Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (John Eidson) USofA

Personal Communication

VETERANS DAY 2019 Post traumatic stress is a leading cause of suicide among veterans.

Knowing about the adversities I’ve faced—Crohn’s disease and losing my wife to suicide—a 78-year-old Chicago physician I’d never met except through frequent emails sent this time-sensitive appeal to me eight weeks before cancer took his life: Hard to keep spirits up with daily pain, bloating and nausea when I eat, coupled with increasing weakness. If you have any advice on coping, please don’t hesitate to suggest something.

Thinking that what I have to say on the subject might be of interest to a wider audience, including veterans and others suffering from post traumatic stress, I answered my friend’s plea in an article, which I wrote and sent to him on June 6, the day I received his email. Here is that article.

Coping with extreme adversity

Barely hanging on.

By John Eidson | June 6, 2019 1

When friends are going through a rough stretch, we all wish we had a magic wand so we could fix things for them. If I had a magic wand, I’d make my friend’s cancer go away.

Since I can’t do that, I’ll do my best here to share with him what I’ve learned about coping. But first, a disclaimer.

The human brain has been described as the most complex structure in the known universe. Since coping is a process that takes place in the brain, I’m not qualified to speak about it from a professional standpoint. With no formal training in how to keep adversity from overwhelming the human mind when hard times visit, the most I can offer my friend is to share what’s worked for me.

Adversity comes in different grades. Coping with a serious cancer, for example, is light years more difficult than coping with a sprained ankle. The same kind of adversity gap exists when comparing the sudden loss of a loved one to having a flat tire. What I’ll touch on here is coping with extreme adversity, which includes the kind my friend is experiencing.

The challenge of extreme adversity is to find a way to cope when it seems our world is crashing in around us. Like the tree pictured above, we must somehow summon the tenacity to hang in there when things seem hopeless.

Extreme adversity and I are not strangers. Nine years ago, I lost my wife of 43 years to a violent suicide. A victim of the most lethal combination in mental illness—manic depression and alcoholism—the only woman I ever loved (photo attached) slipped out of the house and shot herself. Dating all the way back to the time we married, my greatest fear was outliving her. When I found her lifeless body in the backyard of our home, I was like that tree: barely hanging on.

Brought to my knees in a way only those who’ve experienced a similar loss can understand, I cried for the first time since childhood. And I’m not talking about weeping. I cried, as hard as a grown man can. Five, six, seven times a day for ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes at a stretch. I cried for the better part of three years before the crippling grief finally began a glacial retreat.

For those first few years, every day was the emotional equivalent of climbing barefooted up a mountain of broken glass, only to face the same painful journey when the next day dawned. I needed a magic wand in the worst way. I wanted to bring her back. Powerless in that regard, I had to cope with a calamity of the highest order.

As the most difficult challenge life throws at us, coping with extreme adversity is not a cup of tea. It doesn’t undo bad things that happened, and it doesn’t make the pain go away. What it does is enable us to carry on under the most trying circumstances imaginable, to somehow get from one day to the next while maintaining some semblance of normalcy, to keep pushing on in the face of crushing pain, physical or emotional, or both. Sometimes in life, circumstances demand that we dig deep to find a way to cope.

2

In the aftermath of my wife’s passing, I was able to summon the tenacity to cope by calling on an invaluable lesson that fell in my lap nearly a half-century earlier, in 1965, when I was 19. Described in more detail in the article below, here’s a summary of what I learned way back then that’s helped me deal with those inevitable times when life hits us with a two by four. To cope with extreme adversity, I make a Herculean effort to keep my plight in perspective by constantly reminding myself of two things: To be grateful for the blessings I still have, and to never forget that no matter how bad my situation may be, there are always others whose situation is far worse.

No husband ever loved his wife more than I loved mine. But unlike me, many on this earth who lose a spouse to suicide don’t have a decent place to live, don’t know where their next meal is coming from, don’t have health insurance, don’t live in the greatest nation the world has ever known. And unlike me, many are left with young children to care for, or adult children whose lives are in turmoil.

To cope with the most devastating event of my life, I reminded myself throughout each long day of interminable emotional pain that I had none of above issues to deal with. I had every material thing I needed, and our grown sons were doing well in life. The only issue on my plate was grieving. At the more than 200 group support meetings I attended, I heard the stories of many other survivors of spousal suicide, and remember feeling bad that I had it so easy. That way of looking at things didn’t stop the crying and didn’t bring my wife back. What it did was help me cope, no small thing when it’s needed.

Bad stuff happens in life, and sometimes it happens to us. Faced with extreme adversity, being grateful for the many blessings I still have and realizing that many others are far worse off is the best way I’ve found to cope when life goes haywire.

Below is the article about the experience I had in 1965, a life-altering moment in time that still helps me stare down the occasional surreal downsides of life. I will soon be calling on the lesson I learned from that experience again. I don’t look forward to not being able to see, but the endgame of macular degeneration is closing in. So how will I cope when my time comes to join the ranks of the legally blind? I’ll take a daily inventory of the blessings I still have, and will constantly remind myself that millions of people who can’t see don’t have a decent place to live, don’t know where their next meal is coming from, etc. That way of coping may sound Pollyannaish, but it’s worked for me when I needed it most.

3

The grass on my side of the fence John Eidson | August 26, 2005 It was 1964, my junior year in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. At 5’ 10”, my weight had plummeted to 100 pounds. In constant pain, I began passing frightening quantities of blood. The illness within appeared well on its way to destroying me, both physically and mentally. Crohn’s disease can do that. I had been diagnosed four years earlier at William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso, Texas.

The worst flare-up in my brief history with Crohn’s had sapped my ability to study.

I managed to survive academically, but only because of overly generous grades passed out by compassionate professors who knew how sick I was. Embittered at my plight, I was obsessed with Why me?, a question that’s futile to ask because it has no answer.

Angry at God for singling me out for misery, I enviously saw my friends at school, and indeed people my age everywhere, as being on the other side of a fence where the grass was always greener.

As a military dependent with Air Force parents half a world away in Okinawa, I withdrew from school over Christmas break and threw myself on the mercy of the small medical facility at Fort McPherson in Atlanta. Accompanied by a full-blown case of selfpity, I checked into Fort Mac’s clinic convinced that my best days were far behind, never to return.

With limited facilities and a patient badly in need of help, the doctor at Fort Mac transferred me to Walter Reed, the big gun of military hospitals. Shortly after arriving, I was taken to an auditorium, where I was seated on the stage in a fold-up metal chair.

Positioned in front of me were members of Walter Reed’s ‘belly conference,’ a group of a dozen or so physicians who combined their expertise to develop battle plans for the most serious cases of gastrointestinal illness. Alone and frightened, I answered occasional questions as the doctors and surgeons talked above my head in a debate to determine the prescription for my immediate medical future.

While awaiting the verdict of the belly conference, the young officer assigned as my primary physician felt a change of scenery might be good for me, and he issued authorization for me to have my meals in the hospital mess hall, rather than in my bed.

For that seemingly insignificant decision, I am forever indebted to you, Lt. Yutzy.

Although neither of us could have anticipated it at the time, that decision of yours would soon result in a dramatic reversal of my declining fortunes.

As I picked half-heartedly at the food on my plate during the first meal away from my room, the moment that would profoundly change my life was literally just around the corner. A strange sound was coming from a hallway leading to the dining area. I looked up and saw a line of pajama-clad patients hobbling in on crutches, amputees with one leg missing. Close behind were wheelchair patients with both legs gone, followed by triple amputees, and still more with grotesque facial wounds and other 4

injuries too horrible to imagine. Not a draft dodger in their midst, those battle-scarred contemporaries of mine were among the escalating casualties of the war in Vietnam.

At my table in the middle of the room, I sat transfixed in virtual disbelief.

Suddenly, as if by a bolt of lightning straight from the hand of God, I was hit with the revelation that my lot in life wasn’t so bad, after all. In the inspirational presence of those who had sacrificed so much, I realized at that moment that no matter how bad my condition was, there would always be others far worse off. From that point forward, I would never again feel sorry for myself, not a single time. I still had Crohn’s disease, but gone forever were the days of being saddled with one of the saddest afflictions of all: self-pity.

Over the next two weeks, I unexpectedly began to gain weight. Soon, I was back in Atlanta, having been discharged from Walter Reed in light of my rapidly improving condition. Not long after I re-enrolled in school for spring quarter, my weight soared to 144 pounds, twenty-five more than I had ever weighed. My illness had receded into a major remission.

During my three weeks at Walter Reed, I received neither medication nor surgery.

My only treatment—an about-face change of attitude—was entirely self-administered.

Freed from the bitterness that had dominated my every waking moment, I was blessed with an unfailing commitment to never again look with envy at the grass on the other side of someone else’s fence, grass that in many cases may not be green at all.

Over the years, my disease continued to bare its teeth from time to time. I would later experience the debilitating pain of more than sixty intestinal obstructions, and I eventually had a turn or two with the surgeon’s knife. But since those hopeless days of long ago, I’ve gone on to live an unbelievably rewarding life, thanks to the chance encounter that occurred at Walter Reed over forty years ago.

Although I’m sure those courageous young men in the dining room were unaware of me, the brief time I spent in their presence affected me deeply. They had no way of knowing that the patriotic duty they performed on the killing fields of Vietnam would continue in the mess hall at Walter Reed, where, albeit unwittingly and in a very different way, they once again served their country by providing the inspiration that would forever change the life of a fellow citizen.

Since remissions do occur with Crohn’s disease, there is no evidence that my dramatic improvement was in any way related to my equally dramatic change of attitude, just as there is none that the optimistic outlook I adopted way back then has had anything to do with the wonderful life I’ve enjoyed since. But until someone proves otherwise, that’s exactly what I believe. For me, the grass on my side of the fence is whatever color I choose, and I decided long ago that its color would always be green.

5