Page 234 - Total War on PTSD

College, I found the academic regimen in the Navy the most difficult I had ever encountered. I endured and graduated with a respectable grade point average and was enjoying life as a teacher’s assistant at a Naval Nuclear Power training facility in New England. Then a Middle Eastern dictator named Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and as with all members of the military, my life and my future were changed forever. Within a few months, I received orders directing me to San Diego and specifically to the Nuclear Cruiser USS LONG BEACH (CGN-9). I served in Desert Storm, earning the Bronze Star. After leaving the Gulf region the ship returned to the Pacific Ocean, joining up with a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) team and engaging in anti-drug enforcement operations. After six years of active duty service, I transferred to the Naval Reserves for two more years, and received an honorable discharge from Naval Service in 1996. Although I had reasons to visit a therapist shortly after completing my service, and had been in some dangerous situations, I was not diagnosed with any type of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and as I look back, I was suffering more from guilt and depression, not PTSD. Thirteen years later however, my life would change again.
In 2005, I was in an aerobics exercise class and felt an unfamiliar rip in my chest. I went to my doctor and after running some tests, was referred immediately to a heart surgeon who informed me I had suffered an aneurysm burst in my aortic arch, the artery that acts as a conduit for the blood leaving the heart and distributes it to the rest of the body. The open-heart operation repair was successful and after 30 days I was discharged and after three months I returned to work.
Unfortunately, I didn’t change any of my bad habits that probably contributed to my health, namely smoking. I guess I was still feeling like the invulnerable Veteran, because three years later, I was driving on the freeway, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette, and began feeling a pain in my chest, and woke up four days later in a hospital room. I was told I suffered another aneurysm in the thoracic region of my aorta and had to undergo emergency repair. This was my second open heart surgery, and like before, I was discharged from the hospital in 30 days.
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