like the military and people ran around like little kids doing and saying whatever came to mind.

The one thing that really stood out the most is the way people would become panicked whenever something serious happened. Being panicked isn’t in my vocabulary. After 14 months of being mortared, shot at and receiving blown-up patients  in the middle of the night drove fear right out of me.

I’ve learned that nothing good comes out of being panicked. You don’t think straight and nothing will get accomplished as you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I’m not saying that I don’t get a little scared in sticky situations, I’m saying that I don’t let it control me. I have faith that God will tell me the right thing to do and that basically drives the fear right out of me and allows my brain to function properly so I can think straight. My wife and daughter sometimes think that I care about them because I don’t get panicked when they hurt themselves.  I care about them, I just know that they will be ok.

I’m pretty sure every medic who has a CMB (Combat Medic Badge) can think calmly under bad situations because of practice. Next time you find yourself in a panick just remember to take a deep breath, say a quick prayer and try to deal with it the best you can.

Panicked

Living a Meaningful Life

I remember how my life was just four years ago, trapped inside of my head alone and filled with darkness. I never wanted to leave my apartment because of the random flashbacks and spouts of anger I had while being out in public. No one could see, feel or hear what I was going through. Everything I did to feel normal felt meaningless.

Every relationship I had started to slowly deteriorate away. It’s not like my family and friends didn’t try to help me, I just didn’t want their help. I thought they wouldn’t understand, which is true but it didn’t mean they didn’t love me and care about what was happening. I pushed everyone away.

One day I had a longing to get out of the pits I was trapped in. While on the brink of suicide I had a talk with God. He gave me the strength to see that I had the power to overcome my demons and that I needed to start having a relationship with him so I could start living a meaningful life.

From that moment on I have put all my faith into Him, a decision that I’ll never regret. I started going to church and  reading the bible daily, applying every scripture I read to my life. I started seeing a change inside and my relationships with friends and family started growing.

I would love to say the flashbacks and anger stopped, but it didn’t. I just stopped letting it control every aspect of my life so I could live a more meaningful one.

I urge every veteran that reads this to take the initiative to have a relationship with God so you don’t have to take the weight of life on your own. In time you will learn how to live a more meaningful life and stop letting the past run your future.

Meaningless

PTSD Symptoms: Know Them, Save Lives

The main reason I wrote Combat Medic was because God told me it would help save lives. It wasn’t easy sitting down every day for four months to write down the most dreadful memories that I remember. The only way I was able to bear it was keeping in mind that writing my story wasn’t just going to help me understand what happened to me, it was going to educate the world on what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is so people can start getting the treatment that they need.

I took the time to write about PTSD at the end of my book to draw the reader’s attention back into the main focus of my story. If you would like more information on PTSD you can find it on wikipedia.

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder develops in some people that have seen or lived through a scary or dangerous event. It causes people to isolate themselves from things that remind them of the experience. It makes a person feel numb and void, forcing them to be less interested in things they used to enjoy. It causes people to hear and see things that aren’t around in the form of a flashback making it feel as real as the first time. Recurring nightmares won’t allow a person to forget what happened. It’s a tough fight to go through on your own.

If you know someone who’s currently struggling with PTSD, be there. Even if they push you away because they think you won’t understand, be there with open arms to catch them when they fall, even if you don’t understand, because no one else will. Well over 22 veterans commit suicide each day in America, proof that war never ends; even after you’re safe at home. I almost became a statistic, but by the grace of God I was given the strength to fight and go after a better life.

In time I’ve found that talking to counselors has helped with sorting through the pain and darkness I’m feeling. It also helped that I had a loving girlfriend who was willing to listen and try to make things work as best as possible. If I didn’t have her I wouldn’t be here today.

If you’re a veteran and need help, go talk to someone. If you can be seen at the Veterans Hospital, talk to a counselor. Find out if they can get you help. If that doesn’t work, try talking to family or friends, anyone you can to get whatever you have trapped inside, out. Find God as well. Try to build a strong relationship with Him because with His help you can make it through the impossible.

If you are in need to talk to someone because you’re in a crisis, do what I did and call the Veterans Crisis line: 1-800-273-8255″

http://amzn.com/B01FTA9J7K

Symptom