PTSD:The Disorder That Follows Him Wherever He Goes
After mentally preparing himself earlier in the car for the large number of people he would expect to encounter while picking up the necessities for his week, he walks into the grocery store. He calmly begins picking out some fruit, when suddenly he hears a woman shouting at her child a few feet away. As her voice gets louder his heart starts to beat faster and then without hesitation he throws himself onto the woman and just as he places his hands around her throat, customers in the store pull him off of the terrified woman. When he awakens from his blackout and realizes what he has done, he apologizes to the woman and explains that he has PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
This is what 24 year old Specialist Max experienced after returning home from serving in the army for 15 months in Afghanistan. His PTSD which is like a “crutch,” has been a mutual burden for 40,000 soldiers that served in both Iraq and in Afghanistan. Since 2007 there has been a fifty percent increase of soldiers being diagnosed with PTSD, and it has been said that 1 in 8 soldiers are diagnosed with this disorder. http://healthandsurvival.com/2008/05/27/40000-us-soldiers-with-ptsd/.
When Specialist Max was diagnosed with PTSD, he wasn’t surprised at all. He had all the side effects from insomnia to depression. But the two side effects that are the worst for him are the flashbacks and night terrors.
This disorder has brought countless flashbacks to this young man’s life and each one taking him back to the horrific and tragic situations he encountered while in Afghanistan. Namely the witnessing of children being murdered and the memories of experiencing the impact of being in a truck that was hit by a roadside bomb.
Sometimes it will be a loud sound or an individual that triggers the flashback. He recalled a friend setting off a fake gun behind him. The loud bang triggered a flashback of a bomb going off, which led to a blackout. Specialist Max remembers waking up as he was being pulled off his friend by some other people in the bar.
But not all his flashbacks lead to blackouts that will cause violent behavior. Some of them only return sadness.
“My flashbacks tend to bring back a lot of remorse,” Max said.
Even the look in a child’s eyes can conjure up memories of the war for him.
“Whenever I see my little cousin, I will see the same look that a little girl gave me, when I was in Afghanistan,” Max said. “Who had an AK 47 round in her shoulder.”
Even in his sleep, he is taunted with his troubled memories. He suffers from night terrors. Just like a flashback, the night terror will make him think he is still in the war. One night as he was having an attack, he shot up out of bed and started screaming frantically.
“I’m hit,” he shouted.
Like countless times before, he had no recollection of the incident. It wasn’t until the following morning when his significant other, who was lying next to him at the time, told him about it.
These problems are not only affecting his life, but the lives of family and friends to. His good friend Hector, who is more like a brother, knows too well how much Max has changed for the better and the worse.
“He got to see the world and he gained a lot of good memories, memories he chooses not to block out,” Hector said.
When asked if he could describe Max’s present state, he used only one word.
“Stressed,” Hector said. “He is stressed about his past and his present state of mind.”
Feeling at times as though he is talking to a stranger than a close friend really, Hector professed that he wanted the old Max back; the Max he has known since the seventh grade.
“He liked to make jokes, and pull a lot of pranks on people back in that day,” Hector said. “He was just a happy guy, he is getting back there but it’s going to take a lot of time.”
