PTSD veterans helped by Parrots

Parrots Used in PTSD Therapy for War Veterans
by Mandalit del Barco
Weekend Edition Sunday, July 15, 2007 · In Los Angeles, some recovering war veterans are getting therapeutic help for post-traumatic stress disorder from an unlikely source: rescued and abused parrots. Physicians say it's an exercise in mutual healing for both parrot and patient.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11989027


PTSD video on PBS you need to see
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/339/video.html

Vietnam Vets, heroes after their war for new vets with PTSD

Vietnam Vets Help Solve Current PTSD Issues
By Alan Gray, NewsBlaze

There are over 250,000 backlogged PTSD (shell-shock) cases from Vietnam and earlier conflicts, with 25% of our current returning combat veteran's already seeking PTSD treatment and care; we are looking at around 500,000 cases. The existing system has already proven to be overwhelmed by this reality. According to Bill Stroud of Warriors Finding Solace, the system "has shown to be not up to the task." How will the US deal with the other thousands of returning veterans who need PTSD treatment and care?

To continue focusing on 'the good', a team of elder Combat Veterans offers a Peer-Based PTSD Counseling and Treatment Center on Maui. Returning veterans can enter into a process so they can deal with these issues responsibly, while they are fresh.

Stroud says "We older veterans have come to realize that if PTSD issues are not dealt with early on, after many years these disabilities simply become our way of life and we learn to live and deal with them - or not. Our younger Brothers & Sisters deserve better than this and need some kind of effective help now."
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When war comes home, battle begins for spouse

When The War Comes Home
Michelle and Troy Turner live in rural West Virginia, 80 miles from the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital where Troy receives his care. Troy finished his tour in Iraq in 2003, but Michelle must deal with the fallout. Troy's one-year

WALTER REED AND BEYOND
A Wife's Battle
When Her Soldier Returned From Baghdad, Michelle Turner Picked Up the Burden of War
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, October 14, 2007; Page A01
ROMNEY, W.Va.
Michelle Turner's husband sits in the recliner with the shades drawn. He washes down
his Zoloft with Mountain Dew. On the phone in the other room, Michelle is pleading with the utility company to keep their power on.

"Can't you tell them I'm a veteran?" asks her husband, Troy, who served as an Army scout in Baghdad and came back with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Troy, they don't care," Michelle says, her patience stretched.

The government's sweeping list of promises to make wounded Iraq war veterans whole, at least financially, has not reached this small house in the hills of rural West Virginia, where one vehicle has already been repossessed and the answering machine screens for bill collectors. The Turners have not been making it on an $860-a-month disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

After revelations about the poor treatment of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this year, President Bush appointed a commission to study the care of the nation's war-wounded. The panel returned with bold recommendations, including the creation of a national cadre of caseworkers and a complete overhaul of the military's disability system that compensates wounded soldiers.

But so far, little has been done to sort out the mess of bureaucracy or put more money in the hands of newly disabled soldiers who are fending off evictions and foreclosures.
read more here

When they come home from combat with the horrors imbedded in them, it is often up to the wives or husbands to begin the fighting. We have to fight for them to get help at the same time we fight them to understand they need help. Denial is the first battle. The mood swings and detachment plant the idea it's our fault in the backs of our own minds as we try to understand what's happening. Short term memory loss and poor judgement skills turn us into parents having to watch every move they make. This is what happens when they come home with wounded minds. Can there be any wonder why so many of these marriages fall apart? Most of them crumble like burnt toast when the facts about PTSD are unknown to them. A lot of marriages with Vietnam veterans ended because of this and because so little was known when they came home.

As much as I love my own husband, as much as I learned about PTSD over the last 25 years, our marriage nearly fell apart more times than I can even remember. The frustration of it all becomes too much too often even now. Our marriage license is in half English and half Greek. I tell my husband the adoption orders are on the Greek side of it when I feel as if I am no longer a married woman but a parent to a child 8 years older than me. I was a single parent in all the years of taking control, making sure the government took care of their responsibility to my husband. This is our job.

We become caretakers, nursing their wounds, holding their shaking bodies, comforting their broken image of themselves and trying with all our might to reassure them they are still loved and needed. We adjust to daily prayers of healing as Jesus instantaneously healed the mad man; for patience; for restoration of compassion when self-needs get too strong; for the right words to use when logic is not enough to combat illogic; and above all for the ability to be reassured the person we love is still in there beneath the stranger we see with our eyes.

As spouses take control, we also face financial disasters while claims are "being processed" only to be turned down and appeals have to be filed within the deadlines we have to live with but the VA does not. Employment for these veterans is sporadic at best, but bills are constant. Then there is the astronomical cost of the self-medication they turn to with alcohol and drugs. We loose time at work when they were up all night with nightmares or to take them to the VA for appointments because they cannot bring themselves in the beginning. We loose time at work when we have to take them for hearings and to see the service organizations helping with the claims because they cannot manage to get themselves there without us.

All of this at the same time we have to try to keep hope alive in them, reassure them that truth will win and their claim will be approved so that we can at least keep our homes and pay our bills. We also loose income when their jobs are lost. The income they get from the VA, if and when their claims are finally honored, is a lot less than they would make, along with our own loss of income. We had to have several mortgage "forbearance" arrangements to keep our house, borrowed from family, at the same time I had to work more to keep the roof over our heads. This was a lot of fun when I had to worry about our daughter and my husband needing constant supervision. A tiny crisis left him unable to think often. One time a toilet was overflowing. He called me at work in a panic, not knowing what to do, instead of just shutting off the water flow to the tank and using a plunger, which he had done often before. It was just one of those days for him to face.

We are a huge Army of love, fighting for those who risked their lives but forgotten behind the battle lines. Each day is a new experience. I tell my husband there is never a dull moment in our marriage because I never know what to expect. Sometimes he even surprises himself. Most of the worst days are far behind us. We have adjusted to our own sense of what "normal" is and most days, they are good days. We still have times when my frustration reaches its limit and we have a huge argument, but over the years, they happen a lot less. I learned to deal with the fact he has to recheck the door I just locked and the repeated questions I've already answered twelve times before.

We had our 23 anniversary last month. Marriages do not have to end if the tools are available. That's why I've been working so hard all these years. I'm positive that if I didn't know what PTSD was, there is no way I would be able to cope with any of this. Life does not have to be about existing day to day, but living lives with tiny blessings. It can be about holding hands wherever we go because we held onto our hearts. Yes, we still hold hands!

(Honesty time; I get a little mean every now and then. His short term memory loss opens the door for a little mind game I play every now and then. I will remind him of a conversation we really did have and then toss in something we never talked about. We've gone out to eat a lot because I convince him he promised to take me out. While we're eating, I admit what I did. He laughs and then hands me the bill.)

If you are dealing with a combat veteran with PTSD, learn all you can about it and welcome to this Army of love. The war we fight for them now, will never end, but battles can be won and peace can be declared within our own homes.



Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Military kids at Walter Reed find place to play

WALTER REED PLAYGROUND PROJECT
In a Place of Pain and Recovery, Room to Romp

By Delphine Schrank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 15, 2007; Page B03

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday, the children came out to play.

About a half-dozen youngsters poured onto a rectangle of squishy green turf, hopped onto swings and scrambled over a jungle gym, minutes after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new playground. Tucked behind Mologne House, a 199-room hotel for outpatients and their families, it is a burst of primary colors amid the brick-and-concrete solemnity of the center where wounded warriors learn to walk on prosthetic limbs or cope again with the trials of everyday life.

Toddlers to teens can spend months living in Mologne along with their injured parents, but until now they have had few outlets for their stress. About 40 children live there, said General Manager Peter A. Anderson, but many more visit when school is out.

The alternative to the outdoor playground had been a makeshift play area of toys crammed against the stairs in the building lobby.

Another option had been staring at the fish in the pond behind Mologne. "My daughter was actually counting the fish," recalled Staff Sgt. Renee Deville, who has post-traumatic stress disorder and limited arm motion from a mortar attack in Iraq. Yesterday she sat on a sun-drenched wall rimming the playground, watching daughters Janee, 4, and Amani, 9, hard at play.

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Expect 800,000 PTSD veterans out of Iraq and Afghanistan

Iraq veterans deserve more than post-combat negligence
By Stacy Bannerman

Special to The Times


WHEN the appalling conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were made public, accompanied by grim photos of moldy walls, crumbling ceilings and dirty, bug-infested rooms, it sparked a national outcry and immediate action. Unfortunately, it has been comparatively quiet about the nearly 300 Iraq war veterans who have committed suicide, and thousands more who have attempted it.

America cannot afford the price of failing to care for veterans with combat-related mental-health problems. The systemic breakdown in mental-health care is so profound that military families and veterans groups have filed lawsuits against the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth have filed a class-action suit on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The suit claims there are as many as "800,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans said to suffer or risk developing PTSD." The groups charge the VA with collaborating with the Pentagon to avoid paying PTSD benefits.
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Last year, it was about 400,000 we were worried about. The beginning of this year, it was 700,000 we were worried about. Now add in at least 100,000 more. Why? Are you shocked? You shouldn't be and the government shouldn't be either. After all it was already predicted in 1978 when the DAV commissioned a study showing Vietnam produced 500,000 diagnosed cases, as well as acknowledging the numbers would rise as more information came out and the symptoms of PTSD grew stronger. Even back then they knew PTSD did not always show up right away. So why is it no one was ready for what was to come now? They didn't care.

It needs to be pointed out as much as possible that when the Army did their own study finding the redeployments increased the risk of developing PTSD by 50%, this should have sounded a shrieking warning bell across the country and emergency measures should have been driven in overdrive, but no one did anything about it. As a matter of fact, the Bush administration cut back funding, along with Nicholson, in 2005, with two occupations producing more wounded minds daily. To have their lives still at risk after their tours have ended is sickening, is wrong, and there is absolutely no excuse for any of this appalling lack of preparedness. You would think that a nation able to fund hundreds of billions of dollars over and over again on emergency basis, would be able to place the same sense of urgency when it comes to saving their lives, their futures and their families, but they do not. You would think that knowing what the experts have been saying all along would hold more weight than rhetoric and slogans when it comes to the seriousness of this, but it didn't. The problem is they didn't think and they didn't care enough to think about any of our troops or what would happen to them when they became veterans or wounded veterans needing care.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com

UK mental health alert for troops coming back from Iraq

Mental health alert for UK troops leaving Iraq
Sun Oct 14, 2007 9:22am BST
By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - As Britain prepares to pull hundreds of troops out of Iraq, doctors and nurses at home are getting ready to treat not only their physical wounds, but also the psychological ones.

More than four years of conflict in Iraq, and six years of fighting in Afghanistan, have taken a toll on the armed forces, both in terms of the number killed -- at last count 252 -- as well as the number mentally and physically wounded.

In the past week, the government has taken steps to tackle both aspects of the problem, amid criticism from the families of returning soldiers and some veterans' groups that not enough is being done to assist those fighting the unpopular wars.

One move was to increase the lump-sum payments made to soldiers severely wounded in attacks to as much as $570,000 (280,235 pounds).

But potentially more crucial in the long term was a decision to increase funding to Combat Stress, a charity that helps veterans suffering from severe war-induced mental conditions.

Combat Stress was founded a year after World War One to help servicemen returning with what was then called "shell shock" but today is often defined as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The charity has around 8,000 patients on its books, including veterans of World War Two, the Falklands War, the first Gulf War, the Balkans and now Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decision to increase its funding -- by a substantial 45 percent -- comes amid evidence that many more soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are being diagnosed with psychological damage than those returning from previous conflicts. Continued...

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Major General James Livingston says its time to give a damn

Time 'to give a damn' about vets' mental health - ex-gen.

BY RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Sunday, October 14th 2007, 4:00 AM


WASHINGTON - They were an unlikely bunch of soldiers to be making the case for the "talking cure" before Congress last week. They once dismissed it as a copout for shirkers and wimps.

"Absolutely, we've gone through a transition" over the years, said retired Marine Maj. Gen. James Livingston, who wears the Medal of Honor from Vietnam.

"Now I'm a believer in early intervention" by therapists in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, the diagnosis for what was called battle fatigue or shell shock in wars gone by, Livingston said.

He was with 12 other decorated heroes appointed to the special Veterans Disability Benefits Commission as they presented the findings of their two-year study to the House Veterans Committee.

The commission had 113 recommendations for reforming how the military and Veterans Administration cope with disabled troops. They called for hikes of up to 25% in disability payments, and increased funding and programs for PTSD treatment.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, chairman of the commission, said the current system "is so complicated that it's a wonder anyone can get a claim processed."

Another problem the commission uncovered, Scott said, was that "the VA really didn't know as much as they needed to know about PTSD."

The VA system is overloaded. Waiting periods for appointments at VA regional centers now average 177 days. At Veterans Benefits Administration offices, which assign disability ratings, the waits stretch to more than two years.
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This is who is speaking out for vetearns with PTSD.

Vietnam War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient

Maj. Gen. James Everett Livingston USMC
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps, Company E, 2d Battalion, 4th Marines, 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade. place and date: Dai Do, Republic of Vietnam, 2 May 1968. Entered service at: McRae, Ga. Born: 12 January 1940, Towns, Telfair County, Ga.

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Commanding Officer, Company E, in action against enemy forces.

Company E launched a determined assault on the heavily fortified village of Dai Do, which had been seized by the enemy on the preceding evening isolating a marine company from the remainder of the battalion. Skillfully employing screening agents, Capt. Livingston maneuvered his men to assault positions across 500 meters of dangerous open rice paddy while under intense enemy fire. Ignoring hostile rounds impacting near him, he fearlessly led his men in a savage assault against enemy emplacements within the village. While adjusting supporting arms fire, Capt. Livingston moved to the points of heaviest resistance, shouting words of encouragement to his marines, directing their fire, and spurring the dwindling momentum of the attack on repeated occasions. Although twice painfully wounded by grenade fragments, he refused medical treatment and courageously led his men in the destruction of over 100 mutually supporting bunkers, driving the remaining enemy from their positions, and relieving the pressure on the stranded marine company.

As the 2 companies consolidated positions and evacuated casualties, a third company passed through the friendly lines launching an assault on the adjacent village of Dinh To, only to be halted by a furious counterattack of an enemy battalion. Swiftly assessing the situation and disregarding the heavy volume of enemy fire, Capt. Livingston boldly maneuvered the remaining effective men of his company forward, joined forces with the heavily engaged marines, and halted the enemy's counterattack Wounded a third time and unable to walk, he steadfastly remained in the dangerously exposed area, deploying his men to more tenable positions and supervising the evacuation of casualties. Only when assured of the safety of his men did he allow himself to be evacuated. Capt. Livingston's gallant actions uphold the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service.
http://www.medalofhonor.com/JamesLivingston.htm

Are you any braver than he is? Do you think you are able to judge those who have had their minds wounded? Do you think that they are "phony soldiers" or "slackers" or "cowards" when this Medal Of Honor general does not? Are you still trying to search your brain for more reasons to dismiss this wound that every human on the planet can and does suffer from after trauma in different degrees? Have you gotten it into your head yet that they seek help and have trouble coping after their lives are no longer being risked by the military in combat? After combat is when everyone is just supposed to get on with their lives, but the men and women with PTSD cannot.

Wisconsin State address combat veterans as students

SAT., OCT 13, 2007 - 3:29 PM
Student veterans combat different stresses
HEATHER LaROI
608-252-6143
hlaroi@madison.com
John Osborne, a senior at UW-Madison, doesn't tell many people that he spent five years of his life with the U.S. Army.

Why? Mostly because it's just easier. Then he doesn't have to answer the questions. The inane "So, was it hot over there?," or the question vets dread, but always, always know is coming, whether they'd ever killed someone.

"You get it all the time. All the time. And if you say yes, their only response is going to be 'Oh, that's cool," said Osborne, who was deployed 15 months in Iraq. "No, no, it's not. That somebody is somebody's father, somebody's brother."


It's little wonder that veterans, who already "just feel different" from their fellow students, don't talk much about their experiences.

But as the numbers of veterans continues to climb on campus, university officials are increasingly aware that this is a student population with experiences and stresses that most undergrads — and the universities they attend — may know very little about.
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I received an email from a university in North Carolina about using my videos to discuss PTSD. Hero After War, explains in mild details what they see when they come home with the combat in their minds. What is happening in colleges throughout the country, is that they are trying to not only understand what is going on over there, but they care deeply about what is going on in these soldiers when they come home. Vietnam veterans, didn't get this kind of understanding. I think the huge difference comes, not from past mistakes only, but from the wealth of information on the net and the sharing of human experiences. If any generation will end the stigma of PTSD, I am very hopeful it is this one.

If any college wants to use any of the videos, please feel free to download them off Google or YouTube. If you want a DVD, email me. My PTSD videos are none political. They address the human price after trauma.

Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

California tunnel truck fire can add to PTSD

Fire Shuts Down California Freeway
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ,AP
Posted: 2007-10-13 16:31:39
Filed Under: Nation News
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (Oct. 13) - A 15-truck pile-up on a rain-slicked Southern California freeway left 10 people injured and at least one missing, sent flames shooting out of a tunnel and blocked a key link between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/fire-shuts-down-california-freeway/20071013053209990001

If you go onto the link, you can see a video report from AP. I posted this so that you can see what the troops see in Iraq when a bomb goes off. This happened in California, which is home to the largest veteran's population in the nation. It can and will, set off PTSD above normal. Please watch your veteran more closely to see if they need help. Not just the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but all combat veterans. There is a thing called a "secondary stressor" which can send mild PTSD or even dormant PTSD into overdrive.

Fallen Guard's Mom, A woman of courage and love

When I talk to people doing this kind of work, I thank them for being a member of this Army of love. That's really all it takes. A love so deep that everything else is set aside. We all have our political differences, which seem to attract the spotlight of the media, but the spotlight of the soul is found within the volunteers who step forward, set political differences aside, for all the warriors. They are no different than the wounded they fight for. They come from the left and they come from the right. They come in all skin colors and all income brackets. They come to make a difference for those who are willing to do so much for us.

I remembered reading about Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey along with several other stories about Iraqi trainees turning around and killing their US trainers.




This is what happened

Sergeant Patrick R. McCaffrey, Sr. (May 26, 1970–June 22, 2004) was a United States Army soldier killed in Iraq.

McCaffrey was born in Palo Alto, California. He was a U.S. Army soldier who joined the United States National Guard the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and was assigned to the 579th Engineer Battalion, based in Petaluma, California.

On June 22, 2004, McCaffrey was on a patrol with Iraqi Security Forces officers when the two U.S. soldiers were killed, initially thought by the Iraqi insurgents in an ambush near Balad, Iraq. However, witnesses reported that members of the Iraqi Security Forces accompanying McCaffrey's unit opened fire. At the same time, a third gunman simultaneously drove up to the American unit in a van, climbed onto the vehicle and fired at the soldiers.

McCaffrey's mother Nadia McCaffrey was dissatisfied with the findings by the United States Army of her son's death and asked Senator Barbara Boxer for assistance to pressure the Pentagon for answers about the case. Nadia McCaffrey stated, "I really want this story to come out; I want people to know what happened to my son, there is no doubt to me that this (ambushes by attached Iraqi units) is still happening to soldiers today, but our chain of command is awfully reckless; they don’t seem to give a damn about what’s happening to soldiers." "He was killed by the Iraqis that he was training. People in this country need to know that."[1]

On June 20, 2005, the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division concluded that the Iraqi Security Forces officers patrolling with them had killed McCaffrey. [2]

McCaffrey was promoted posthumously to sergeant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_R._McCaffrey,_Sr._and_Andre_D._Tyson

McCaffrey's son, Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, a National Guard soldier, was killed by the Iraqi troops he was training in 2004.

A soldier who served in the National Guard with McCaffrey's son volunteered to redeploy to Iraq in July rather than cope with the transition to civilian life, said McCaffrey, who has kept in touch with soldiers who served with her son. The soldier, whom McCaffrey did not name, had taken to heavy drinking and risky behavior as he attempted to settle back into civilian life, McCaffrey said.

Could you imagine the kind of pain this mother went through? What did she do? She made sure she knew what happened to her son and once she found out, she was still not satisfied in just thinking about her own son, her own loss. She reached out to move some mountains in the way of those who survive to make it back home.

Land donation opens door for Veterans' Village plan
By Jake Armstrong
Record Staff Writer
October 12, 2007 6:00 AM
TRACY - An unexpected donation of land and a four-story building in Sonoma County has ramped up a Tracy woman's plans for a retreat center to segue soldiers from the battlefield to civilian life.
The building, in final phases of construction on a wooded hillside outside idyllic Guerneville, and 2 acres of farmland will serve as a pilot location for Nadia McCaffrey's Veterans' Village, a self-sustaining counseling and job-training center for armed forces members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A World War II veteran, who wants to remain anonymous, made the donation late last month after hearing McCaffrey speak in Petaluma two months ago about her vision for the Veterans' Village program.
"He is a veteran himself. He understands what they are going through when they come home," McCaffrey said.
Contact reporter Jake Armstrong at (209) 239-3368 or

jarmstrong@recordnet.com.
go here for the rest
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071012/A_NEWS/710120314

We speak often of courage and some of us will remember the words of Christ when he talked about there being no greater love than the willingness to lay down one's life for the sake of another. That is what women like Nadia McCaffrey do. They set aside their own personal lives, their own needs for the sake of others. It was not just the physical life Jesus was talking about and when you read the rest of his words, you know he meant to set aside yourself for someone else. When he was quoted in the Bible he was addressing the fact that he knew he would set aside his physical life for "the sake of his friends" but everything else addressed the sense of self. Nadia will not only reach men and women right now, but for generations to come and generations of the past because they will also notice they are loved as well.

What began my attention to this piece, beyond the human interest part, was soldier she would not name. He wanted to go back because he couldn't adjust to civilian life after. This I still hear from Vietnam veterans. They wanted to go back because they changed from the civilian the day they set foot in Vietnam. They left their "safe" world to enter into another world of death and horror. They no longer felt as if they belonged in this "peaceful" side of life. They didn't want to keep risking their lives but they didn't want to feel like an outsider here as well. They belonged to neither world.

Some adjusted back fairly easily but others, it was damn near impossible. As the levels of PTSD are rated, so too are the levels of adjusting back into normal. Most of us grew up with either a WWII veteran, Korean Veteran or Vietnam veteran, and know how quiet they were about what they were a part of. We know how differently they acted, but never knew why.

My father-in-law, was a veteran of WWII. He had a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, yet aside from funny stories about his time at war, he never talked about any of it, not even to his son, my husband, who is a veteran of Vietnam. You would think they would at least speak to each other about but they didn't. His father said, "get over it" when it came to the combat brought back with him from the jungles and the memories of Camp Evans and Camp Eagle. But as the pictures he took faded, the memories did not. (I find it ironic that he can remember names and faces he knew over thirty years ago, but he cannot remember what he had for dinner or if he took his pills or not.)

We need to make a path for them to come home and feel that they do belong back home within this nation they risked their lives for. We need to find a place in our days to do something for them even if it is to offer kindness, a prayer or a warm smile when you see them in uniform. Each one of us can do so much for them if we "lay down" at least part of our lives for them. I'm not saying you should do what I do. Most people think I'm nuts doing this 10 to 12 hours a day for free. I only do it because I can and because I fell in love with a Vietnam vet 25 years ago. I do it for him. In their eyes, I see him. I remember what he went through and is still going through but I also remember their families going through what I went through. If I didn't have the tool of knowledge and the deep faith, I doubt I would have been doing any of this. I wouldn't be able to. Had I not met Jack, I wouldn't have been touched so deeply by these rare men and women.

What I am suggesting is that if the rest of us 283 million people in this country took care of the 17 million combat veterans, their lives would no longer be trapped between two worlds, but would find home with all of us again.

I found this story from the PTSD Combat blog of Ilona Meagher, who also wrote a fantastic book on PTSD, Moving a Nation To Care. She is one more of the people who set aside her life for the sake of others. Visit her blog and see with your own eyes how much love she has for our combat veterans. Ilona Meagher
http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.com/

Put Ilona with Nadia and then ask yourself what you can do for them to help them heal. Begin by finding out what you can about PTSD and then listen. Remember what you learned and then if you hear a parent speak of the changes, speak up and let them know what PTSD is. You can be a part of moving the rest of this nation to care.


Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
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