Different PTSD Causes Different Reactions From Us

Troops Were Young Too
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 20, 2016

Exposing youth to violence causes PTSD but exposing youth to war seems to be harder to understand? That is exactly what is going on and has been for years.

Take a good look at the face of this soldier in Vietnam. Not hard to tell he was very young. James Callahan, combat medic. You can read about his actions on that day online and you can see a picture of him taken many years later. 

Medic James E. Callahan of Pittsfield, Mass., looks up while applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a seriously wounded buddy north of Saigon, June 17, 1967. Communist guerrillas had raked a U.S. battalion with machine gun fire in a jungle clearing. 
(AP Photo/Henri Huet)


My brother was working with inner city youths struggling with PTSD in the 90's. I was living with my husband who had PTSD from being in Vietnam in his youth. He turned 19 there. While my brother had great empathy for the teenagers he encountered, he had none for my husband. Needless to say, after a blowout argument, I was done trying to get him to understand.

The next day in work, he talked to his boss about what I said.  She said "Your poor sister must be going through hell." But he didn't tell me that. He told our mother.

Why couldn't he understand that we take young men and women, send them into war before their emotional core is fully developed and that changes them? How can some understand PTSD in the civilian world so much easier than they can understand what combat does?

The difference is, when it happens to civilians, we can put ourselves in their place knowing that what happened to them could very well happen to us. When it happens to members of the military, we have a harder time connecting their experiences to our own lives.

Many years ago I heard a psychologist ago explain that we also expect them to be prepared for whatever they face, not just expecting the worst but being trained to just deal with it. That is a thought that has not faded with time and knowledge gained by 40 years of some researchers doing their best to understand PTSD while even more do their best to simply make money.

There is a report on PTSD and violence in Oakland. PTSD in Oakland: Gun Violence Victims, Families Suffer Continuous Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder If you want to understand PTSD more, it is a good way to introduce yourself to it. Especially when you factor in that the only reason we can understand what happens in the civilian world, is because veterans came home and fought for all the research to be done on trauma. Keep in mind that while it all began with them, they are the last to be helped now.

Much like my brother, folks seem to think that older veterans have had plenty of time to get over it and don't need our help. Just as my brother couldn't see the truth, it is easier to dismiss their suffering especially when they are the majority of veterans in this country along with the majority of the suicides.

So why do researchers seem only interested in combat PTSD while clearly civilians are struck by in as well? Simple, the government has plenty of money to fund them. If they actually reached the point where they understood how to treat and prevent PTSD in civilians, they may get closer to treating it in combat forces and veterans along with police officers and firefighters.  That is the most telling thing of all that keeps getting missed. 

How can they expect us to have faith in what they do for those exposed to traumatic events trying to save others when they can't even understand others getting PTSD living in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Combat Medic Getting More Help After Road Rage

PTSD cited in Wellesley ‘road rage’ arrest
Boston Globe
Eric Moskowitz
Globe Staff
February 19, 2016

“It’s about the guy next to me,” Beagan’s father remembered him saying. “I feel like I should do my share to protect those guys.”

DEDHAM — When Wellesley police patted down Ian Beagan, they felt Army dog tags under his dress shirt and sweater. When they checked him for identifying marks at booking, they found the numbers 8-3-1-1 tattooed across his right knuckles.

The tags and the inked digits — the date Beagan’s friends were blown up, according to his father — hinted at the burden he has carried in the four years since he returned from Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the 25-year-old community college student was arrested for allegedly pointing a loaded gun at another motorist on Route 9, in an incident police said was “road rage.” In court Friday, Beagan’s lawyer called the episode a result of post-traumatic stress disorder, and a judge postponed Beagan’s arraignment so he could seek evaluation and treatment.

Beagan told police he had been a combat medic and hinted at an experience his father detailed to the Globe in an interview. On Aug. 3, 2011, the truck Beagan usually rode in was carrying five soldiers when it struck a hidden improvised explosive device on a bridge in the Nerkh District, his father said. Two died instantly; two others were badly wounded. Beagan was not on board, but he responded quickly to the scene, treating the wounded.

“Some soldiers have survivor’s guilt,” said his father, Michael Beagan. On top of that, “medics feel it’s their duty to keep their unit safe — that even if they weren’t there, somehow it’s their fault, and Ian has tremendous guilt that his buddies died.”
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Afghanistan Vet Ordered To Get Counseling After Wellesley Road Rage Incident From CBS News

Dixie Davis Endless Love and Second Chances

Sometimes I think this "job" is just way too good to be true because of some of the people I've met over the years. Sammy and Dixie Davis are two of them. Well, Sammy has been going around the country for years as a recipient of the Medal of Honor and his wife Dixie has been right by his side.

I've had the pleasure of spending time with them on more than one occasion. A few years ago they sat down with me for an interview. (Video below)

Dixie wrote a book and I think it is fabulous she did. I can't wait to read it.

Endless Love and Second Chances: The wife of Medal of Honor recipient Sammy Davis shares their love story through grief, faith, and joyful new beginnings 
Paperback – February 8, 2016
by Dixie Davis (Author), Sherry Maves (Author), Gary Sinise (Foreword)

Published on May 8, 2012

Through unspeakable grief, they found an unbreakable connection—through their love, the joy of second chances. For Dixie and Sammy Davis, the road to each other’s arms was paved with tragedy. But through their marriage, they each found a new beginning filled with blessings, joy, and hope—a testament to the power of love after loss.

In Endless Love and Second Chances, Dixie Davis, with Sherry Maves, describes the joys and heartbreak of Dixie’s marriage with musician Tim “Doc Holiday” Taylor, tragically cut short by terminal cancer. Years later, Dixie makes an unexpected connection with mutual acquaintance Sammy Davis—one of seventy-seven living Medal of Honor recipients who has dedicated his life to spreading the values of “duty, honor, and country.”

An inspirational love story of hope, faith, and redemption, this heartfelt memoir follows Dixie and Sammy as they both recover from the profound grief of losing their spouses to find the love and healing in each other that they needed to move on. As the couple continues to travel throughout the country in the name of veterans’ awareness, this book pays a touching tribute to the difference they have made to each other—and to veterans everywhere. go here to order this






Vietnam Medal of Honor Sammy Davis has a message to all the troops coming home. Talk about it! Don't try to forget it but you can make peace with it. Dixie Davis has a message for the spouses too. Help them to talk about it with you or with someone else.

VA Pacific Islands Head Resigned!

Embattled director of Veterans Affairs in Pacific resigns 
Honolulu Star Advertiser 
By Dan Nakaso 
February 17, 2016 

Wayne Pfeffer, the embattled head of the Veterans Administration’s Pacific Islands Health Care System, has abruptly resigned, effectively immediately, and will be returning to the mainland.

Pfeffer had been on the job less than three years and oversaw a system that at one point in 2014 had the longest wait times in the entire VA system for an incoming patient to get an initial appointment with a primary care physician. In 2014, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard had called for Pfeffer’s resignation.

Acting director Tonia Bagby, a clinical psychologist, today referred to Pfeffer’s departure as a “retirement,” rather than a resignation.

Pfeffer was not on the job today after sending an email to the VA staff around noon Tuesday that read, “It has not been an easy decision for me, however due to personal reasons, I am retiring and returning to the mainland.
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WWII Iwo Jima Marine First Lt. John Wells Passed Away

Marine who led WWII charge up Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima dies 
Marine Corps Times 
By Matthew L. Schehl 
February 17, 2016

Wells, meanwhile, persuaded a corpsman to donate morphine to him, escaped from the hospital ship and joined his men shortly after the flag raising.

John Keith Wells of Abilene, Texas, left, chats with then-Gov. Rick Perry during a brunch that Perry hosted in Wells' honor in 2006. A first lieutenant in World War II, Wells commanded 3rd Platoon, Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division, during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The unit became the most decorated platoon to fight in a single engagement in the history of the Marine Corps.
(Photo: Harry Cabluck/AP)

The Marine who led the charge to place the first American flag above Iwo Jima has died.

First Lt. John Wells, 94, died Feb. 11 at the Arvada Care Rehabilitation Center in Arvada, Colorado.

Wells received the Navy Cross, Bronze Star and Purple Heart after leading his Marines in a frontal assault up the slopes of Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

He didn’t make it to the top after taking multiple enemy rounds, but continued to command, leading his men to victory. His platoon raised the first flag atop the mountain, hours before the iconic photo of the second flag raising was captured.

“He was a very warm, sensitive, spiritual man, all the way to age 94,” Connie Schultz, Well’s daughter, told ABC affiliate Denver 7. “He honored and loved the Marine Corps with all his heart and soul. He loved his family, and his last words were, ‘My family.’ ”
read more here