PTSD, Just 4 little letters...

How do I even begin with this???

These four letters have changed my life as I know it...  I am proud to say that my husband is a soldier in the Canadian Forces and has done tours to Bosnia and Afghanistan.  Some people think that you can go to a war torn country and come back without being altered.  This isn't the case.  My husband, like most soldiers, came home different, quick to anger, confused...  This is an issue that many families face in silence, all on their own.  It has carried shame for people over the years, as if for some reason coming home like this makes them less of a soldier.  It doesn't.  The shame needs to go away and we need to stop suffering alone in silence.

I can remember when my husband started therapy.  I always knew when he had a session as he was difficult to be around!  He was so wrapped up in the session, angry, frustrated and sad.  Bringing up the past, his experiences, in his session made my life miserable!  I couldn't make it better for him and I couldn't bring up anything that would frustrate him for fear of an outburst.  I walked on eggshells for days after a session and life returned to normal just in time for the next one!  It was really tough, but we love each other enough to muddle our way through it.  We are some of the lucky ones!

He refused medication recommendations for a long time as he thought that he could get through it without the meds.  This worked for a long time.  It wasn't until our third child was born and had colic that he realized that maybe, just maybe he needed something more.  Oh I remember the hurt look in his eyes when he knew that if he didn't walk away from Jake at 3am that night that he could easily have hurt him.  Anyone that has had a colicky baby knows how that feels but there was more to this.  It was the next day that he went to get something that he could take that would calm him during a spike. 

Jump two days to one of the worst days of my life!  He was prescribed Ativan, a drug that is intended to be fast acting to calm him.  However, a mistake was made and he was told to take it every 4 hours.  Luckily he has some size to him as he could have ended up in the hospital.  It was our middle child's 6th birthday, our baby was 4 months and my dad was coming in from Australia for a visit.  I can't remember exactly what started the chaos but I'm sure it was something small.  His anger spiked and he went from being calm to being in a rage in a second.  The coffee table flew up against the wall and I remember him kicking at the overturned table, yelling at the top of his lungs.  Less than a minute later and he was on the floor consumed with tears asking "What's wrong with me?" over and over again.  I had to go pick my dad up at the airport, but I didn't want to leave him like that.  He told me to go.  I had never seen anything like that before, and I hope never to see it again!  When I returned home about an hour later, he was closer to being his normal self, this "episode" finished.  I made him promise not to take the meds again until he could get them looked at by a doctor.  Sure enough, a mistake was made and this episode was caused by an overdose.  It was awful!!!

You have to understand that my husband is the joker, the one who makes people laugh all the time.  He's usually smiling and making sarcastic comments.  This was completely out of character.  I also want to make it very clear that I have never been afraid of him as I know that he would never cause harm to me or our children as he knows when to walk away.

I have spoken to many military spouses and they all have stories.  We muddle through this disorder all on our own, behind closed doors, for fear of rumors and repercussions with the military.  Why does it have to be this way?  The military says that there is help available.  Of course there is, once you're through the red tape that seems endless.  And when you finally get through the red tape, you have to walk through that door, the door that everybody knows where you're going, everybody knows that if you're walking through that door, there's a problem.  The stats say that 98% of combat veterans have some form of PTSD, why is it still a stigma?

Why do families like mine have to deal with this alone?  I still think it's because people think that it makes someone less of a soldier to have trouble.  These 4 little letters have killed families, friendships, and unfortunately, caused people to take their own lives.  We band together through deployments, I still don't understand why we don't band together through this.  It needs to change, maybe this is where it starts...