PTSD Vet: "I was questioning God why I was alive."

Disability claims pose long wait for veterans
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 7:59 PM
By Vic LeeThere's a huge backlog of claims among returning veterans affected with brain injuries. (KGO) -- Since 2001, post-traumatic stress disorders, or PTSDs, may have tripled among U.S. combat troops. That is according to a report by the Naval Health Research Center. PTSDs and brain injuries have become signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now there's a huge backlog of claims among returning veterans.

"I don't care if someone just went into war for a day, if they saw combat, been around it, it's going to affect them," says Guido Gualco, a Gulf War veteran.

Former Marine Corporal Guido Gualco served in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the late 80s in Operation Desert Storm. He says they were under constant fire.

"We were receiving scuds, cluster bombs, going across mine fields, tank rounds," says Gualco.

Gualco enlisted when he was 19. He was discharged four years later in 1991. However, he was still fighting the war at home in Stanislaus County. First came anxiety attacks, then the nightmares.

"I'd be going to the local shopping center and then coming under attack. So even places that were safe in reality, but in dreams they would come under fire," says Gualco. "Doing perimeter checks around your apartment or your house. I've talked to vets and even myself, I've set up boobie traps around my windows, whatever, just to give a sense of security."

He turned to alcohol and drugs.

"You use meth to stay awake so you didn't dream or I would drink enough to be passed out where I wouldn't dream," says Gualco.

Gualco was suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, but he didn't know it. Nor he says did VA doctors who didn't diagnose his condition until 2005 -- 14 years after he was discharged. By then he was suicidal, even begging his friend to kill him.

"I was questioning God why I was alive. I didn't want to live," says Gualco.
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Paul Sullivan of Veterans For Common Sense is part of the report.