Help will turn your life around

Scott:

My name is Scott. I was in the Army. I was Infantry. I served with the 101st from 2001 to 2009. One of the very first missions that we got was to clear a cornmeal factory. They were getting reports of that's where the Fedayeen were coming from. We started to come up over the berm and those loud whistles got louder and louder, and about that time you hear this boom, and the LT and I got blown forward, and from pretty much that point on I don't really remember a whole lot. My platoon Sergeant told me, “For the love of God, I thought you were dead.”

I started noticing a lot of changes when I came home, like I’d go somewhere, and I’d pull over because I’d forget where I was and what I was doing. I was constantly sleeping, complaining of migraines and I would just randomly go to sleep. When I’d get a headache, there’d be this flickering in my eye, and I later found out that that was actually a form of a seizure. It was like an internal seizure. And then they got me on medication for that.

Towards the end of my Military career, I was finally able to start, you know, working with doctors and stuff to try to figure out what was going on and about that time, I got out of the Military and I came down to Florida. While I was searching for employment, I did get to a point to where I was pretty depressed and I basically told my wife that I felt like I’d be better off if I was no longer here and she recognized it as a problem and called the Veteran help line and they sent an ambulance and they got me over to the VA.

When they started, you know, talking about TBI and PTSD, I really noticed that a lot of my symptoms were associated with both of them and I went through testing and whatnot for about a year, and they said that as far as memory and cognitive actions and whatnot, it was mild to severe TBI and then PTSD was pretty severe as well.

A lot of the effects of TBI and PTSD, they kind of blend in together and it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference. For the TBI, I went through some cognitive thinking training. It was computer-based training and I went through that for almost two years, and I’m actually getting ready to go back and do some more. And for the PTSD, they… I went to the cognitive thinking therapy and that was really beneficial to me. My counselor was fantastic, sitting down with me, going through different stuck points. They no longer are stuck points, and I’ve moved on from those situations.

I’ve relaxed a lot, I’m not so uptight. I’m slowly starting to get a little bit of a sense of humor back. Since things have turned around and gotten better and I’ve gone through counseling and I’m getting help with TBI, you know, I think it’s built a stronger relationship between me and my wife. It starts with going in and saying “Hey, I need help.” That’s the first step, is to recognize the fact that there’s something wrong and that you need help, and once you ask for help, the help comes in massive waves and it’ll completely turn your life around.