I read the most interesting book lately, having nothing to do with combat trauma and PTSD, yet everything to do with human beings' abilities to fight tenaciously for their own survival, and outmaneuver both death and chance, occasionally. The book's title says it all: "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" -- and it's by a risk junkie author who is himself the son of a genuine WWII battle hero, who survived some spectacular near-death experiences (including a fall 27,000 feet out of an airplane he was piloting, only to land in a German field and have a farmer nearby then try to shoot him to death, until that guy's gun misfired. Unbelievable...).
The book is riveting -- it follows the stories of well-prepared experts who perish needlessly, while under-prepared or un-prepared neophytes sometimes make it out alive -- and the author takes a look at recent brain research as well as in-depth accident reports to draw his conclusions about why sometimes the most unlikely types beat the odds and survive.
The author's conclusion at the end of the prologue, introducing the rest of the book, is that often it's an unseen factor that accounts for who inexplicably beats the odds. His book isn't at all about combat trauma or PTSD, of course, but I'm going to offer up what he says anyway, because I think (in a different, yet related context) it might give some people hope, who are struggling mightily with circumstances seemingly far beyond their control. The message remains that there is still hope for them, too. In the words of the author:
"It's easy to imagine that ... survival would involve equipment, training and experience. It turns out that, at the moment of truth, those might be good things to have but they aren't decisive. Those of us who go into the wilderness or seek our thrills in contact with the forces of nature soon learn, in fact, that experience, training and modern equipment can betray you. The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of mind is that it's not what's in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. It's not even what's in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it's what's in your heart." -- Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, by Laurence Gonzales.
We've talked about hope recently; and the reality is, sometimes you just know you're going to get better, even when it feels like no one else believes in you, or the evidence seems to point completely to the contrary. Sometimes you just know, and it's only a question of time before that comes true. Here's "hope"-ing that many, many veterans survive and thrive, despite combat trauma and PTSD, even when initially it seems like there might be little realistic "hope" for doing so, whether the struggle has gone on for months...or decades.
This blog isn't about me, in the slightest, but I do have a story to tell that somewhat relates. Years ago, when I had chronic fatigue syndrome -- which at the time, as now, no one really understood well or unfortunately recovers from -- I went through a "state of the art" multidisciplinary program for treating chronic fatigue, covered by insurance. Hmmmn. No one really got better through that program either -- some people, including me, actually got sicker from reactions to the medications, etc. -- but, there was one odd moment in the program that stuck with me afterwards. As part of what we had to do, we had sessions in biofeedback and hypnosis, among other things. The psychologist who led those sessions was someone who at one point had been the team psychologist for a very competitive sports team. After one hypnosis session, he came up to me, out of the blue, put his hand on my shoulder, and just said, warmly -- to me, and not to anyone else -- "I just know you're going to beat this..." -- and I thought to myself, how on earth does he "know" that? I'm totally sick as a dog here. So I put that moment completely out of my mind. A few years later, when I WAS fully recovered, a complete rarity, it's sad to say -- almost all the people who were sick when I became sick still are, if not quite a bit worse -- years later -- suddenly that memory came back. And someone he must have been able to tap into what was inside me, which definitely was a fighter, after all. Hmmmn. Even I didn't know that at the time, but he was able to figure that out. Cool moment, even after the fact.
It's great to see when spouses and family members fight and never give up, for injured veterans they love (with TBI, for example, or amputation injuries from IEDs). There are some spectacular stories out there of love, support, courage and tenacity. But not everyone has people who can pull for them; and sometimes, veterans with PTSD have actually worn the most likely candidates out. Even so, it may be possible for them to get better, "against all odds" -- because, who knows, it may turn out to be like the stories of survival from the book. It may come down to something ineffable that never gives up, even when circumstances appear to be completely against you. Something like...what's already in your heart.
