Page 505 - Total War on PTSD_FINAL

One of the most painful things that I’ve ever experienced was to call in that one of my family was KIA (Killed in Action).
After we medevaced our wounded, it still wasn’t over. Because we were the only element on the ground that could retrieve the destroyed vehicle and its sensitive equipment, we had to sit there for 30 more hours waiting for the vehicle to cool down so that we could search for what was left of our LT. The only thing we could find was a piece of upper thigh and a necklace, which we placed in a bag and put into the back of my truck.
We would go on to clear 83 pieces of explosive ordinance in order for us to carry our LT home.
Amazingly, within 10 hours, we were back on mission to the same area. No tears, no time to grieve. We still had a mission to accomplish. There is no time to process emotion in the midst of war. The mission always comes before grieving.
But even after my deployments ended, a war raged on. This was a battle for my own mind and spirit.
The first time I walked into REBOOT, I had spent the previous six months struggling day in and day out. My marriage was ending. I was angry and had no fuse. Physically I had been injured in Afghanistan and was so frustrated with my medical care I was on the brink of giving up. Frustrated and not improving, I couldn’t even sleep.
And that’s just a few of the issues I was struggling with. Needless to say, life was not as I had envisioned it would be as a kid growing up in a little town in North Carolina.
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