Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Love, War, and PTSD

LOVE, WAR, AND PTSD
Produced by Karen Brown

P: My name is peter mohan, i served in afganistan with the 82nd airborne division, and i served in iraq with the north carolina national guard.

A: my name is anna mohan. i'm married to peter mohan. he's suffering now from post traumatic stress disorder. and it's been very difficult.

P: we met a friend of mine's wedding,

A: i'm sitting on the bride side of the aisle, and he's sitting on the groom side, he was this big huge guy, and his face was all red, and he was crying during the vows. and i sort of pointed him out to my friend and said, look at the big cute guy crying.0:03:19.9

P: i thought she was beautiful, and i was surpirsed that anna wanted to talk to me.

A: peter was fun, loud, gregarious, around other army guys, 0:09:31.9 Alone, he was very senstivie, very sweet,.0:09:49.5

P: i was a typical, 22 year old guy in the army, [i liked to go out] and i liked to party real hard and i liked to shoot guns and i liked to jump out of planes.

A: i had never been into the army type, but i fell in love iwth him very quickly. and we went down to the courthouse and got married, just two days after getting the call that he was going to iraq.0:02:16.3 ?.we were both scared, upset, we were both worried he wouldn't come home.0:14:14.2

[music break]

A: in his letters, he seemed ? especially before june 24th, the big battle, he was like, ok, we?re here to help the Iraqi pp, there are good reasons we?re here.

P: june 24th, 2004. it was the heaviest day of ground fighting since the 0:16:33.4 mission accomplisehd banner was flown behind our president?. it was a bad day. [we lost] i lost a close friend of mine?. Ever our company commander got killed that day. 0:17:17.1

A:, after that day, his letters started to question more and more, what are we doing here? Are we doing any good? Why did my buddy die? Why did my commander die?

Cut? P: you have ceremonies for pp when pp get killed. you might actually have tears well up a little bit, and then you laugh with your buddies later, shit -- i almost cried there.

P: when your'e in a place where death is around every corner, you have to sort of callous your emotions, kind of disconnect. otherwise you probably wouldn't be able to do it. 0:19:18.4 **

[music break]

A: the day that they got back and were to be released, they had to fill out a checklist, saying do you have these symptoms, do you have nightmares, thoughts of hurting other pp? 0:33:13.7 ?

P; ? are you having trouble sleeping, are you feeling suicidal, are you feeling homicidal. and it's yes or no, ?so naturally, when you get home, you want to go back to the house and get all this crap behind you, so you run down the No side, and you check em all no.0:23:37.1

A: well, at first, it was wonderful. he was home, he was good, we were excited. ? it quickly became apparent, though, that something was going on. after the first week or two, he was very emotionally distant. and he was spending most of the day at home, doing nothing.

P; i didn't want to leave the house, i hated driving, i didn't like being out in public.

P: I?d check the locks four or five times, check the perimeter of the house inside, always kept blinds closed, ?0:26:04.0 i was doing the things you do to stay alive in a combat zone, ?and i was also drinking very heavily as a means to control my anxiety.

A: he was trying to get out of doing anything. he was trying to get out of enjoying life, going to the movies, but i didn't recognize that yet.0:29:09.5

P: i was doing a good job faking, for a long time. 0:24:18.5 I call it a front of functionality. when i was really falling apart, i just kept donig the day to day things that have to get done in order for someone to get well... doing the laundry, washing the dishes, cooking, cleaning.

A: weird things were going on, like bills were missing. all of a sudden, a credit card bill would show up and it would be 2 months overdue. ?i thought my memory was getting awful, or that i was misplacing bills all over the house. but it turned out that he was actually compulsively hiding them.

P; it was simple things that i just eventually couldn't do. couldn't write a check. couldn't make a phone call, -- and i didn't know why. 0:33:28.1

A: eventually i dragged him to the local vet center -- i said you have to do it, i'm going crazy. 0:34:28.8 we have to go see someone. So they made an appointment with him at a VA clinic. ? and of course, he didn't make it to the appt. 0:35:14.9 he rescheduled it but didn't make it to that either.

P: in a lot of ways i was afraid of stigma, of saying I've got post tramatic stress disorder. i felt like it was kind of a weakness. 0:31:57.2 as it turns out, I kind of realized it takes more courage to realize you?ve got a problem.

PART TWO:

A: i came home one day from work, right before thanksgiving, and peter was so drunk that he could barely stand up ? and at the time, he actually was suicidal. ?he?s told me now, more recently, in the last few months. 0:35:42.6 he said he would go out on his motorcycle and speed as fast as it could go. 0:35:51.8 hoping that a cop would pull him over and that somehow he could get the cop to shoot him.

P; riding around at a 100 plus miles an hour, doing things that just are ludicrously unsafe. putting my feet on the handlebars. standing up on the seat. things that a normal person would not do. 0:29:56.2

A:? he couldn?t be left alone. first, i just took sick days, but eventually i took a leave of absense, and ? we couldn't afford our house, everything was falling apart. 0:42:41.1 so my parents offered that we could come up here and move in with them.

P: i felt like a failure. geez, how can i have let things go this far out of control? 0:35:50.6

[music break]

P; i just recently completed a 24 day program, inpatient, at the northampton VA for post traumatic stress, that's what they do. you have group therapy sessions, a lot of classes about what PTSD is, what causes it?. they teach you how to sort of step back in your mind, and not get wrapped up in your thoughts and living these thoughts, that get to control your life and behavior

A: i find it all very frightening and overwhelming bc it's hard to figure out what their plan is at the VA. i keep thinnking if peter had cancer, then we would sit down with the oncologist and he would say, ok, this is the prognosis. these are the therapies that would work best for peter in his condition. ?but there's nothing like that. and I?d like to be more involved. i'd like to know what i'm supposed to do. 0:51:46.6 am i supposed to get him out of that room when he goes in there? am i supposed to say, come on, you have to go out, lets' go for a walk, let's see a movie? or am i supposed to let him be? am i supposed to say, OK, he needs to be alone right now? no one seems to be able to answer that question for me.

P: i believe it is hard for her. i'm getting all this help and support, and she's standing by me, and yet she still has her own issues and concerns and things, and i feel almost like she's putting her life on the back burner while I'm recovering from this. 0:43:08.0

A: and every one keeps saying, ok, anna, you have to keep moving on with your life, you have to keep doing things, which is sort of frustrating. so, ok, i'd like to go to graduate school, but right now that's not really possible. ?ok, i'd like to get a fulltime job. well, what happens if peter comes home and has a really hard time and needs someone to be with him?

A: i have gone a couple times with him to his therapist, i have not seen my own therapist, and i definitely should. 0:52:24.4 when we moved up here and i left my job, i lost my health insurance. ?so i have trying to ask around to ask if there are any good sliding scale therapists or someone who would do pro bono work.0:52:55.0

there is a spouse group down at the vet center in springfield. but the wives are wives of vietnam veterans, and i found it very difficult. ? it?s very scary to think these pp are still going through this 20 years down the road, and could that happen to us?

P: this is probably the worst thing that we're gonna have to face. in our lives together. and so far, we're doing it. 0:44:23.1 which is encouraging for the future.

A: sometimes i can still see underneath the person that i married. and i know it sounds silly, but i do still believe he has a beautiful strong soul filled with love and compasson. 0:56:03.3 but he's very very different. and it's very hard to be emotionally intimate with each other right now, and i'm praying and hoping that once we get farther into healing, more of him will start to re-emerge.

P: i'm defeintley not the same as i was, but despite all the physiological and emotional and all these things that have changed, i think at the core, i am still who i am.

[music break]

A: there's this inside gut reaction that says, don't talk about this. this is private, ?. and bc of that, pp don't really know the full extent of what happens after war. ?we really need to take into account everything that we're asking of these soldiers, and of their families. 0:50:25.9 and it's not just they're gonna put their lives on the line. and it's not just asking them to kill, but we're also asking them to put their emotional health on the line, possibly for the rest of their lives. and if we do ask it, it needs to be for a really good reason.

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