Page 1006 - Total War on PTSD

For me they were life. I flew back to Little Rock. My parents were there even though I didn't ask them to be. In a way I hadn't come all the way back mentally, and that made me reluctant to meet people I had always loved.
After 9/11 and my injuries I never truly came back. That is, until I got Duke. Duke, who is now retired, was my Service Dog since 2004. I think he sensed from the day he was born that he was special. He saved my life many times. Because he was specially trained to help with PTSD, he could also keep me stress-free most of the time. He never passed anyone without flashing them a sly look and a big toothy grin, wagging his tail as if to say, "I see you and want to play, but a I can't because I'm working."
People would notice me — a slender man — standing beside Duke. They saw me and would realize that my stiff walk and straight posture is not due to pride but because of physical necessity. They can't see the other scars — the fractured vertebrae in my body or the Traumatic Brain Injury that left me with a crippling migraine and seizure disorder. They can't see my PTSD, psychological wounds, the flashbacks and nightmares, social anxiety, and panic attacks. They don't see the collapse of my family, my marriage, my career or the months of mustering the courage just to leave my own house.
I still take more than ten different kinds of medication for physical pain, seizures and crippling migraines. Some days I can barely bend over because of pain from the damaged vertebrae in my back. Before Duke, I would spend hours working up the courage to get out and take a walk in my own yard, and sometimes I didn't even try. I didn't pick myself up and start putting the pieces together — and holding them together — until this beautiful German Shepard, trained for two years to change the life of someone like me, came into my world.
I can still remember all of the crazy things Duke did when he was a puppy. He got into things as all puppies do. One day, Duke go his head stuck between the spindles on the back-porch railing. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. Another time, my kids were swimming in the family pool and they started yelling for me. I ran outside to see what they wanted, and Duke had jumped right into the pool with them! One summer day in Arkansas, we took the family boat out with my nephew and his family. Duke decided that he wanted to go swimming and he jumped
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