The power of the book

I'm a librarian, so I can't go long without talking about books.

There's an feature in Publisher's Weekly called, "Why I Write." One week, it featured author Karl Marlantes, who is also a Vietnam veteran. He writes about how he was verbally attacked by a group of students and how a girlfriend left him because he was a marine. He said, "I’ve wanted to reach out to those people on the other side of the chasm who delivered the wound of misunderstanding. I wanted to be understood."

In my last post, I wrote about how civilians can cause PTSD.  I want to believe that most civilians don't realize they're inflicting these wounds of misunderstanding. They don't know they are causing more pain and damage than the shrapnel in my husband's leg.

It's not limited to civilians vs. veterans. When it comes to war, there's no shortage of misunderstanding. So much of my husband and I learning to live together again revolves around this misunderstanding. (If you speak militaryize, this is called reintegration.) Obviously, I don't understand combat. Sgt. K doesn't understand that time actually passed at home while he was gone. He doesn't understand what it was like for me to run our household by myself. He doesn't understand how scared I was.

We'll never fully understand each other. But admitting you don't understand opens your mind and heart to other points of view. I've always relied on books to show me the world and in a different way and give me comfort.  (I tried learning about the soldier's viewpoint by following Sgt. K around the apartment and asking him, "How do you feel? How do you feel?" According to him, that sort of behavior is annoying.)

So I'm going to start including book reviews in this blog because, like Marlantes, I believe books have the power to build bridges over chasms.

From the Journal of Obvious Studies

According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, deployments are stressful to spouses. Apparently, when someone you love is in danger, it can make you a tad anxious. Who knew?!

Ranger Up (via SpouseBuzz) has a good post on why this belongs in the category of no-shit-Sherlock. Perhaps in future studies, the Journal can study the nutritional value of romaine lettuce vs. deep fried Snickers bars, or the caloric output of running vs. watching Rock of Love reruns.

About a month after Sgt. K came home from Afghanistan, we were at a Yellow Ribbon reintegration event. We were suffering through a PowerPoint presentation on PTSD vs. plain-old reintegration issues. (The military sure does love that PowerPoint.) When the chaplain reached the hyper-vigilance bullet point, we both started laughing. Sgt K whispered something  like, "Honey, I think you need help." And I said, "You don't understand, man, you weren't there." The chaplain was describing me!

Before going to bed, I double-check that the doors are locked. In restaurants, I don't like sitting with my back to the door. When I drive home from work, I pay attention to whether the cars parked on my street are familiar. (But I am constantly losing my keys and cell phone.)

I later learned from a counselor that it's common for spouses of soldiers to have symptoms of PTSD. The stress is literally contagious. In my case, the hyper-vigilance started during deployment #2. My non-medical opinion is that after being in a state of fear for three years, it takes a while to come back down.

I guess the Journal's study could be helpful if it brings more attention to military family programs. But as a military wife, I don't need someone to tell me that deployments are emotionally tough. How these emotions are likely to manifest, and how to deal when they do, is far more interesting to me.

Validation

I can see why it's hard to understand why Sgt. K doesn't work. He can walk without his cane, although with a limp. He looks fine.

For one, driving scares the shit out of him. He has what's called intrusive memories, which means about once a day his mind runs through what happened the night he was wounded. He becomes really sad, upset, and sometimes angry. All of this might not be a problem if he had a supportive employer, someplace that would give him the time a space to ease into his job gradually.

The way civilians treat my husband has been a bigger source of stress than anything he experienced in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Sgt. K could have gotten his former job back under USERRA. He did so when he came back from Iraq.  Shortly after he returned, his now ex-boss asked him, "So, you're not going to come in here with an M-16 and kill everyone are you?" Not a supportive environment for someone with PTSD.

Sgt. K's first disability check came in the mail this week. It only took about eight months. When he called to let me know, it was one of those moments where I realized how cliches were cliches. I breathed a sigh of relief. If I saw Sgt. K's caseworker, I would have kissed her.

I was relieved knowing we wouldn't have to obsess about every penny we spent. We've been living off just my library paycheck, which isn't exactly huge. But I also felt validated. Somebody was saying that it was OK that Sgt. K couldn't just jump back into civilian life like nothing happened. The actual paperwork says something along the lines of, "gainful employment" is not "feasible or advisable."

I'm not going to lie, receiving a check every month is nice. But it's not about the money, it's the message it sends: "Hey, we understand your husband went through a traumatic experience. He needs time and help readjusting, and there's nothing wrong with that."

You might want to bookmark this because it is probably the last nice thing I will say about the VA in this blog.

What happened

I always can tell when people want to ask me about Sgt. K's injury. There are things they want to ask, but don't know if it's appropriate.

I don't mind answering any question (about his injury or either of his deployments). You should know, I'm going to answer, and you might not like what you hear. When Sgt. K was first deployed, I would see I was freaking people out, and alter my answers to calm their fears. I would say things like, "Yes, he's right next to Iran, but nothing ever happens there!" I'm trying break that habit because it's bad for my skin.

So if you don't want to know how Sgt. K was wounded stop reading.

So here's what happened: Last June, my husband was riding in an MRAP, which is like a Humvee on steroids. His convoy was attacked and someone shot a rocket-propelled grenade at his truck. The rocket went through his truck, through his driver, and sprayed Sgt. K's legs with shrapnel. (Yes, his driver is still alive.)

The next question I usually get is, What's shrapnel? If your squemish, skip to the next paragraph. Shrapnel is all the junk that sprayed from the explosion: dirt, bone fragments, and pieces of plastic and metal. When Sgt. K came home to me, he is leg looked like a piece of raw meat. When he flexed his foot, you could see his tendons in his shin slide back and forth.

A couple of days after it happened, another Army wife said to me, "Wow, most people don't survive attacks like that." When someone you love comes that close to the line that separates us from death, there's no describing the emotion. At times I feel shocked, scared, and angry. Someone tried to kill my husband. But most of the time I feel blessed and thankful that I didn't lose him on that road in Afghanistan.

Delaying the Dawn

In July, my husband returned to me from Afghanistan with a leg full of shrapnel and a head full of PTSD.

When Odysseus came home from the Trojan war, the goddess Athena stretched out the night to give Odysseus and Penelope time. Yes, time for them to get it on, but the wise Athena knew that after living separate lives for so long, Penelope and Odysseus would need time to get used to being married again. She knew that Odysseus would need time to readjust to being home without those pesky Ithacans looking at him all concerned and constantly asking him, Have you gone back to work yet? You can bet the first question his father asked him was, What are you doing with your time, son? Athena knew he needed time to heal.

When Sgt. K was deployed, there were a crapload of blogs I could go to find someone else going through the same things I was. But when it comes to what happens afterward, the Internet is silent. (Unless, there's some great blog I missed. If so, link to it in the comments.) I don't know why other people don't talk about it, but I know why I don't: Because of those news stories that come up every once in a while about a veteran shooting is wife. Because of that episode of Grey's Anatomy where the returned Iraq vet starts choking his girlfriend in his sleep. Because of that movie preview where Toby Maguire is doing his crazy face and and waving a gun around. Because the only way I know how to fight these stereotypes is to show that Sgt. K. and I are OK.

Pretending like we're all Stepford-like happy isn't really the truth either. Making the decision to blog about it is scary, but I don't think keeping quiet is doing anyone any good. So if nobody else wants to start talking about it, I will.