Page 1049 - Total War on PTSD

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 right out of the boat. I didn't have a ladder for him to climb back in so I had my nephew drive the boat to shore while Duke and I swam alongside each other. Luckily it was a short swim. Ever since then, I've always brought a ladder when we go boating so Duke can get back into the boat.
In the summer, when I felt up to getting out of the house, Duke and I would go to the beach and just hang out. Even if we didn't go into the water, the sound of the ocean always calmed me down. Duke likes lying on his blanket and watching people go by. I can look back on days like that and see how wonderful Duke had been to me. He got me out of the house to do things I never thought I would do. Then was the summer we went to the beach, and I never even had the
1049 of 1085