"Me too." (standard:non fiction, 6478 words)
Author: THE BIG EYE	Added: Feb 27 2005	Views/Reads: 3044/2156	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
first chapter from my book: PTSD in Alabama (vietnam vets) and the Bronx, (me, the treating psychiatrist.)

"Me too." 

PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  The program at the Tumpalega VA,
in Alabama, is for the veterans of the Viet Nam who suffer from PTSD. I 
am a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, from the Bronx and Israel, and the 
clinical director of the PTSD  program. 

I run  a 5 week in-patient program to treat  the Viet Nam vets who
suffer from recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, rage reactions with 
frequent violent outbursts; they also suffer from severe anxiety, 
depression and suicidal tendencies; more than ninety percent of them 
have made at least one suicide attempt.  Most of them have histories of 
alcohol and drug abuse and more than half of them have been arrested 
and jailed on more than one occasion. More than half of the patients 
have been married and divorced 3 times. Their average age is around 
forty. 

In  Nam they  faced death and destruction almost every day; they lost
close friends as well as comrades-in-arms in tragic and dramatic 
fashion. For example, two marines were  bringing supplies on to the 
shore in the Mekong Delta  when one of them had his head blown off, 
spraying his buddy, standing  next to him, with blood, bone and brain.  
Many of them have killed enemy soldiers along with innocent civilians,  
such as some Viet Cong shooting at them from village huts with women 
and children in them. 

When in doubt some who have killed civilians whom they suspected of
belonging to the Viet Cong  but weren't sure:  one vet lost two of  
buddies to a booby-trapped Coca Cola sold by  a nine year old girl.  
The next time a Vietnamese girl came near  his squad to sell the 
thirsty G.I.'s a cold drink, she was cut down by three of the squad 
when she was  15 meters from them.  A few committed possible atrocities 
such as running over civilians who slowed them down while in a convoy.  
One technique the VC used was to push civilians, including women and 
children in the path of a convoy to stop it for an ambush. 

These  horror-traumas are alive and kicking  in their conscious minds,
and repeatedly haunt them in their nightmares. During their waking 
hours they have flashbacks, (nightmares occurring in the form of a 
violent daydream,)  triggered off by any loud sudden sound or someone 
suddenly coming up behind them. If they go to public places such as 
restaurants they sit with their back to the wall, facing the door; they 
do their shopping at 2a.m. when there are few people in supermarkets.  
One vet was cruelly taunted at his place of work when a group of his 
co-workers would drop a large piece of metal.  He invariably ducked for 
cover or ran out the factory in panic. He was a quiet, introverted, 
good worker but had to quit because management also thought it was a 
lot of "fun to see him run." 

They are survivors in real or imagined situations where they feel the
least threat, showing  it in their cursing, in the  threats of violence 
so easily elicited from them, and in fact in being violent.  A common 
way for some of them is to release their rage and anxiety by  knowingly 
 going into a bar to pick a fight, very often winding up the loser, 
punched out, or in jail.  I treated three vets who went to jail for 
manslaughter because of bar fights that ended in murder. Now you know a 
little about PTSD.  Who is Dr. Bronsky?  Let me tell you about myself.  
I am Itchy Bronsky from the Bronx, a long time sufferer with PTSD. When 
I was three years old I was run over by a speeding car and I suffered a 
serious fractured skull. The doctor told my parents  that I have a 
fifty- chance to live. I survived but I paid the price.  I was 
hospitalized for one month, tied down to the bed for the first two 
weeks: "for bed rest," they said. The "accident" was the  label applied 
to me by my family  to describe my behavior when I did something wrong 
or they thought I misbehaved. "Sure, it's the accident that made him 
crazy." Sometimes there was an additional zinger:  "I think we should 
call the ambulance to take him to the Bellevue Hospital crazy ward." 
Before the accident I was a curious, bright child nicknamed Little Jack 
Dempsey. When I came home from the hospital I was hyper-active, 
frightened, a nail-biter, and had recurrent nightmares about dying. 

I'm sixty five years old, bald, with a handlebar mustache, a straight
nose and hazel eyes.  I'm six foot two, overweight, and I have an ease 
and confidence about me that is prominent when I work with patients 
individually, and especially in groups.  In the second World War I 


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