Page 594 - Total War on PTSD

the stress and anxiety from the theater of war, thus allowing them to lead healthier, more resilient lives. The same is true for those under Reserve status who have deployed. When these men and women come back home, they deal with the same kind of difficulties as do active-duty personnel. Often they are expected to return to their regular jobs and to deal with their inner difficulties and traumas on their own.
My Dad hoped I’d be a doctor, but it wasn’t for me. When I was 10 years old he tried to get me interested in medicine by bringing me along to Fort Miley. Saturday mornings, he’d find me throwing my baseball against the concrete wall in front of the garage, scooping up grounders with the worn Willie Mays glove I slept with every night. “Okay Bobby,” he’d say, “we’re going to go to the hospital, and I’m going to read one x-ray. Then we’ll go to Candlestick Park.”
Candlestick Park was where my beloved San Francisco Giants played. The idea of going to a Giants game was for me. So I would go to the VA Hospital at Fort Miley in San Francisco and sit in the hospital waiting room. Invariably, one x-Ray would become two, then ten, and then too any for me to count, because there were always emergencies. I used to sit there for hours. And I watched these war-torn, sad-faced Veterans rolling up and down the sterile corridors in wheelchairs and bandages.
Broken men. Seeing their physical and emotional pain left a deep impression on my heart. Maybe that’s why I am drawn so much to work with Veterans today.
Every day I read in newspapers that mental health is increasingly at the forefront of the national debate — and for good reason. Does anyone really know what to do?
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