There's a lot of bad news going around: suicides up, PTSD wrecking lives and families, not much constructive help in sight. But here's a story that's GOOD news...about how much progress one combat vet with severe, chronic PTSD -- for 40 years(!) -- made in just a year of trying integrative medicine techniques and therapies, in addition to his medication. (He was able to lower his psych meds to an absolute minimum as part of the progress.)
At the end of year one, I asked him to write up his experience so he could contrast, for himself, a personal "before" and "after." Knowing him and the story, I know that he left out the highest highs and the lowest lows, but still, it paints a powerful picture of one life substantially freed from the ongoing torment of PTSD.
If you want a little backstory on who Pat is, he's the author of the "Eyewitness to Combat" selections on this site. Read those, linked here, for background about his tours in Vietnam and the after-effects of PTSD in his life. (That's him in the photo at left.)
Here's the letter:
Healing Combat TraumaRe: Alternative Modality Treatments for PTSD
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR
MAKES? It has been one year ago that I
first made contact with the web site “Healing Combat Trauma” in an effort to
find out information on the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As back-story, I was a Disabled Vietnam
Combat Vet. I was attached to “Flames”,
2nd Battalion, 9th Marines (Hell in a Helmet) my first
tour of duty and with “Bravo”
From the time I got back from
However as the years rolled by it became clear that a definite pattern of cyclic behavior, action, response, aggression and consequence began to manifest itself. Regardless of determination, courage, education, competence, and ability; quality jobs lasted on the average of no more than an eighteen months and no less than one year. They averaged about thirteen months, the same as the Marine Corps Tours of Duty in “The Nam”. I was excellent and even exceptional at all of the tasks of my profession but could never become acclimate to following “orders” by anyone in “authority”. I just wanted to be left alone to “do my job”.
Not only did the patterns of
behavior and consequence continue to recycle in my and my family’s life, they
intensified with each cycle and became more and more destructive as time went
on. This resulted in extreme “guilt” and
“withdrawal” and developed into a “hatred” for anyone who had not gone into
“combat” in
Twenty five years into this self destructive lifestyle and monumental stressor left me broke, unemployed and unemployable, family in constant turmoil, physically ill with heart disease and arthritis, and mentally devastated with depression and constant suicidal thoughts. It was then that I was told that the VA had identified PTSD in 1976 but was reluctant to let veterans know because of the reality of paying disability to them. So it was suppressed from us. Even so the treatment they were then engaged in was a combination of “physiological and therapeutic drug” treatments. I entered their treatment program in a desperate effort to save my family and my own life. I was diagnosed with severe PTSD and rated 100%. And it had already taken its toll on me. I ended up with two quadruple heart bypasses, congestive heart disease, electro-cardial heart failure requiring radical clinical trial surgery and pacemaker, Rheumatoid Arthritis destroying my body and severe clinical depression. The VA solution was to continue the “group sessions”, the “psychological counseling”, and increasing the amount of “psych” drugs I was to take. I literally became a drooling “zombie” unable to carry on a coherent conversation, unable to remember what anyone was saying to me, looking at everything in a blur of fog and sleeping 20 hours per day. The VA had essentially “locked” me up in a “mental institution” and thrown away the key.
My family went on with their lives and I became an invalid. Then my almost-grown kids began to experience the exact same symptoms of PTSD that I was having. I just quit taking the “meds” and actually “awakened” enough to realize that one of them was about to kill himself. I began to desperately search the interned for anything that could save my boy and me. If he killed himself, I would do the same but go out in a “blaze of glory”, taking those with me whom I blamed for the hell we were living.
This is when I came upon a “web blog” called “HEALING COMBAT TRAUMA”. As I began to read the blogs, I became not only interested but engrossed in and awe struck by the intuitive content of it. Whoever wrote the blog KNEW what living with PTSD was like and began to cry. This was not someone who had been educated about it, this is someone who had LIVED with it but was incredibly intelligent and understanding. As I read, I began to understand what was going on with me, my wife and my children. I began to “believe” that there really was another way to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder besides being quizzed about how bad your father treated you and then prescribed “killer” drugs. The quality of the web site and the professionalism of it made me believe that this “Company” had a huge staff of Doctors, technical staff and alternative modality practitioners. They most probably would not even be interested in me. Hesitantly, I contacted the individual listed on the contact page. Beyond belief, she answered me.
I waited a while to answer back
because I was embarrassed to have even made contact. It was a “Don’t hang your dirty laundry out
in public” sort of thing. My life was so
complicated and I had spent forty years trying to put it down in writing to
find the magic answer to it. I asked if
she would be interested in reviewing my much self-edited draft and this lady
said YES. Wow I was excited and
flabbergasted. Maybe there was help
coming that I could share with my family, my son in particular to let him know
there was real HOPE. And I could take
this “hope” to the remaining
Lily Casura took a sincere
interest in my “story” and in my plight.
Her interest was genuine and not usury.
I knew that if what she said were true, then she needed to take this
program to the rest of the mentally wounded souls still living from
However, as I was moved through them one by one, I began to “feel” much differently and I began to “change”. I felt physically better and mentally at peace. Something I had not experienced in forty years. I became a true “BELIEVER” and want to share it with the world.
What a difference a year makes? One year ago I was suicidal, physically dieing from multiple illnesses and immobile. My heart has stopped eight times and had to be resuscitated. My family was suffering from depression and my son was on the verge of killing himself. I had no Hope, no future, no purpose and no reason to live.
One year later, I am disease free; my Rheumatoid Arthritis has been declared in complete remission, my heart has actually healed itself, my arteries are completely free of plaque, the acute pain that I have always had is no longer there, my anger is gone, my mind is at complete peace, my son is fine, my family is happy, I am thrilled at every day I am here, I have hope in a wonderful future for me, my family and my fellow vets. I was taking over 58 prescribed medications one year ago; I am taking nine now. I was taking huge doses of prescribed pain medications and ongoing treatments for the same. I no longer have any pain, do not take any of the medications and no longer need the treatments.
The Difference One Year Makes: I was dead and now I’m alive! That’s the Difference!
Thank you, Lily, for saving my
life and for giving me HOPE and a FUTURE. I am, for the first time in my life, looking forward to the rest of my life, and can't wait to see the difference one more year will make.
Patrick ______________.
Sgt., USMC
Bravo Co., 1st Battalion, 9th Marines
Vietnam 1966 and 1967
