PTSD

PTSD

Recently, I was seeing one of my regular patients in the clinic. He was a well-built extremely athletic looking man in his early fifties. A couple of years ago, he had retired from the United States Army. He had been a special forces soldier.

He now lived with his wife with whom he had been married for a few years. This was his second marriage. His first marriage had ended in a divorce many years ago. His opinion was that this was in part due to his frequent and prolonged deployments overseas. He had no children or step children.

On his visit, he was having palpitations and difficulty sleeping along with frequent headaches. I did a detailed work up. This included multiple lab tests as well as an electrocardiogram. Everything came back as normal.

I then said to him that these could possibly be symptoms from stress and anxiety. He could have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from his time in active military duty overseas. Were you ever in a war zone, I asked?

He laughed. For over twenty-five years, his life had been about deployments from one war zone to another. Some of these were obscure places as he was a special forces soldier. He explained to me that sometimes he would be sent on missions to places that never made news headlines.

Now, I was curious. What kind of missions, I asked? He then described one mission in which he was part of a mine clearing unit in a country in Southern Africa. He said that while they took precautions, it was still a dangerous task. He loved his work though, and told me that those two years he spent in the African Bush were very memorable.

He remembered another assignment in a Central African country. He was in the middle of the jungle along with a platoon of other United States special forces. They were on some kind of peace keeping mission and were on patrol one day, when they saw a small plane circling and appeared to come down to land nearby. The platoon decided to investigate. They came upon a landing strip in the middle of the jungle.

There was a small plane that had landed there. Surrounding the plane were some heavily armed men, carrying Uzi submachine guns. They were Israeli mercenaries that had come to pick up a shipment of illegally mined diamonds.

The Israelis and the Americans looked at each other. Both sides were heavily armed. His platoon decided that it was none of their business as to what the Israelis were doing and backed off.

There you go, I said. All those stressful situations are probably causing you symptoms of PTSD. He disagreed with me.

He said that at his military discharge, he had a very thorough medical checkup. He even had a Psychiatrist evaluate him specifically for PTSD, and he was given a clean bill of health. Unlike some veterans, he had very fond memories of his military days.

So, what happened after you got back, I asked? He moved back in with his wife and started adjusting to civilian life. He had to learn to do groceries and cut the grass in his yard for example. It is a good life he told me, but he would sometimes have arguments with his wife. She can get angry very quickly, he said.

He then admitted to me that it was sometimes stressful being around his wife. He could not often understand the reasons why she got upset. Being in a war zone is a piece of cake compared to being around an angry wife, he told me.

Aha, I said to him, I think I have your diagnosis. You have PTSD from your wife. He looked at me quizzically. You mean that what twenty-five years of being in a war zone did not do, a couple of years living with a woman has done?

That was a joke, I clarified, and we both laughed.