Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The first cousin of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Both are horrible conditions to have. They hold hands and take turns torturing you, laughing at you, scoffing at your failures, teasing you with fear, chasing you and making all your enemy.

With PTSD you get to relive the moment of your TBI again and again. Anything which you recognize surrounding the moment of your TBI will cause extreme anxiety and fear in you. PTSD will awaken you at night sweating, screaming, striking out at some incident which occurred when you brain was injured. Over and over you relive it. There are no specific medications to stop PTSD, you must treat it through psychotherapy, and getting back in the saddle.

My TBI was caused when I ran out of gasoline on a freeway in Phoenix one dark night and was attacked by four young males. My PTSD exhibited itself with me waking up at night fighting for my life swinging at people who were there, yelling at people who weren't there, sweating and shaking. I also became deathly afraid of riding in a car. I quit driving and my wife drove. That made it worse as I no longer had control of the steering wheel and I felt she stopped too slowly and drove too fast. I was afraid of the car in the next lane coming over into our lane a hitting us.

I used to go to Los Algodones, Mexico for my dentist. After my head injury I had my two front teeth knocked out, so the next weekend we drove over to Mexico to see my dentist and have teeth placed back in. It is just outside Yuma, Arizona. After we finished getting the teeth placed in, my wife and I decided to stop in Yuma for lunch. We exited the freeway and was on the exit ramp waiting for the light to change so we could go. Traffic was back up in the two lanes with the last car in the lane next to us even with our car. Suddenly a women came barreling down the exit and slammed her brakes on at the last second. With tires screaming she slammed into the rear of the car next to us. With my TBI and PTSD just starting a week earlier this set me back quite a bit. I honestly though I would either lose control of my emotions or have a heart attack. It enhanced my fear of driving. This is what PTSD will do for you.

In my previous post I wrote about the results of TBI, but PTSD is tougher to list. Some people will relieve their traumatic experience and try at all cost to avoid similar situations. Other see enemies everywhere and may try to take them out. Other will do as in TBI and self-medicate to get the experience out of their minds. Some escape into the jungles of urban city life, living on the street.

Some people with PTSD get in trouble with the police because of their fear of authority.The police do not understand this and will arrest these unfortunate people for so many charges, they patients may never see the light of day, except for the one hour in the exercise yard. They will be charged with resisting arrest, assault and battery on a police office, failure to follow an officer's command, under the influence of something, running from the police, spitting on the ground, not standing up straight to the officer, not having an I.d. and the charges keep piling up. It doesn't matter to the police, their job is to arrest people and pile the charges on. The damaged person then get to spend their time in jail or prison without any health care, all because they were injured and received no medical care.

It's a shame. We've lost too many of our citizens for this (TBI and PTSD). It's time for medical doctors, social workers, insurance company's to provide the help needed to help these injured people turn their lives around and become productive citizens in our society, again.