The stigma attached to
mental illness is beginning to fade. People understand that our brains can be
injured just as easily as our bodies. People are quick to offer support to
veterans suffering from physical injuries or PTSD, or both. They are also quick
to assume that the service dog by my side means that I am a military vet with a
war injury, either physical or PTSD, or both.
I do have a physical
injury. And I also have PTSD. But I am not a veteran. I did not serve overseas
protecting the borders and ideals of our country. I'm a medically retired
police officer. I served here in the US, protecting the streets and homes of
our citizens.
Several years into my
career as a police officer, I began experiencing depression, nightmares, and
mood swings. My level of awareness swung between irrationally heightened and
frighteningly numb. I felt threatened when people were too close to me. My work
suffered. Where I used to be proactive and busy with traffic stops, encounters,
and building checks, over time I became reactive, just taking dispatched calls
and rarely initiating anything. I no
longer took overtime shifts, stopped caring how my uniform looked, and used all
my sick time. My personal life began unraveling, too. I lost interest in things
I'd always enjoyed, gave up on working out, refused to socialize, and rarely
left my home except for work. To avoid being labeled "weak" at work, I secretly sought medical help but none of my doctors or therapists associated PTSD
with police work so I was diagnosed with depression and prescribed medications
that actually made things worse. In desperation, I called our
"confidential" Employee Assistance Program. The EAP accused me of
exaggerating my symptoms and said they'd have to alert my Chief if I admitted
to taking antidepressants.
At a police training
course in the mid 1990s, an instructor asked us to complete a "test"
on police stress. The officer seated closest to me had attended the police
academy with me. After catching site of my score, he leaned over and whispered,
jokingly, "You should be dead."
He was joking because it was the 1990s. Cops were supposed to be too
tough to have emotional reactions to the things they experienced at work.
Off-color jokes, drinking, and, most of all, silence were the only acceptable
responses to burned bodies, mayhem, and dead babies. So, I sucked it up,
managing to keep it together for most of my shifts and then falling apart at
home alone.
Years later, a
psychologist told me the development of PTSD is like trying to hold a beach
ball under water – you struggle to keep it down and when you inevitably lose
your grip, the ball explodes up and practically takes your head off. To
maintain my social mask, I'd been struggling to stuff a beach ball full of
emotions and memories and symptoms under the surface. I finally lost my grip
when a cherished police friend was killed in the line of duty (https://uneflic.blogspot.com/2007/05/lost-friend.html).
The resulting explosion did almost take my head off.
I felt like I was
falling down a hill backwards. I was having flashbacks, avoiding public places,
waking up a dozen times a night from violent, terrifying dreams, and isolating
for days or weeks at a time. Even though I often felt completely numb inside, I
could be sparked to irrational anger or to wallowing anguish for no reason,
often in the same hour. I was fearful and hypervigilant. I had to carefully
censor what I watched, listened to, and read to avoid being
"triggered" to a flood of tears, or to unwanted memories, or to the
depths of despair, or into a flashback. I turned into a hybrid of a sloth, a
snarling rabid wolf, and Eeyore, the donkey from Winnie the Pooh.
When I did leave my
house, I engaged in risky behaviors like driving too fast and tempting fate
where a rational person wouldn't. Even my core beliefs began to change. I
developed trust issues, felt any betrayal viscerally, and laughed or smiled so
infrequently that even strangers commented on it. I began to see people in two
categories; they were either a threat or they were blocking my view of a
threat. I was angry too often – wrap rage, apple core rage, coffee cup sipping
lid rage – and I started filling my sentences with profanities. One of my
brothers joked that I needed a DEFCON-type T-shirt to warn friends and
relatives about my mood levels.
I finally asked my
police supervisors for help, telling them that work stress was getting the
better of me. They listened impatiently, and then accused me of shirking my
duties and looking for unwarranted time off. Feeling lost and abandoned, I
poured my feelings into three essays that were published locally and then
nationally. Still, except for a note from a supervisor acknowledging my
writings and suggesting I call our EAP, no one reached out to me, not even
coworkers who were members of our regional police stress team.
In the midst of
struggling with the "depression," I was physically injured on patrol.
When my Chief insisted on an involuntary disability retirement, the career I
loved was terminated against my will. I
was unceremoniously shoved out of "the brotherhood" where I'd spent
my entire adult life. My years of service to my community were not recognized
with a party or even an official farewell, just a call telling me I didn't
"need to bother" coming to work anymore.
The
"depression," coupled with forced retirement at age 37 and the
physical pain from injuries that wouldn't heal, swamped me. Because of my
career, my past contained nothing but monsters and without my career, my future
contained nothing, period. My soul felt empty while my head and heart were
overflowing with filthy trash that bubbled up from a brimming cauldron. My
super power became a total lack of affect and I shielded everyone from my
deepest thoughts. I spent a lot of time seesawing between figuring out how to
commit suicide and figuring out how to stop myself from committing
suicide. Many friends suggested that I
was "just depressed" and needed to "stop thinking about it"
because "people are as happy as they choose to be" and when I didn't
"just shake it off", they stopped coming around. Other friends, along
with family, watched me withdraw from the world – the woman they'd known for
years was disappearing. I let them think it was entirely due to the relentless
physical pain. Only my dog knew the truth, and when things were at their worst,
I hugged her tightly to me while I sat on the floor with a loaded gun and a
3-minute egg timer, tangling my fingers deep into her fur and letting her lick
the tears from my face while I told myself that I could pull the trigger when
the egg timer went off if I still felt the need.
"Hope" was no
longer in my vocabulary.
A few months after
retiring, I was finally diagnosed with PTSD. My police department hadn't been
supportive when I was a cop, and even though my now former department was aware
of my PTSD diagnosis, I didn't receive any support when I was a civilian
either. I used my personal insurance and my personal savings for treatment. I
attended week-long residential workshops for First Responders at On-Site
Academy (https://onsiteacademy.org/)
in Massachusetts – twice – and at The West Coast Post-trauma Retreat (https://www.frsn.org/west-coast-post-trauma-retreat.html)
in California. I spent many hours on the
phone with Dr. Bobby Smith (http://www.visionsofcourage.com/). I practically memorized Allen Kates's book CopShock (http://www.copshock.com/). I embraced treatments like EMDR, more medications, more therapy, meditation,
and a service dog. Those tools helped me better understand and accommodate the
PTSD but I came to realize that unless getting hit by a bus could be considered
a cure, PTSD can't be cured – it can only be managed.
But living with PTSD is
not the same thing as having a life. It's a battle to maintain real courage
under fake danger. And being torn between wanting to enjoy memories and being
tormented by them is maddening. Sadly, though, when you stuff down the bad
memories, you stuff down the good ones, too. When you dull the emotional pain,
you dull the joyful moments, too. So, I become an empty shell of the person I
used to be.
In recent years, police
PTSD has received more attention and more respect. Officers are receiving
mental health care from their departments. Organizations are sending officers
on cruises and to retreats so they can bond with other First Responders with
similar diagnoses. And PTSD is now being treated as a line-of-duty injury.
While it's heartening to witness the positive changes, it's been difficult to
be excluded from the benefits that seem to be reserved for the newer
generation. Recently, when a Massachusetts officer retired from PTSD with an
exclusive pension that generously exceeds the statutory standard, I met with
the politician who had spearheaded that special pension exception. He said
"ALL cops have some level of PTSD," and since I "didn't have
your best friend's brains splashed across your face," my PTSD is not
remarkable or worth compensation. I left the meeting in tears, chastising
myself for thinking that the State would support me when my Town and police
department never had.
A year later, a friend
sent me information about a new PTSD treatment developed by Dr. Sean Mulvaney in Annapolis.
Dr. Mulvaney's
professional, direct, and friendly manner cultivated the trust I needed to
allow him to stick a long needle into my neck.
After a short period of rest and a couple of evaluations, I was
released. I was too distracted until later to notice that my service dog
greeted me very differently when I returned to the car but I would have seen it
as a good omen. Within an hour of the procedure, I felt different. It was as
though my head had been a noisy, bustling, overcrowded room and suddenly the
people left, leaving an open, clear, quiet sensation. I felt lighter - not
physically but mentally - the way I used to feel when I finally arrived home
and dumped the day's events (as well as my duty belt and bulletproof vest)
after a long shift. I even felt spiritually taller because the weight my
shoulders had carried for so long was lessened.
There were a few minor
side effects that lasted a few hours but the changes were extraordinary and
immediate. I caught myself smiling for no reason, which was startling. Although
I normally went to bed early to escape the chaos in my head, that night I
stayed up until I was physically tired. In the morning, I was shocked that I
felt rested and that I hadn't had a single nightmare or been startled wake from
a single insignificant noise. As I prepared for the journey home, I had a
persistent, strange, elusive feeling I couldn't shake. I finally identified it
as a thing called "hope," something I hadn't felt in two decades.
That's when I realized that my service dog had been treating me differently
since I'd had the procedure. He'd recognized the transformation instantly.
At home, I surprised
myself by readily accepting the first social engagement that was offered.
Friends said they could hear a difference in my voice. I slept through the
night again, and again, and again. I continually smiled without provocation.
The clear-headed feeling remained; the chaos in my head had settled, replaced
by a quiet composure. I no longer lost my temper over trivial things and the
sensation of being constantly emotionally overwhelmed was gone. My dogs were
confused, and delighted, when I started singing, even when there was no music
playing.
But the procedure did
not take away the PTSD. It only quieted it. Whereas most of the symptoms used
to strike many times a day, they now only occur once or twice a week, some only
once or twice a month. And I am still susceptible to the triggers that used to
overwhelm me but now my reactions are muted and they pass when I acknowledge
them. It's disconcerting but there's peace in knowing the symptoms won't last
and there's power in realizing I can better control my reactions to them.
Continual hope has
replaced constant thoughts of suicide. I am rested and more focused because I
sleep through the night; the few times my Service Dog has awakened me, I assume
he sensed a nightmare but I have no memory of one – a far cry from waking
almost every night covered in sweat with tense muscles and clenched teeth,
unable to fall back to sleep with the nightmare spinning through my head like a
movie reel. In public, I am
situationally aware – like a cop – rather than paranoid and hypervigilant, and
when my service dog steps between me and others, instead of feeling relief that
I have a safety barrier, I feel relief that now I can actually breathe in the
midst of other people.
I'm still figuring out
which behaviors are continuing from habit rather than from the PTSD symptoms
that linger. And I still have to deal with the daily physical pain from the
physical injuries that forced my retirement. Discovering how tangled the PTSD
and physical pain were is staggering. In some ways, the PTSD masked the pain by
upstaging it but in other ways, it magnified the pain by heaping more stress
onto my body. Unfortunately, since the procedure, there have been times when
I've longed for the numb emptiness of PTSD that veiled the physical pain.
I have always thought
that having some control over the PTSD would make me the person I used to be
but now I know that I am no longer who I was and that I will never be what I
was going to be. And now that there's space in my head and a desire to move
forward, I'm starting to build a new me. It is a struggle to figure out who I
am, what I will enjoy, what makes me happy, how I will live, and how I will
love.
Prince Harry, the Duke of
Sussex who is a military veteran and founder of the Invictus Games once said,
"You do not have to be defined by your injury or your disability. You may
not realize or appreciate it but do not underestimate the incredible impact you
are having on those around you, by simply being yourself."
Having the PTSD under
control means I can be myself again, whoever that may be, and I have begun
waking up for my life rather than to my life. I, not the PTSD, can dictate how
I move through the world.
So, six months after
the SGB procedure I am still unraveling the snarled knots that muddled the PTSD
and the physical pain, and trying to accept the pain as its own entity. In that
endeavor, I have posted a single quote on my normally blank refrigerator door
from a quadriplegic man named Chad Hymas, "Let go of the illusion that it
could have been any different."
There's something to be
gained from living through what Dr. Mulvaney's procedure erased. When I find out what it is,
I'll be able to let go of the illusion.
Jill Wragg is a retired police officer in Massachusetts.
She can be reached at JKWragg@yahoo.com
Jill Wragg
Yarmouth Police Department
Chief Frank Frederickson
Christopher Van Ness
Steven Xiarhos
@yarmouthpolice
http://www.yarmouth.ma.us/
