Page 1000 - Total War on PTSD

that. I recognize now that it's not a weakness and that being able to deal with it and persevere through it is actually a strength...to not be broken. I have definitely undergone an attitude change in that regard. I don't really see a difference between the 'label' of PTSD or PTS. You either have the issues, the PTSD, or you don't. One letter doesn't really make a difference. There are still a lot of people who don't want to show accept that they have such an issue; there are some who really don't know they have it; and there are others who don't develop the issue until much later in life, once they retire from work or the military. Sometimes PTSD shuts some people's lives down and not others. It all depends on the individual and their own experiences. I have issues of my own in relation to my amputation. A lot of the guys I know have moved on and it's as natural as can be to not have a leg. It's just one of those things. It's just different and everybody's different.
I received multiple Traumatic Brain Injuries, shrapnel in my leg (from a nearby explosion — a secondary shrapnel injury), a ruptured lumbar disc and two blown out knees. Over the years of parachute jumping and normal military activities, I have all of the typical shoulder injuries. I have a lot of arthritis from all of it. I've got neck issues and a lot of neuropathy in my arms from the neck issues. The TBI's happened during my service in Afghanistan. One TBI occurred from a close rocket attack and I got knocked down from the concussion of the rocket and I couldn't hear anything for about 24-hours afterwards. The ringing in my ears has never gone away. I also had a week’s worth of headaches and short-term memory problems around it. Still, being in the field, it wasn't an EVAC situation.
One was from driving a vehicle off of a dry waterfall nose end first and ending up in the dashboard windshield from it. This occurred during an extended patrol to look into some remote provinces that, pretty much, the U.S. had not been into yet. We were there to check out the area
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