Here we go. When last
I left you I felt I had nothing more to give.
Blogging was something that stressed me out and I was living a very low
stress life. Things at home were great,
we were almost like a normal family and our issues were the same small issues
everyone has. Work was looking up, I was
seriously considering taking a job that would require more of a commitment from
me, maybe even start using my brain at work.
We were floating along as happy as could be when suddenly, at the end of
August, it happened.
I don’t even know what “it” was really. Something happened and we went from actually
going out and enjoying a concert together to the next week with him in the back of an ambulance
and me following behind driving like a crazy woman. Panic attacks were the diagnosis. Lots of them, so bad that he convulsed and
had to be taken to the hospital because the convulsing and shallow breathing
could bring about seizures. We’ve been
dealing with his TBI symptoms that we had ignored the fact that he has PTSD
too.
What we’ve learned since this all started is that
PTSD and anxiety are major assholes and will likely pick a time when you are
happy to remind you that they are there and want to run the show.
Looking back we both know it wasn’t quite as “suddenly” as
it appeared. Will had been getting sick
for months, throwing up every morning and every night. Unable to eat most foods he was living on vegetable
soup and green tea. As any man would he
ignored it, thought he must have had a bug or something. Going to the VA to testing seemed worse than
his symptoms. He quickly lost over
30lbs, he looked malnourished and had very little energy. But he tried, we still went on date nights
and he played with the girls as much as he could but something was off. Mid July his sleep was no longer restful and
dreams of horrible images of what he saw and dealt with in Iraq started. Then the dreams started to include me and the
girls…it was too much for him to talk about so he kept it to himself.
Anxiety and all things PTSD related don’t just go away. You can’t just wish it not to be so and
*poof* it’s gone. We should have
listened to the early signs.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
From the ambulance to the hospital and back home all in one
day and now our lives are forever changed.
It was after this that we learned just how useless VA healthcare
is. When they would return his call or deem him sick enough to get an appointment hey didn’t know how to treat
him. I wont get into all the details now
but he was sent away numerous times with no treatment at all. He was expected to drive all over
Massachusetts to doctors who are impossible to contact and are so overworked that
finding out what is causing your physical symptoms is just too time
consuming. He was on Prednisone for over
2 months for an unknown (maybe) allergy.
I think we all know the VA loves to throw pills at problems.
One of the best moves we made was contacting The Home Base
Program which is run by The Red Sox Foundation to help post 9/11 vets deal with
PTSD & TBI. They have been wonderful;
doctors who listen can genuinely care about how he’s doing, how I am
doing. Although they are strictly mental
health they paid for him to have labs done at Mass General Hospital to try to
do what the VA wouldn’t. Unfortunately,
we still don’t know what is physically wrong with him we have wonderful people
working to help with the PTSD. I will talk more about this program in later updates, I'm sure!
Since all this has happened I have kind of been a mess. I am surprised with how quickly I was able to
detach myself from all of this and process very little emotion with
everything. I had a big cry when I made
that first 911 call and 2 full on sob fests since (one at work and one in my
car) but that’s it. It’s not that I don’t
want to feel sad about what’s going on, I just don’t have time to be sad. Life didn’t stop because Will got sick. TC still started kindergarten last fall,
Addie is still waking up to poop at six AM daily and needs help with that. I still have a full time job that I need to
get to so that we don’t deplete all of our hard earned savings. Mouths need to be fed, snuggles need to be
given, laundry needs to be washed. For
the last several months it’s all been on my shoulders. If he did have to leave the house I had to
drive him. I’ve swallowed my pride and
become a paid caregiver through the VA, I should start seeing that money next
month.
Work has been great about all of this. My time off beyond my 80 hours vacation isn’t paid but my job is safe
thanks to FMLA which gives 1000 hours to care for a vet. But working less than 20 hours a week some weeks has really hit me in the savings account. It
sucks, but thank God we had that savings account. Now there is even more pressure on me to be
at work because I am carrying the health insurance. One of the benefits to serving is that you
are supposed to have healthcare for life, HA!
On New Year’s Eve we counted down the seconds not to 2016 but to Jan 1st
because when that clock struck midnight he was covered under real health
insurance.
This is where we are now.
I may or may not elaborate on some of this stuff. If you have an questions please ask – I am
very open to talking about as much as I can without violating too much of his privacy. I feel like stories like ours need to be out
there, people need to know what is going on with our combat vets.
