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Date Posted: Thu, January 13 2005, 13:01:02
Author: Larry Lusk
Author Host/IP: 66.214.61.174
Subject: Re: They served too
In reply to: Richard dyer 's message, "They served too" on Thu, January 13 2005, 5:02:28

Hi Richard,

I am a Vietnam Vet and I had a six year relationship with a three tour Vietnam Nurse. She reacted in the same way to the sound of a helicopter as the nurse in “They Served Too”. One time I had to pull her out of a crosswalk at a busy intersection because a chopper had flown over us as we reached the middle of the street. When this would happen she was almost catatonic and it took a few minutes for her to recover afterwards. We didn’t talk much about Vietnam and if we did it was in a very general way. I guess we didn’t want or have to. There were times when I “went away” for a while and she was always there for me when I came back. We didn’t have to explain to each other what had happened, we understood and that was special because most people didn’t and in a way I guess we scared them. It’s hard even today for me to imagine what she saw and experienced doing her job in Vietnam. I saw friends and men I didn’t know die or get wounded but they number in the tens not the hundreds that she saw. The memory of the one time I watched a friend die and could do nothing to help him still visits me on a frequent basis, most often in a nightmare. To continue to function and do our jobs in Vietnam we pushed our emotions and even some memories down into a place in our minds where we could seal them off. That mental process continued long after we left Vietnam and “wired” patterns of behavior and reaction into the way our brains interpret and respond to what happens around us. Conventional psychotherapy can help us understand the “why” but the reactions are still on a form of autopilot. This is one of the symptoms of long term chronic PTSD. It’s hard for two people with PTSD to maintain a close relationship, we both needed more than the other could give. We lost touch with each other almost ten years ago. I very much hope that she is well and has found someone who not only understands but can also give her more comfort than I could.

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