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coping with war wounds: families must deal daily with ptsd

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

In jail, homeless or dead. That’s a real future for veterans who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without any support network or assistance.

That is and was the prognosis of anyone who returned from war without knowing the potential disaster awaiting men and women who served their country in any war, dating back to World War II veterans, who are now in their 80s and 90s. More than 386,000 have been compensated in some way for PTSD, according to a Department of Veterans Affairs document.

Statistics for Korean and Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD vary, but for Vietnam veterans, a 1983 study conducted by the U.S. government showed about 15 percent of men and about 9 percent of women suffering from PTSD after their service in Vietnam.

Statistics for veterans returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan are no less alarming. The only difference might be the amount of information readily available for those returning veterans that was unavailable or unknown for returning veterans from earlier conflicts.

However, no matter what the statistics, they can’t come close to describing life for any veteran who continues to fight his own personal war over and over, sometimes for years without finding the needed help. And that’s just part of the equation when a vet brings the war home to his or her family.

Consider the Hills: Gina and her sons have learned what to do when retired Staff Sgt. Allen Hill, her husband and the boys’ father, begins to spiral out of control. With PTSD, flashbacks can take him back to Iraq where during his second deployment, a roadside bomb exploded and sent him home with a traumatic brain injury and a very different life from the one he left.

With medication, counseling, his new pal, Frankie, a service dog, and a huge assist from Extreme Home Makeover, the family is beginning to pull itself together in so many ways.

When men and women go off to war, they may think about the risks and the possibility of being hurt, but they can’t know what effect their service will have on their families especially when they return to the lives they left behind, carrying a sometimes unknown and certainly unwelcome time bomb ticking inside them.

Virginia Wagner, a social worker at Jefferson Barracks, the St. Louis VA Medical Center, described what could happen to a veteran suffering from PTSD.

A visual break might occur that takes them from the living room of the family home to a “wadi, where they’re throwing commands at their brothers in arms,” Wagner said. It could take seconds or minutes to “get them back.”
Those suffering from PTSD “tend to remain on full alert, because of adrenaline flowing 24-7
in a combat zone,” Wagner said.

That was certainly the way one soldier described it. While he was attending a conference at Our Lady of the Snows shrine in late August, he said he had to leave one of the sessions. He was watching Staff Sgt. Hill listening to his wife, Gina, and the soldier began looking over his shoulder, letting his “hyper vigilance” get the best of him. He just couldn’t sit in the session, he said, because he kept looking at Hill, then looking over his shoulder, then back at Hill.

It isn’t the way he thought his life would unfold when he came home from war, he said.

“Military returnees are euphoric and optimistic when they’re coming home,” Wagner said. They believe “everything will be fine. Just let me get home and everything will be fine, they think.”

That works for awhile, maybe two weeks to two months, but then “they all hit the wall.” That could mean they can’t focus. They’re used to high stress, maybe high fear and high anxiety, and then the veteran is overwhelmed, wives wonder why they’re emotionless, Wagner said.

Maybe they had buried their fears, their feelings and those pictures of war they carry, but eventually all those things float to the surface of their consciousness. Perhaps a sound or a smell triggers a memory.

For Staff Sgt. Hill and his family, the sounds around their home played a role in his PTSD. One of the last sounds he heard in Iraq was an explosion, and he returned to his home in Kansas near a rock quarry where a company used dynamite as a general rule to blast away rock.

“The blasting made him think there were incoming mortars,” Gina Hill said.

Social worker Wagner said PTSD sufferers often need anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications. They need to sleep, she said, and often their sleep becomes a doorway back into the chaotic battles they continue to fight, even from their own bedrooms.

Some only seek help when they become completely overwhelmed by their surroundings and are unable to reconnect to their world.

When the sergeant returned to his family, his wife had to become his advocate, for treatment and for every kind of help that was available. She spoke on Capital Hill as one of a number of people who have first-hand knowledge of PTSD.

The Hill family developed a way of coping, of trying to bring the sergeant back when a mental break transported him back to Iraq. When she found the Puppies Behind Bars program that trained service dogs, the Hills applied for and received Frankie who has become a valued member of the family.

The dog can sense when something is wrong, the Hills said, and she might jump into Allen Hill’s lap and start licking him or bring Gina to Allen’s aid.

When Allen Hill was paired with Frankie, actress Glenn Close interviewed him for a segment in May 2009 on the Oprah Winfrey show. Close supports the Puppies Behind Bars program and met the couple then.

Later, she signed off on the application that led to the Hills being chosen for a new home compliments of Extreme Home Makeover that aired Nov. 4th.

Much work and coordination was required to find a new lot where a home could be built for the Hill family that was not near a quarry or other loud and potentially dangerous sounds.

Then, with assistance from people working with Glenn Close’s nonprofit Bring Change2Mind — which included Emily Smith who coordinated volunteers — more than 3,000 volunteers were marshalled in Kansas to help with the build.

While the Hills have moved into their new home, and they are truly grateful, Allen Hill continues to deal with PTSD, a disorder that doesn’t magically disappear, even if the family moved into a new house.

Smith, whose husband, Kevin’s family started the Karla Smith Foundation after his sister died by suicide, said she didn’t have any experience with someone suffering from PTSD or the toll it takes on a family.

Smith, who now volunteers for Karla Smith said she sees Gina Hill as a persistent and tenacious woman who not only takes care of her husband and her family but also reaches out to other military families who need help too.

What most people don’t immediately grasp is the danger a veteran and the family face at home if PTSD goes untreated.

When a veteran lands in the VA Medical Center, Wagner said, a team is assembled to care for the veteran. “Our job, our duty first is to keep them safe.”

Suicide is a big risk, Wagner said, a risk that is taken seriously. “We asses for suicide or even a hint that life may be overwhelming.”

Wagner said medical personnel explain that the veteran is not “losing their mind” with the flashbacks. “We educate them that these are symptoms that go with PTSD. That’s how we start.”

When a warrior returns from battle, family members need to familiarize themselves with the signs of PTSD for their veteran’s sake and for their own, Wagner said.

This Veterans Day, everyone should take time to find out more about the invisible wounds that many warriors carry inside, wounds that change more than the veteran, that impact families in so many ways.

Information about PTSD and other mental challenges that veterans face is available on the internet. If you don’t have any information, please start with www.va.gov that takes you to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The 24-hour suicide crisis hotline is 800-273-8255.

To read more about the Hill family go to Gina’s blog at theinvisiblewounded.blogspot.com.

To learn about support for those suffering from mental illness, please see www.karlasmithfoundation.org.