PTSD : An Indepth History

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychological disorder stemming from continuing and severe stress, including the stress associated with combat, concentration camps, near-death events, and other horrors. Killing, sustained exposure to the possibility of sudden death, and witnessing the violent death of friends can have a lasting, traumatic consequence for a high percentage of survivors.

PTSD has been prevalent among Vietnam War veterans, for example, even several decades after the war. Of the approximately 1,600,000 American soldiers who served in Vietnam, 800,000 have had severe emotional and psychological problems since the war, and 200,000 have been diagnosed as having PTSD. Virtually none of those vets diagnosed as such have had any measure of substantial relief in the years since, despite massive treatment intervention.

(3/29/07) The Iraqi War has yielded its own bumber crop of problems. In one report, "Iraq Reservists Face a 'Perfect Storm' of Post-Traumatic Stress", AlterNet has brought attention to the fact that while active-duty troops are required to participate in post-combat mental health sessions for 90 days after their reentry, National Guard reservists are not provided the same amount of support. In fact, if they are not diagnosed within two years, they lose all rights. Inasmuch as the reservists have to wait an inordinate amount of time for a comprehensive mental health evaluation and following that allowed access to treatment, the odds are very clear that they will not make the deadline. Accordingly, the statistics on Iraq PTSD will likely be skewed toward lower numbers, despite reality.
  Symptoms of PTSD in Vietnam veterans who have returned to the United States include dramatic personality changes, increased levels of drug abuse and criminal activities, continuing nightmares of having died in combat, and a grotesquely high rate of post combat suicides. It has been estimated that the number of casualties from suicides of veterans who returned to the United States now exceeds the number of combat-related fatalities! Truly, these are some of the most horrifying statistics of that ill-fated war.
  But PTSD is not confined to war veterans. PTSD sufferers also include survivors of airline crashes, witnesses and survivors of such tragedies as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and 9-11-2001, as well as individuals who have been close to the death of others and who were simultaneously psychologically vulnerable to the traumatic effect of that person or persons’ death(s). While the medical history of veterans in the post-Vietnam era provides for a massive data base in dealing with PTSD, the continuing plague of PTSD sufferers in all walks of life -- along with the largely ineffectual treatment of PTSD and related problems over the last several decades -- makes it clear that alternative treatments of this condition are necessary and perhaps essential. From the viewpoint of the PTSD sufferer (as well as his or her friends and family), alternative treatments that are effective -- even those treatments which are far outside the mainstream medical and psychiatric community -- must be considered a viable and worthwhile possibility. Effective treatments -- whether or not they are recognized by medical authorities -- may be far more valuable than the ineffective, standard practices of mainstream medicine and psychiatric practice.
Given this disclaimer of the ideas and concepts suggested in this brief discussion, an appropriate beginning might be the description of an actual scene between a therapist and a Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD. In the scene, the vet is relating to his therapist the details of a nightmare which has been repeating itself over and over in his mind (nightmares being a common symptom in all cases of PTSD including non-combat ones).
“It’s a trail. In Vietnam. It goes down the hill and then curves around to the left. There’s a hill on the left and some kind of embankment on the right. I’m with five guys and there’s lots of noise.”
“What kind of noise?”
“Guns. M-16s. And helicopters. Hughies, I think.”
“What happens next?”
“We’re going down this road, and I’ve got this feeling that somebody’s going to get hurt. Maybe Jim. He’s point man. I was supposed to be, but Jim’s my best friend. He took point.”
“Your friend’s going to take point?”
“Yeah. But they’re all my friends. We’ve been together a long time. Six or seven months. Anyway, we start down the trail... Suddenly everything’s coming apart. Mines are blowing! Everybody’s blown to pieces! Jim’s right side is blown away!”
“You see it?”                                                                                                               “I see it. I’m the medic and I grab all the morphine I can find and I’m just crawling around because I’ve got shrapnel in my hand too, and I crawl (sob) around and I’m trying to help them and they’re screaming. I’m trying to hold their bodies together. They’re screaming. The VC opens up and they mow the rest of us down. Oh God! I shouldn’t sent Jim out there!”
“Wayne, there was nothing you could do.”                                                                 “I should have been the one. I should have... I grabbed him, and I’m crawling up the side of the hill. I’m dragging him, we’re going to get out, we’re gonna get out of there, somehow. Get to the top, this hill...”                                                                    “Who are you dragging up?” “Jim. What’s left of him.” “Is he still alive?”               “Still alive.”
“Okay. You get to the top of the hill.”
“I get to the top of the hill. There’s a helicopter, he’s coming down. The door’s opening, and I... I don’t have much strength left. It’s just about all I can do. The CO’s there. He’s yelling at me. ‘What happened, Wayne, what happened?’ I don’t give a damn. I pick what’s left of Jim up and put it in the helicopter. He’s bleeding. There’s not much left of him. He’s dying. He’s dead.”
“Jim’s dead now, isn’t he. You gave him morphine?”
“Yeah.”
“You eased his pain in the last minutes, didn’t you.”
“The CO’s screaming at me. He’s asking me what happened. He thinks it’s my fault.”
“He thinks it’s your fault?”
“Yeah. Smashed him right in the mouth.”
“Good. What happens next?”
“Blacked out, I guess. Next I knew I was in the hospital. They said I’d been there for 3 weeks.”
“Do you remember anything during that time?”
“Sometimes. Like seeing my body from overhead. I wanted to help.”
“You wanted to help?”
“Yeah. Give him strength. So I went in.”
“Give who strength? Who went in?”
“Me. Jim. Wayne was my buddy. I figured I could help him. All of us did. So we went in.”
“You went into Wayne?”
“Yeah.” “You said, ‘all of us’.” “All four of us. Tom, Jeff, Sammy. All of us.” “Who am I talking to?” “Jim.” “Is Tom or Jeff or Sammy there with you now?”
“Yeah. You want to talk to them?”
“Not yet. Jim. You were point man that day, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“It was pretty awful. Everybody was real tired. It was real hot. We got packed up, going down the road. We knew there might be mines, but we figured what the hell. Anything was better than where we were at. I just went on down, truckin’ it down the road. All of sudden, there was a big explosion. I didn’t feel anything at first. Everybody else was yelling and I turned around and I wasn’t all there. I started screaming. I couldn’t help it. Oh God, it hurt!”
“Where?”
“My whole right side’s gone. Wayne comes barreling down the hill. Trying to help everybody. He was everywhere at once. And the road kept blowing up.”
“The other guys...”
“He was trying to get to me. He was yelling, ‘I’ll be there in a minute, Jim, I’m coming. I’m coming. But it was too late. I knew I was gone. The last thing I saw was his face. He was crying.”
“He drug you up the hill, to the helicopter?”
“I was dead. He just didn’t know.”
  “Were you watching him drag you up?”
“Yeah.”
  “Were you in your own body?”
“No.”
  “Were you in pain?”
“No. The hurt was all gone.”
 “What happened next?”
“Well, I was, what was left of me, laying on the floor of the heelie. It was really a mess. The CO was laying in my blood. (laughter) The heelie went up and they landed. I was quite a ways from the base camp, about four clicks.”
  “What about the other guys on the road?”
“Well, they were... It was pretty ugly, man. They were just smashed everywhere. They’d have to look around trying to pick those guys up. They blew ‘em everywhere.”
  “And you’re still in the heelie watching all this happen?”
“Yeah. We were just like up on the ceiling or... weird!”
 “We?”
“Yeah. Tom and Jeff and Sammy.”
“And then what happened?”
“At base they take what’s left of my carcass -- it’s pretty awful looking -- and they just stick it in a bag. They take Wayne up to the hospital and I followed him.”
“You followed Wayne?”
“I did!”
“Not your body, but Wayne?”
“Yeah. I was afraid. I didn’t know what was gonna happen to him. I couldn’t just let him think that it was his fault. It’s not his fault.” “He thinks it is.” “I know.”
“You heard him a few minutes ago?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been hearing him right regular for the last ten years.”
“When did you enter Wayne?”
“When he was in the hospital. He’s out. They’re keeping him out. All he was doing was just screaming anyway. He’s not making a lot of sense. They tried sending a shrink in there to talk to him, but he won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about it at all. It’s gonna be OK though. Me and the guys are gonna help.”
 “All four of you go in?”
“Yeah. Been there ever since.”
  This incredible dialogue is taken from the actual transcript between a therapist and his client. The implication is that a Vietnam veteran named Wayne, brought four of his dead buddies back to the States with him. All four of these personalities were somehow incorporated into Wayne’s memories. And in some fashion, the thoughts, dreams and nightmares of those four dead men became Wayne’s. In Hendin and Haas’ book, Wounds of War, numerous Vietnam veterans describe their dreams and nightmares -- dreams and nightmares very similar to that of Wayne’s. In considerable detail, the authors write that veterans “mourn for friends who have died, but they also mourn for what they have lost themselves, and often perceive themselves as having died in combat.” [emphasis added] One of their patients said that “he recurrently dreamed that he was back in Vietnam and someone would sneak up behind him and cut his throat. Periodically, he would be overcome with a desire to end his life and had made several suicide attempts. He had no idea why he sometimes became suicidal.”
Yet another veteran suffering from PTSD had nightmares in which he would see himself in combat fatigues, lying dead in a coffin draped by an American flag, while members of his family, including his wife and sister, would be seated around the coffin, crying. Other therapists such as J. O. Brende and I. L. McCann have reported on one veteran who claimed that since his return, something had changed inside of him. “Something was locked up within me.” [emphasis added] One veteran was preoccupied with friends who had died in an ambush. He dreamed of them frequently, but when he did, it was as if they were not dead. In another vet’s recurring nightmare, he would be turning over the bodies of soldiers who had been killed, and one of the bodies would turn out to be his own. Invariably the dream image involved finding his own body and sensing that part of him had died in Vietnam.
  Hendin and Haas noted that “this theme has a striking parallel with many Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic stress whose words and lives express a sense that their survival in combat is an illusion and that they have in reality died in the war.” [emphasis added]
  The conclusion seems tantalizingly easy. Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in the nightmares wherein the memory of dying is a real, actual memory. In other words, in some form or another the memories of a deceased personality who has died still continues to reside in a living person. The possibility is best described by a veteran who continually relived the experience of being shot by a Vietcong woman, felt the impact of the bullets, fell backward, and died. Hendin and Haas have noted that in many of the episodes where the veteran relived the experience, the vet seemed to “dissociate from his present life. He was absorbed with the death of his friends in combat, Vietnamese civilians, enemy soldiers, and his own sense of having died.” [emphasis added] After his tour, he wrote [taken from Wounds of War]:
  “Even dead men. Ours and theirs -- reside inside,rotting in my head.”
  Can we interpret the words in this poem in a literal fashion? Do they mean precisely what they say? Are many cases of PTSD but instances of the personalities of deceased individuals somehow incorporating themselves into living individuals, and thereafter residing within the mind of that living person? Hendin and Haas describe one veteran’s recurrent nightmare in which the vet “would be shot and killed, but he would be like a spirit outside of his body looking at what happened.” [emphasis added] If this description sounds like Jim’s account, or like the tens of thousands of individuals who have had a near-death experience and lived to tell about it, perhaps there is something very significant here. In near-death experiences, for example, individuals often report leaving their physical bodies and/or viewing it from a vantage point outside of their bodies. Often this vantage point is above the physical body remains -- just as in Jim’s description. With remarkable consistency, subjects describe a total cessation of pain, and often an intense feeling of peace and calm. Many are pulled very rapidly through a dark space, typically described as a tunnel, cylinder, cave, enclosure, or valley (i.e., “the valley of the shadow of death”). In their out-of-body state, they may become aware that their spiritual body lacks solidity, that physical objects appear to move though them with ease, and that they are unable to grasp any object or person that they try to touch. The spiritual body is reported as weightless, while the person describes sensations of floating or drifting. Many subjects involved in a near-death experience report being surrounded by a brilliant, guiding Light. The Light is invariably sensed as being quite bright, but never to the point of being uncomfortable for viewing. Once in the presence of the Light, any feelings of loneliness are replaced by remarkable feelings of peace, tranquillity, and intense happiness. Many subjects sense the presence of a close friend or relative, or in some cases a religious figure of importance to the subject. Communications with those entities in the Light is a direct, unimpeded transfer of thoughts, with no possibility of misunderstandings.
  George Gallup, Jr. of Gallup Poll fame has reported in Adventures in Immortality, that five percent of the United States adult population have had near-death experiences. Well-established medical doctors, psychologists, theologians, cardiologists, social scientists and researchers such as Cobb, Crookall, Savage, Hyslop, Richet, Moody, Kubler-Ross, Sabom, Lundahl, Gabbard, Twenlow, and a host of others have compiled an extensive and varied library of professional journal articles, research papers, and extensively researched books on the subject of near-death experiences. The validity and reality of these experiences are no longer in question by rational, open-minded individuals who have studied the subject. (But this does not assume that all who write on the subject -- both pro and con -- are necessarily “rational, open-minded individuals who have studied the subject”.  
  By implication, one can take the reality of near-death experiences -- along with the equally significant research from deathbed experiences -- and their combined description of what lies beyond and one can begin to grasp the immediate aftermath of death. Instead of the hell and damnation some would have us believe, human beings, as they encounter the life transition known as death, find themselves without pain, at peace, and surrounded by a warm and nurturing Light. Friends, relatives and religious figures may be there to welcome -- literally welcome -- the transiting soul into the Light (which may be simply another name for Heaven).
  The extensive research in the area has also brought to light [pardon the pun] the apparent reality of spirit attachment -- wherein the spirits from once-living human beings somehow attach to a living human being. Just as in the case of Jim, Tom, Jeff, and Sammy -- who having been killed in combat, their spirits left their physical bodes, and thereafter attached to their friend, Wayne; their buddy who had survived the war in Vietnam -- spirits from deceased individuals do not always go into the Light upon their death. In effect these spirits or souls, take an unfortunate detour from the Light, and for whatever reason find themselves “earthbound”. Instead of going into the Light, they remain in transition.
  One of the most knowledgeable therapists and researcher in the field of earthbound spirits and spirit attachment is William J. Baldwin, Ph.D. He has described in detail much of what is currently known about the subject of spirit attachment and its symptoms:“The emotions and feelings connected with a sudden, traumatic death can become the force which binds a spirit to the earth plane. Anger, fear, jealously, resentment, guilt, remorse, even strong ties of love, can interfere with the normal transition. Confusion and disbelief concerning religion and spirituality can prevent the spirit from moving into the Light. Obsession with food or sex can detain a spirit as well, and thereafter finds that it must attach to someone in order to indulge its needs through the physical sense of a living being. Drug and alcohol habituation exert a powerful hold on a being, even after death, and these appetites can only be satisfied by attaching to a person who already uses the substances, or can be induced to use them.
  “A discarnate spirit may attach itself to anyone who is available and open for whatever reason. The choice may be completely random. It may occur because of close physical proximity to a person at the time of death. Victims of an air crash, or fatal automobile accident, for example, can be drawn to a bystander who is deeply compassionate or sympathetic. One who dies in a hospital of a condition with certain symptoms, may be attracted to another patient with similar symptoms.
  “The disembodied consciousness seems to attach itself and merge with the consciousness of a living person, exerting full or partial control over the mental as well as the physical body. The physical, mental, and emotional conditions that characterized the entity when it was alive, may be imposed on the host. The attached spirits may not cause noticeable symptoms, but will use the energy of the person. In some cases, the only indication of an attachment is chronic fatigue. However, in cases of very recent attachment, personality changes may occur. Physical appetites for food, sex, alcohol, and drugs can increase dramatically. Personal behavior and attitudes may change quite noticeably. Symptoms of physical ailments may suddenly appear. The voice and even facial features and appearance can change dramatically. A victim of this phenomenon can be totally amnesiac about episodes of complete takeover.
  “Physical sensations and symptoms, in the absence of a medically sound cause, can indicate an attached entity. These sensations often move about in the body. A subject may report hearing voices, originating outside of themselves or from within, and have no other psychotic symptoms or behavior. Dreams or spontaneous visual images of faces, sometimes grotesque and frightening, may indicate the presence of such an entity. Severe stress may cause susceptibility to the influence of an intrusive spirit. Personality changes after surgery or accident, the sudden onset of drug or alcohol usage, inappropriate speech and behavior patterns, may signal the newly formed attachment of a discarnate being.”
  The good news is that earthbound entities, even those attached to other living beings, can be released and sent into the Light. In what is referred to as Spirit Releasement Therapy, attached spirits are counseled, healed, and guided into the Light. In effect, the normal transition procedures associated with death are reinstituted. For example, it is generally believed by investigators and researchers in the field, that when an individual dies, spirit helpers and guides are there to meet the soul consciousness after the death of the physical body. Unfortunately, strong feelings and emotions, those often accompanying drug related, violent, or untimely deaths, seem to block the connection necessary for a soul to be guided into the Light. Lack of religious beliefs, or strong incorrect thought forms regarding the afterlife, can also prevent contact. The spirit helpers simply can’t be seen. In many case, the person who has died is not even aware of that fact. They end up groping about, experiencing confusion and frustration, and ultimately do not make the transition into the Light. It is these spirits -- such as Jim and others -- who in their confusion and lack of understanding, do not complete the transition of death and are thus unable to find the Light on their own.
  The solution is to resolve the strong emotional feelings of the attached spirits, and acquaint them with an awareness of their own condition. Ultimately, this will allow them to see the spirit guides and helpers. Once that occurs, the attached spirits can then complete their transition into the Light.
  This kind of “therapy” has been practiced for centuries. It is indirectly recognized by the Catholic Church, where Catholic theology has long recognized the reality of people being earthbound for a variety of reasons. The Church’s response has been to pray for the deceased, conduct masses for the dead, perform last rites, and include usually the sacrament of reconciliation and communion.
  But often, such rites are insufficient, or are provided too late for the earthbound and attached entities. Often, these entities simply do not hear or see. Instead, a specific therapeutic session is required, such that each attached entity -- and there is often more than one attached spirit for each sufferer of PTSD and related conditions -- can be individually counseled and led into the Light. One at a time, the attached entities can be counseled and released, until the living patient is completely clear. Incredibly, often a single therapeutic session is required for releasing all of the attached entities. Some will, even after reading this passage, catch on or begin to understand, look up for the Light, find it, and quickly and easily move on. The results can be dramatic to say the least.
  Earlier, we included material from an actual transcript of a Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD. In the process of hypnosis, the therapist, Dr. Baldwin, talked to several entities, including four of the G.I.’s friends, a Klu Klux Klan member (attached to one black G.I.), and a Vietnamese boy. The therapist was told about “several” Viet Cong, a baby, and “several others”, all residing within one living person. By the end of the session, the therapist had sent all of the attached spirits into the Light. In a subsequent visit to his therapist, the veteran reported that he no longer was having any symptoms of PTSD. Several other Vietnam veterans who were victims of PTSD have found similar relief.
   The idea that PTSD may be spirit-attachment in some cases is no doubt incredible. But if spirit-releasement therapy works, not using it because it sounds fanciful and nonscientific would constitute nothing short of malpractice. Surely it is time to try any means necessary to “heal the wounds of war”. At the same time, victims of PTSD stemming from more recent horrors, such as the Oklahoma City bombing disaster, the Twin Towers of New York City and Pentagon suicide attacks, may, in some cases, also be suffering from the same form of spirit attachment; whereby entities of formerly living human beings -- who having died so abruptly and traumatically that they were unable to make the transition into the Light -- attached themselves to another human being. The victims at the time may have been extremely vulnerable to the attachment of these spirits due to their own traumatic reaction to witnessing or being involved in the tragedy.
Whatever the causative trauma of PTSD, it appears that many of these cases may be due to spirit attachment, and that Spirit Releasement Therapy is capable of providing substantial if not complete relief. With the assistant of open-minded, licensed professionals in the medical and psychiatric fields, many of the symptoms of PTSD may be alleviated, and the sufferers of PTSD -- along with their family and friends -- may encounter a long-sought relief from a disabling, chronic problem.

This is a raw version of what soldiers go through in combat and as a result of combat. God Bless them all and God Bless the U.S.A.       theblogmeister

PTSD is a Hidden Killer

  I suffered in silence for over 30 years. The battle raging in my head is a constant one. One that I cannot foresee. I have a different traumatic stress than the ones our military men are getting because of the terrible things they are re-living. I feel for our soldiers who have had to endure the atrocities of war. I am not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as those brave men and women. However, we do share a common problem. Learning to deal with the traumatic stresses that, unfortunately, claim the lives of those that cannot bear the burdens.
  My traumatic stress occurred while I was in the military but do not involve combat. I was a medic in a regional hospital on a military base and was asked by a dying man to stop the pain. This patient and I had grown to become great friends. He and his wife, Bunny, had no children and they treated me as one of their own. I had this person on my unit for over six months and grew to love them, both. He was a retired fighter pilot and I would sit in awe of the stories he would tell. Unfortunately, he was dying of cancer and I still, after being warned by the staff, became very close to him and his wife. Then came the day that he asked me if I would do him a great favor. He knew that I would do anything for him. When he asked me to put a stop to the pain I was stunned. I knew exactly what he meant. He wanted me to go against everything I believed and do the opposite of what the Hippocratic Oath says, 'I will do no harm.' I struggled with this request for many weeks. I finally gave in and told him I would help him end his life. The day came, we said goodbye, and with tears rolling down my cheek, I administered a fatal dose of potassium chloride. I immediately left the room. By going against all I believed in it began years of mental torture. He began appearing in my dreams as a demon. I suffered in silence for the next few decades without telling a soul. The nightmares became such a part of my life that I could not function as a normal human being. It took years of therapy after I told a medical professional and medication to have a life that would seem to those outside fairly normal. My life is not a normal one. I still have nightmares involving him and I do not know if it will ever change. I want those that still suffer there is a way to live. I am not saying it is easy, however, it does get easier with time. Please, hang in there. Do not be afraid to talk with someone and get it off you. Life is too precious, live it as best as you can.    theblogmeister

The Silent Killers of Our Military

  They are the casualties of wars you don’t often hear about - soldiers who die of self-inflicted wounds. Little is known about the true scope of suicides among those who have served in the military. But a five-month CBS News investigation discovered data that shows a startling rate of suicide, what some call a hidden epidemic, Chief Investigative Reporter Armen Keteyian reports exclusively. “I just felt like this silent scream inside of me,” said Jessica Harrell, the sister of a soldier who took his own life.
"I opened up the door and there he was," recalled Mike Bowman, the father of an Army reservist.
  "I saw the hose double looped around his neck,” said Kevin Lucey, another military father. "He was gone,” said Mia Sagahon, whose soldier boyfriend committed suicide.
Keteyian spoke with the families of five former soldiers who each served in Iraq - only to die battling an enemy they could not conquer. Their loved ones are now speaking out in their names. They survived the hell that's Iraq and then they come home only to lose their life.Twenty-three-year-old Marine Reservist Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of this parents’ home - where his father, Kevin, found him.
"There's a crisis going on and people are just turning the other way,” Kevin Lucey said.
   Kim and Mike Bowman’s son Tim was an Army reservist who patrolled one of the most dangerous places in Baghdad, known as Airport Road."His eyes when he came back were just dead. The light wasn't there anymore," Kim Bowman said. Eight months later, on Thanksgiving Day, Tim shot himself. He was 23.

  Diana Henderson’s son, Derek, served three tours of duty in Iraq. He died jumping off a bridge at 27."Going to that morgue and seeing my baby ... my life will never be the same," she said.
  Beyond the individual loss, it turns out little information exists about how widespread suicides are among these who have served in the military. There have been some studies, but no one has ever counted the numbers nationwide."Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total," Bowman said. "Why do the families think that is?
Because they don't want the true numbers of casualties to really be known," Lucey said.
  Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee.
"If you're just looking at the overall number of veterans themselves who've committed suicide, we have not been able to get the numbers,” Murray said. CBS News’ investigative unit wanted the numbers, so it submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense asking for the numbers of suicides among all service members for the past 12 years.Four months later, they sent CBS News a document, showing that between 1995 and 2007, there were almost 2,200 suicides. That’s 188 last year alone. But these numbers included only “active duty” soldiers.
CBS News went to the Department of Veterans Affairs, where Dr. Ira Katz is head of mental health.
  "There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem," he said
Why hasn't the VA done a national study seeking national data on how many veterans have committed suicide in this country?"That research is ongoing,” he said.
  So CBS News did an investigation - asking all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and non-veterans, dating back to 1995. Forty-five states sent what turned out to be a mountain of information. And what it revealed was stunning.In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year. Dr. Steve Rathbun is the acting head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we obtained from state authorities for 2004 and 2005.
It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)
One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)
  "Wow! Those are devastating," said Paul Sullivan, a former VA analyst who is now an advocate for veterans rights from the group Veterans For Common Sense."Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems," he said.
“We are determined to decrease veteran suicides," Dr. Katz said.“One hundred and twenty a week. Is that a problem?” Keteyian asked.“You bet it’s a problem,” he said.
Is it an epidemic?“Suicide in America is an epidemic, and that includes veterans,” Katz said.
  Sen. Murray said the numbers CBS News uncovered are significant: “These statistics tell me we've really failed people that served our country."Do these numbers serve as a wake-up call for this country?“If these numbers don't wake up this country, nothing will,” she said. “We each have a responsibility to the men and women who serve us aren't lost when they come home."

  These young men and women we are sending to deserts in the mid-east are dying, not from terrorist EID's, of even from gunfire that is being rained upon us by people that we do not know if they are friend of someone that hates Americans who would love more to see our military dragged trough the streets as they did in Somalia.
  We are losing our youth by not giving them the proper mental health therapy they deserve. I know what it is like to have a demon haunting my dreams. We have to do better if we want to keep those brave soldiers, who risked their lives, so we could bitch and moan about why we do not like consolidating schools. Thank God for the men and women in uniform and God Bless the USA!     theblogmeister

There are two issues for me are the most important issues that we face, today. The first is suicides in our military and the other is near death experiences or commuting with those from the other side. These are the two topics that I most write about in my blog.
  This story was written by Spenser Ackerman and it is a story that must be told.


  Citizen soldiers are killing themselves at record rates, the Army announced on Wednesday. Last year, 145 Army Reservists and National Guardsmen committed suicide, compared with 65 suicide deaths across the entire Guard and Reserves in 2009. Worse, Army leaders aren’t entirely sure what’s caused the increase. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s deputy chief of staff and its point person on suicide prevention, told reporters at the Pentagon that there were 343 suicides amongst active and reserve soldiers, Army civilians and family members last year. The number of active-duty suicides in 2010, 156, declined by 6 from 2009, indicating what Chiarelli called the “modest success” of Army suicide-prevention efforts. But 101 Guardsmen took their lives last year, an increase of 53 from 2009, as did 44 reservists, an increase of 12.

The stress rates don’t appear to be linked to going to war, though. About half of National Guardsmen who committed suicide last year never deployed, said Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter, the acting head of the National Guard; fewer than half of Army Reservists did, according to Reserve chief Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz.
  In the aggregate, the economy is another x-factor. While Chiarelli said that the Employer Support to the Guard and Reserve had to help identify links between persistent unemployment and self-destructive behavior, only about 15 percent of National Guardsmen who committed suicide in 2010 didn’t have a job.
As best as the three generals can determine, romantic troubles are a high contributing factor to the reservist suicide increase. But none were willing to attribute the rise to any single factor. “If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know, because we don’t,” Chiarelli said.
  Access to suicide-prevention efforts for non-active duty soldiers remains a problem. The fact that reservists only spend a small portion of their time outside of call-up on Army bases or with their units means that they can’t always get access to the suite of services the Army’s set up for dealing with emotional stress. Not all know about the online Comprehensive Soldier Fitness exam that seeks to build what Chiarelli calls “resilience” from emotional difficulty. All three generals pledged to push reservist commanders and senior enlisted officers to check in on their units more often and called on community groups and family members to help recognize and combat the warning signs of suicide — especially the abuse of prescription drugs.
  The military has noticed a recent spike in prescription drug usage in both troops and their families, particularly for anti-anxiety and depression medication. It’s also experimented with a variety of post-traumatic stress relievers, from yoga and “bioenergy” to online counseling. A new “virtual PTSD experience” based in Second Life launched just today. While not all post-traumatic stress is combat stress, the apparent lack of a link between deployments and reservist suicide rates call into question whether tools like those are what citizen-soldiers need to overcome their hardships.
  Chiarelli said a key focus for the Army — active and reserve — would be to remove any stigma surrounding mental health treatment. He noted that 35,000 Americans are estimated to have committed suicide in 2010, meaning the Army accounts for less than 1 percent of last year’s suicide deaths.


If you have had a son or daughter in the military who have committed suicide I just want to take this time to tell you that you child was a hero. Thank you and I hope God blesses you in the future.    theblogmeister

The Living Speaks With The Dead

This is another example of what a care givers, one that sits with elderly patients, believes about communicating with loved ones that have crossed that realm to a new dimension. You can believe what you choose. I am just giving you another example of the phenomenon of the living communicating with the dead.

  When people are approaching death - maybe weeks, even months sometimes - it's not uncommon for them to experience dead relatives coming to visit. The husband who died years before. Mom and Dad visiting an 88-year-old daughter. People with Alzheimer's and other dementia also have these visitors.
  For family members, who may not know or be involved with other elders as they are with their own parents, can be really upset by these dead visitors. However, there's no need to be upset. They're just passing visitors, or visitations, or waking dreams or - you decide. One thing they are NOT is crazy. They're not even unusual manifestations.
They're so usual that someone like myself, who spends a fair amount of time being with elders who are dying, or going to get there, are familiar with the phenomenon. Ask any hospice nurses - they'll tell you the same.
Now I don't really even try to define what the phenomenon is, because how would I know - other than that these are normal around-dying events. People are very comforted by these visits.
  I have a dear friend of 92 who was seriously ill in hospital, from which she recovered - thank goodness. When she returned home, she told me her late husband had been sitting in the chair beside her bed the whole time.
So should I have called in the psych nurses? Told her doctor she was crazy? Phoned for the exorcist to drop round to her house? Of course not. If you spend time with the dying, you'll find they often have these experiences and are happy to share them. I'm happy to hear about them I'm happy they still feel so in touch with those who loved them. I happy to hear that the continuing spirits of those who have left their bodies come to help and comfort the living who may soon join them.
  I neither believe nor disbelieve in their experiences. I don't have to, because they're not my experiences and furthermore, they are clearly helpful, spiritually uplifting and loving experiences, so what the heck?
  I'm always amazed that people who purport to be practicing Christians, a religion in which life after death is a big feature, get bent out of shape by accounts of these experiences.
And they do. They get upset, they want Mom medicated out of her visitations - weird huh? It's as if they just can't handle that there may actually be life after death. Me> I'm cool with people's accounts of their experiences.
  There's hardly a culture or religion in the whole world not familiar with such accounts. visitations, experiences. But in the USA, oh my! Actually, in my experiences of talking with a lot of Americans about a lot of personal lives, I find that these around-death experiences probably touch about 70 percent of everyone. They're just afraid to talk about them in case we think they're nuts. Isn't that sad?
  So, my dears, if Mom tells you Grandma and Grandpa came to see her - and you know they've been dead for 50 years - don't be spooked. Just smile and nod and be glad that her heart, her mind, her spirit, the drugs or your grandparents, are supporting at a time of greatest need for such visits.
Remember, dead relatives coming to visit - that's normal.


  I have had many relations with those that have crossed to the other realm. This is someone else's perspective.    theblogmeister

Death's Second and Most Traumatic Visit

 At the age of fifteen I had already experienced the death of someone that was close. It was now time, once again at age fifteen, for me to lose someone that was as close to me as a brother. His name was Lance Prater and his death changed me, forever.
  In 1974, my Mother was a nurse at the local hospital working on the same floor that my grandmother was a patient. I had decided that I was going to become a doctor, so, I spent as much time at the hospital as the staff would allow. As I was standing at the window of my grandmother's room I heard the sound of an ambulance siren. My pulse became a little faster in anticipation of the arrival of the ambulance. When I got a glimpse of the flashing lights of the ambulance, out the door I flew. I found my Mom and told her that I was headed to the ER to see the medics bring in their patient. My Mom told me to stay out of the staff's way as I was a regular at the ER when an ambulance approached. The ER Nurse knew my Mother and my interest in medicine and tolerated my visits because I stayed out of the way and knew when to stay away from the patients and their families. I had seen numerous patients being brought in and had some of the staff even giving me lessons on basic emergency medicine. They thought it great that I was showing such an interest in medicine at such an early age. This ambulance call would be the last one I would see for quiet a while because of the people involved. I came out of the elevators and made a quick right down the hall to the ER department when I saw my football coach walk in with the front of his shirt covered in blood. Confusion had set in because several more people came in and I knew them all. I hit the button that opened the door to the rear staff entrance and saw a gurney with a body, lying face down, completely covered in a sheet, being wheeled into a room. I knew, from my experience, that it was serious to be put in a room. If a patient came in as a non life threatening issue the staff usually put the patient in cubicles, separated by a curtain. One person rolled the patient in the room and immediately came back out of the room. This was not good. I exited the ER the same way I went in and walked around to the ER waiting room. It was filled with many of my classmates from school and the brother and Mother of my best friend. I mean we were close. If he was not at my house , then I was at his, most of the time. I saw Lance's Mom, his brother, and the hospital chaplain, along with many others from our school. A couple of the ER nurses were getting Doug, Lances brother, taking him to one of the cubicles to get checked out." Where was Lance?" I was asking myself. Then I started to think about the body the staff had put in the room and left him there. I saw another classmate and asked him if he knew what was happening. He said that Doug had been going too fast down 4th ave. in Glencoe and lost control of his car. He did not know who was in the car other than Doug. Then another ambulance pulled in and the medics brought in Wayne, another friend from the same grade. He was in a lot of pain, so, I could not get any information out of him. "Who else, was in that car?" I knew there was someone that did not make it because all the staff was treating Doug and Wayne. I left the waiting area and enter the rear staff entrance where the body was being kept. I had to know who that person was. I opened the door and went inside and it was eerily quiet. His blue socks were sticking out from under the sheets, facing downward. I was scared to death. I walked over to the head of the bed. The sheet that was covering the body was soaked with blood at the head of the bed. A lot of blood. I found the nerve to raise up the sheet and quickly backed away, almost falling. I could see enough of his face to tell it was Lance. The Parietal and Occipital region of his skull was crushed. I could see brain matter lying across the back of his neck. I could not move. I stood there with my mouth open and my mind was telling me to run like hell but I could not move. I have no idea how long I stood there when I heard Lance tell me to tell his Mother that he was in a good place. I could not be sure if the sound came from the room or inside my head. It was very clear and unmistakable, "Tell my Mother that I am in a good place." It was lance's voice but after seeing what I had just seen I knew the sound did not come from the body under the sheet. Then I heard, "Will you do that?" Again, very clear and from where it came, I do not know. I said, crying over and over, yes, yes, yes, when my Mom's friend, the ER nurse walked into the door and grabbed me and turned me toward the door and escorted me to the seventh floor, where my Mom was working. I was taken to the nurses lounge and my Dad picked me up some time later. The next several weeks were a blur. Once again, I was a messenger for someone from the other side. I have never forgot those times and now, I have a son named Lance.       theblogmeister

Death's First Visit

  Having had the experience with near death, saving the life of my Mother, it was time for death to impact my life. Five years after the experience of cheating death the angel of death showed me the way a life is taken. It was not a stranger that died in the summer of 1974, it happened twice to personal relationships. The first happened to a good friend's father. Randy, who at the age of fifteen was a close friend that had a Mother and Father old enough to be his grandparents. Randy was a mistake when he was born. When I say mistake I mean that his parents did not plan to have a child in their 'golden years.' Randy had a nephew that was older than him. Anyway, Randy, his Father, brother-in-law and I, were shrimping in the Mobile Bay. Harvey, Randy's Father, Hinky, the brother-in-law, Randy, and myself had been out on the bay for several hours when Randy decided he was ready to go back to his Sister's house. Harvey, Hinky, not his real name, and I was not ready to give it up. Arrangements were made for Randy to be picked up at the marina so we could finish shrimping. We stayed another two hours before we decided we better quit before fish and game stopped us and found out we were way over the limit for non-commercial shrimping. As we were putting the boat up on the trailer I looked over at Harvey standing up against the truck. He had a far away look in his eyes. After cranking the boat up against the trailer stop and locking it down I looked over to get Harvey to help me but he was not standing where he was a few minutes ago. I jumped down off the trailer and saw Harvey lying on his back with an abrasion over his left eye. I ran over to him and I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. I started yelling for Hinky when a woman from the next slip over came to help Harvey. She started CPR and someone called an ambulance. I later learned that the woman was a registered nurse. I knew without a doubt that he was dead. He was. It was rough on Randy's whole family. Seeing what the nurse had done gave me the desire to go into medicine. I was fascinated with seeing what the nurse was doing to try and defeat death. I had found my calling. That desire would be questioned the following October when an event happened that rocked my world.   to be cont.......   theblogmeister

Personal Visits From Beyond

  I want to first of all state emphatically that I do not presume to possess any psychic ability. However, things have happened to me as early as 11 years old that defy logical explanation. My first experience with the other world happened, as I said, when I was 11 years old. I come from a family of 5 kids. There are only 4 of us left after the passing of my brother in 1989. My first other world, I say this because it cannot be explained in the world we live in, experience happened in 1969 at the age of eleven. My three brothers and I were walking across the field to catch the school bus. I had a younger sister, that was three years old, and my Mother at our home on that morning. As my three brothers and I were waiting on the bus I was overcome with a strong sense of doom. At that age I had no understanding of my exact feelings I just knew that I needed to go back home. It was like a voice inside my head that told me what I had to do. It was so strong I knew I had to go back. After some threats and warnings of a butt whipping from my brothers I turned and headed back home. Half way home the bus stopped to pick up my brothers and away it went. I walked into the house and immediately began trying to answer my Moms questions and give her a viable reason that I chose not to go to school. For fear of sounding crazy I did not tell my Mom of the overwhelming feeling I had and the voice inside my head telling me to go home. My Mom had no way to take me to school because we owned one vehicle that was in use at that time by my Dad and his job. After my mom settled down my sister and I began to watch TV. She was the only one glad that I skipped school, at that time. I was a little edgy because I seemed to be waiting for the reason I was told to come home. I did not have to wait very long. I went to ask my Mom something and found her on the floor in her bedroom, lying on her back clutching her chest. She was in so much distress that she could not talk. I immediately ran to the phone to call the plant where my Dad worked. The plant operator, after I told her that I needed Charles Riley and it was an emergency, she asked me what extension. We had the phone number of where my Dad worked and other important numbers in a place that all of us knew. The one thing that I did not know was the extension of his department. When the operator asked, without hesitation, I told her extension 36. My Dad was immediately on the phone and after telling him the situation he and an ambulance arrived at about the same time. The next day my Mother was in Birmingham having quadruple bypass heart surgery. There is not a doubt in my mind that if I had not been there my Mom would have died. That is a lot for an eleven year old to grasp. I told mt Dad why I was at home when I should have been at school. He told me that God used me to save my Mom. That made it even harder for me to grasp. Why did he, if it was God, choose me. I believe in God, however, I do not think it was God telling me to go back home. It may have been a spiritual entity doing God's work. I do not know. I struggled with this for many years. I am definitely grateful that my Mom's life was spared but the lingering wonder of it all has never left me. I can't explain how an entity can put information into someones head to use for a specific purpose. That is exactly what happened. I cannot tell you, to this day, why me. It was the beginning of some more other world experiences. Some of them were good and some were evil. I wish it was not me.      theblogmeister

Dreams I'll Never See

  To get a complete understanding of my situation you will need to go back to the beginning of my stories. My situation is a unique one, in that I have not read very many that are similar to mine. What happened to me made a profound impact in my life. For years, I self-medicated to deal with the pain of my experiences. The visitations have not stopped but the frequency has subsided. I comb the Internet to look for stories like mine. So far, no luck. When I do find a story that is interesting I publish it, here. I hope I am not violating any copyright infringement laws. What are they gonna do? The reason I  am so passionate about these writings is because every family member I have lost has come to visit me. I do not know why, I am not a palm reader or a Shamus. I was normal until that one visit was not a pleasant experience. It is the one demon that visits me on a regular basis. I ask, why me? The answer has to be that I was the reason of his death. I interrupted the cycle, I suppose. Whatever the reason, I am a changed man. This story is from an elderly caregiver. You decide.
                                                                                             For family members, who may not know or be involved with other elders as they are with their own parents, can be really upset by these dead visitors. However, there's no need to be upset. They're just passing visitors, or visitations, or waking dreams or - you decide. One thing they are NOT is crazy. They're not even unusual manifestations.
They're so usual that someone like myself, who spends a fair amount of time being with elders who are dying, or going to get there, are familiar with the phenomenon. Ask any hospice nurses - they'll tell you the same.
Now I don't really even try to define what the phenomenon is, because how would I know - other than that these are normal around-dying events. People are very comforted by these visits.
I have a dear friend of 92 who was seriously ill in hospital, from which she recovered - thank goodness. When she returned home, she told me her late husband had been sitting in the chair beside her bed the whole time.
So should I have called in the psych nurses? Told her doctor she was crazy? Phoned for the exorcist to drop round to her house? Of course not. If you spend time with the dying, you'll find they often have these experiences and are happy to share them. I'm happy to hear about them I'm happy they still feel so in touch with those who loved them. I happy to hear that the continuing spirits of those who have left their bodies come to help and comfort the living who may soon join them.
I neither believe nor disbelieve in their experiences. I don't have to, because they're not my experiences and furthermore, they are clearly helpful, spiritually uplifting and loving experiences, so what the heck?
  I'm always amazed that people who purport to be practicing Christians, a religion in which life after death is a big feature, get bent out of shape by accounts of these experiences.
And they do. They get upset, they want Mom medicated out of her visitations - weird huh? It's as if they just can't handle that there may actually be life after death. Me> I'm cool with people's accounts of their experiences.
  There's hardly a culture or religion in the whole world not familiar with such accounts visitations, experiences. But in the USA, oh my! Actually, in my experiences of talking with a lot of Americans about a lot of personal lives, I find that these around-death experiences probably touch about 70 percent of everyone. They're just afraid to talk about them in case we think they're nuts. Isn't that sad?
  So, my dears, if Mom tells you Grandma and Grandpa came to see her - and you know they've been dead for 50 years - don't be spooked. Just smile and nod and be glad that her heart, her mind, her spirit, the drugs or your grandparents, are supporting at a time of greatest need for such visits.


Once again, I ask you to scroll on my page and you will see dates. Go back and read when I first started documenting these visits. I kept all this to myself for over 30 years for fear of prosecution and being labeled a 'crazy'. You will find some startling stories and you be the judge.  Thanks               theblogmeister

Troop Deaths Double In Afghan Surge

.KABUL -- The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.
U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.
  "We must steel ourselves, no matter how successful we are on any given day, for harder days yet to come," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.
In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed here during the first two months of 2010 compared with 28 in January and February of last year, an increase of more than 100 percent, according to Pentagon figures compiled by The Associated Press. At least 20 American service members have been killed so far in March, an average of about 0.8 per day, compared to 13, or 0.4 per day, a year ago.
  The steady rise in combat deaths has generated less public reaction in the United States than the spike in casualties last summer and fall, which undermined public support in the U.S. for the 8-year-old American-led mission here. Fighting traditionally tapers off in Afghanistan during winter months, only to peak in the summer.
After a summer marked by the highest monthly death rates of the war, President Barack Obama faced serious domestic opposition over his decision in December to increase troops in Afghanistan, with only about half the American people supporting the move. But support for his handling of the war has actually improved since then, despite the increased casualties.
  The latest Associated Press-GfK poll at the beginning of March found that 57 percent of those surveyed approved his handling of the war in Afghanistan compared to 49 percent two months earlier. The poll surveyed 1,002 adults nationwide and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said the poll results could partly be a reaction to last month's offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province, which the Obama administration painted as the first test of its revamped counterinsurgency strategy.
  Some 10,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan forces seized control of the farming community of about 80,000 people while suffering relatively few deaths. But the Taliban continue to plant bombs at night and intimidate the locals, and the hardest part of the operation is yet to come: building an effective local government that can win over the loyalty of the people.
"My main thesis ... is that Americans can brace themselves for casualties in war if they consider the stakes high enough and the strategy being followed promising enough," O'Hanlon said. "But such progress in public opinion is perishable, if not right away then over a period of months, if we don't sustain the new momentum."
  A rise in the number of wounded - a figure that draws less attention than deaths - shows that the Taliban remain a formidable opponent.
The number of U.S. troops wounded in Afghanistan and three smaller theaters where there isn't much battlefield activity rose from 85 in the first two months of 2009 to 381 this year, an increase of almost 350 percent. A total of 50 U.S. troops were wounded last March, an average of 1.6 per day. In comparison, 44 were injured during just the first six days of March this year, an average of 7.3 per day.
The increase in casualties was partly driven by the higher number of troops in Afghanistan in 2010. American troops rose from 32,000 at the beginning of last year to 68,000 at the end of the year, an increase of more than 110 percent.
"We've got a massive influx of troops, we have troops going into areas where they have not previously been and you have a reaction by an enemy to a new force presence," said NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale.
  The troop numbers have continued to rise in 2010 in line with the recent surge. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that a third of the additional forces, or 10,000 troops, are already in Afghanistan. They plan to have all 30,000 troops in the country before the end of the year.
  U.S. officials have said they plan to use many of the additional forces to reassert control in Kandahar province, where the insurgents have slowly taken territory over the past few years in an effort to boost their influence over Kandahar city, the largest metropolis in the south and the Taliban's former capital.
  Many analysts believe the Kandahar operation will be much more difficult than the recent Marjah offensive because of the greater dispersion of Taliban forces, the urban environment in Kandahar city and the complex political and tribal forces at work in the province.
  The goal of both operations is to put enough pressure on the Taliban to force them to the negotiating table to work out a political settlement to end the war - a process the U.S. believes will only gain momentum once the militant group has lost traction on the battlefield.
"Until they transition to that mode, then we will have fighters ready to take shots at us and plant IEDs (improvised explosive devices)," said Lt. Col. Calvert Worth Jr., commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines Regiment in central Marjah.

It was not that long ago that the Russian military were beaten by the Afghan's, only because the Afghan's were receiving help from the CIA. They have been fighting over there for hundreds of years. What makes us think that we can change that? Just bring our boys home.     theblogmeister

Making it Back Home; For What?

One of the most heart wrenching stories I have read is stories of veterans, after surviving the horrors of war, are dealing with the traumatic events that they did not know was as deadly as an enemies bullets. PTSD has become an epidemic in our armed forces and the result of this disorder, left untreated, can be as dangerous as the war itself. Larry Shaughnessy, a CNN contributor, wrote this article about some soldiers in Ft. Hood Tx.

Four soldiers from the Fort Hood base apparently killed themselves. "This is a very tragic situation." the base commander stated.
There have been 14 other suicides at Fort Hood this year
The base is also the site of the worst shooting on a military base in decades
Four soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas died over the week. In all four cases, it appears the soldiers, all decorated veterans from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, took their own lives, according to Christopher Haug, a Fort Hood spokesman.
If confirmed as suicides, it would be on top of 14 other suicides on the base this year. Base officials called a news conference for Wednesday afternoon to discuss the problem of suicides at the huge base in central Texas.
"Every one of these is tragic," said Maj. Gen. William Grimsley, the post commander. "It's personally and professionally frustrating as a leader."
Grimsley did not announce any major action or response during the news conference. "I don't think there is a simple answer," he said.
  The recent spate of incidents, began Friday Sept. 24 when the body of Pvt. Antonio E. Heath, 24, of Warren, New York, was found in Temple, Texas, the victim of a gunshot wound. Heath was deployed to Iraq for most of 2009 and earned a number of medals including the Army Commendation Medal.
  The next day, Master Sgt. Baldemar Gonzales, 39, of Victoria, Texas was found dead in his residence on Fort Hood. During his service he had fought in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. During that time he earned a Bronze Star, a Meritorious Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster, an Army Commendation Medal with four oak leaf clusters as well as numerous other decorations.
  That same day the body of Sgt. Timothy Ryan Rinella, 29, of Chester, Virginia, was found in his home in Copperas Cove, just outside of Fort Hood. He had an "apparent gunshot wound," according to information released by Fort Hood.
  Rinella served three tours of duty in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan.
And then on Sunday, Sgt. Michael F. Franklin and his wife, Jessie, were found dead of apparent gunshot wounds in their home on the post. The case is being investigated as a murder-suicide. They were the parents of a 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. Franklin served two tours of duty in Iraq in just the past four years, earning an Army Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters and several other decorations.
  The entire U.S, military has been focused for years on trying to stop or reduce suicides among service members. At times some have speculated that troops wouldn't seek help for emotional or mental problems because it would stigmatize them in the eyes of their comrades in arms and their commanders.
But that didn't always appear to be the case at Fort Hood this past weekend.
"Early indications are, in at least two of the cases, and I can't speak definitively about the others, a couple had been in counseling for certain things," Grimsley said.
He said the pace of Army operations, caused in large part by fighting two wars simultaneously over many years, may be one "stresser" leading to more suicides.
"We are certainly a busier force as we've ever been in my career, you put those and the other stressors of life, with finances and relationships and everything else, it's a tough life. It is a tough life," he said.
It's yet more violence for Fort Hood, which was the site of the worst shooting on an American military base in decades. On November 5 of last year, a gunman opened fire in a building on the post, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others. Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist was shot and paralyzed by police who responded to the incident and is facing murder charges in the case.
Grimsley doesn't see a link between the the suicides and the shooting last year. "I don't draw a correlation, it's clearly in our respective psyches and will be for life. But so are all of the other things that have gone on here."
  The first testimony in Hasan's pre-trial hearing is set to start in two weeks. 


May I make a suggestion with what to do with Maj. Hasan? Give him a Bible, make surer he is in an American uniform, stuff a partially burned copy of the Koran and drop him off in the middle of a Taliban stronghold. Might as well put a sat phone in his pocket so we could listen at him begging before they chop off his head.
  Hopefully, he will get the death penalty so we won't have to pay for 3 hots and a cot for the rest of his coward ass.          I want to welcome Sheila to my blog express. I hope you enjoy it and if you don't, hell, leave me a comment.     theblogmeister

Colobrainyoscopy

  I just read my post about Zappa and I want to explain what happened. I do not want to lose my valued readers, so, I feel I owe you an explanation. I am about to turn 52 years old and my brother was telling me that I needed to get a preventive colonoscopy. Well, I had it done, yesterday, and that is the reason for my crazy post. The doctor must have shoved the black snake so far up my ass that he bumped into my brain. By bumping into the brain it caused my neurotransmitters to get all jumbled up. I'm pretty sure that is what happened. I cannot say for 100% certainty because the nurse gave me some stuff in my I.V. line that was the color and consistency of milk. Is dairy products used as an anesthesia, is the medical profession going green? What ever it was, when she put that stuff in my I.V. I raised my head up from my pillow to tell the nurse that shit burned like hell. Before I could even finish thinking about what I was about to tell her, my head dropped like a stone. Not a little bitty stone. I'm talking about one of those stones those aliens used to build the pyramids in Giza. Now you understand why I said that I could not be certain what, exactly, he shoved up my ass. The only thing I saw, I checked the place out while the nurse went to get some KY, and the only thing I saw in that room, other than an extension cord, which, by the way, is not near stiff enough to make it all the way to my brain, Was a black snake-looking thing about 4 ft. long with stripes on it. I am pretty sure that snake was long enough to reach my brain. The doctor could have brought something in the exam room when he came in. I just don't know. I was at Neverland ranch and the place was blasting Michael Jackson music for some reason. I did not remember even seeing a doctor. Hell, the janitor could have used his mop, for all I know. The one thing that I do know, now this is a little gross and I apologize for not having that crooked M so you won't let young'uns read this, my asshole was barking like a blue tic hound dog for the rest of the day. I appreciate you letting me apologize for the uncharacteristic writings you saw, yesterday, and I will try and do better.  Thanks    theblogmeister

Melancholy Mind

  I have been having a hard time getting Cornbread off my mind these last few days. When he was in the Air Force and I was a senior in high school I would spend some time with him at his base in Sumter, S.C. On one of our excursions we left Bama headed to Hotlanta to see Frank Zappa live at the fabulous Fox theatre. The Fox is an awesome place to see a live show. It has great acoustics, the reason so many artist recorded live albums there. Yea, I said album. Vinyl. It was a few years ago.
 We had reserved seating in the balcony on the first row. The first row of the balcony almost put you just above the stage. We had a considerable amount of cocaine. C'mon, we were young! Zappa and the Mothers of invention put on one hell of a show. Coming from the sticks in Alabama you would never know that we owned an 8-track tape of Zappa.                                                                                                                 I dreamed I was an Eskimo, The northern winds began to blow. Under my boots and around my toes. The frost had hit the ground below. It was a hundred degrees below zero. My momma cried, Nanook, no no. Don't be a naughty Eskimo. Save your money don't go to the show.Well, I turned around and said, "Oh No." And the northern lights began to glow. She said, "Don't go baby," with a tear in her eye. Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow. Well, right about that time people, a trader who was strictly from commercial. Had the unmitigated audacity to jump up from behind that igloo and said Peek-a-boo. He started in to whipping on my favorite baby seal, Whop! with a lead-filled snow shoe. He went right up side the head of my favorite baby seal, he went Whop, and he hit him on the nose and on the fin. That got me just about as evil as an Eskimo boy can be so I bent down and I reached down and I scooped up a generous mitten full of the deadly yellow snow crystals and I rubbed it all into his beady little eyes with a bigger circular motion hither unknown to the people in this area but destined to take the place of mythology. Here it goes, now, the circular motion. Rub it! Well he stood up and looked around and you know what he said? "I can't see. I can't see. Oh, woe is me. I can't see."  We go trudging across the tundra, mile after mile until we enter the tiny little Parrish of St. Alfonzo. Yes, indeed here we are. At St. Alfonzo's tiny breakfast. Where I stole the margarine. I saw a handsome Parrish lady, make her entrance like a queen. She was totally senile and her name it was Maurine.    I have to stop, there. I got off on a song by Zappa from the album, Apostrophe. Now I forgot what I was writing about. Oh yea, my brother. Cornbread died March 3, 1989 and my life has not been the same, since. I think about him everyday. Those lyrics were dedicated to you, my brother. Lord knows we laughed a lot at those Zappa 8-tracks. I can't believe that I remembered the lyrics to that song. As you may have noticed that Frank Zappa is a little weird. He named his daughter Moonunit. I think his son's name is Dweisel. The dude claimed he never did any drugs. Yea, right, and we never landed on the moon, it was a stage prop from somewhere in California. Hope you made sense out of what I wrote. If you did, you are smarter than me. I just wanted you all to know what a great guy my brother was. I wish you all the same relationship with your sibling. Alive, of course. I have enjoyed visiting that portion of my brain that catalogues musical lyrics. That has to be the largest part of my brain, of what few brain cells I have left. If this crazy train took your mind off something that is bothering you then that is why I wrote it.  Thanks,   theblogmeister

Free Speech?

  Yesterday was a sad day for the families of our brave soldiers that lost their life in combat. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that gives the right for a bunch of inbred deviates that belong to a church in Kansas the green light to stand outside of a fallen soldiers funeral and harass the families during the funeral. You know who I am talking about. Justice Alito wrote the lone dissent and I want him to know that his interpretation of the constitution dealing with free speech is great. He was the only one that had the balls to interpret the inherent right drafted by our forefathers in the proper manner. I do believe that all Americans have the right to protest and have the right of free speech. Those that drafted our constitution must be rolling in their graves. These assholes, I am being kind, travel across the nation just to show the public what evil people, that pretend to be Christians, do at veteran's burial services. I am surprised that they can even find their way out of Kansas. I have a son that is in the military and if he were killed in action and these ingrates showed up at his funeral I promise you that it would be the last time they protest anything. I do not think a jury would convict me for temporary insanity. They sing that God hates America but the fact is they would not live anywhere else. That is what pisses me off. If you, and I am talking to that greaser tree jumping pastor, do not like America then get the hell OUT! What gives you and your idiotic congregation the right to invade the privacy of a grieving family by holding up ridiculous signs and shouting out moronic slogans? To expose your children, and I would not be surprised if you were the father of them all, to disrespectful attitudes of your warped religious beliefs. You, the right reverend Fred Phelps, and all of your lunatic followers will burn in hell. I would like to see you go through a little bit of hell, yourself, that is why I am posting your cell phone number so all of my readers can tell you what kind of dog shit you are. Mr. Phelps cell number is (785) 237-0325. Let us all show Mr. Phelps the disrespect he deserves.      theblogmeister

PTSD: The Silent Killer

  PTSD-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a silent killer. It comes in many forms, however, our brave servicemen suffer the most. This article, written by Jason Notte, tells of how this disorder is ravaging our military. These brave men and women suffer in silence and we should not let them do it alone. If you happen to cross paths with one of our brave soldiers tell them how proud we are of their sacrifices. Because of them we are able to speak our mind in a free society. The recent turmoils in the middle east and Northern Africa is the reason I am posting this story.

FORT HELL: Retired Army staff sergeant Andrew Pogany suffered from hallucinations and panic attacks while on active duty in September 2003 — the result, he says, of mandatory medication administered by the military. Since then, 17 of his fellow servicemen from Fort Carson, Colorado, have committed suicide.
  Upon returning from Iraq, 23-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Jeffrey Michael Lucey suffered episodes of such intense war-induced rage that he'd often need to be consoled by his parents, who would rock him back to normalcy in their laps. On July 22, 2004, unable to handle the intensity anymore — the daily vomiting, the feeling that he was a murderer, the fear that none of his military higher-ups even cared — Lucey wrapped a garden hose around his neck in the basement of his family's Belchertown, Massachusetts, home and hanged himself.
  During his last visit to the Northampton VA Medical Center in Leeds for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — a three-day stint in the hospital's psychiatric ward almost six weeks before he killed himself — Lucey had been prescribed a number of antipsychotic drugs, including Klonopin, Ativan, and Haldol. He was also given warnings that they not be taken with alcohol. Two days after his release, he destroyed his parents' car in an apparent suicide attempt. A little more than a month before he killed himself, say his parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey, he was refused mental-health treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs (known as the Veterans Administration until the late 1980s, but still commonly referred to as the VA) because he'd been drinking heavily. The Luceys insist that the VA focused on a symptom (the drinking) instead of the actual cause of his mental deterioration: PTSD.
  In January 2008, the Luceys were awarded a $350,000 settlement from the VA, which admitted no wrongdoing in their son's suicide. This past Thanksgiving, the Luceys were once again left with an empty seat at the table and emptiness in their hearts. A few days before the holiday, they distributed a letter through the non-profit organization Veterans for Common Sense, which used Lucey's story as a cautionary tale for other veterans and their families.
  Another front has opened in the wars being fought by the US military, and it is one for which the Pentagon was as unprepared as it was for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The primary (though not the only) enemy is PTSD, and to fight it, US troops are desperately being prescribed a wide array of medicines, from anti-depressants to anti-anxieties. They are also self-medicating in numbers beyond the control of the Department of Defense (DoD) or the VA, and the military has failed to provide adequate long-term treatment and follow-up care. America's troops both in the Iraqi conflict and in the one in Afghanistan are literally fighting their wars on drugs — and a record number of both active troops and discharged veterans are committing suicide.
  Tragic stories like Lucey's are becoming more commonplace. The journal Military Medicine found that, during an 11-month period in 2004, 30 percent of soldiers evaluated by mental-health staff in Iraq said they had considered suicide within the past week. (A DoD intelligence-center report on psychotropic drugs acknowledges this finding.) Of those, almost 64 percent said they had specific plans to kill themselves.
  Four years later, the situation has worsened. The Army announced in January 2009 that its suicide rate hit 138 — or little more than 20 per 100,000 — this past year, which surpassed previous highs of 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006. (That's also higher than the suicide rate for the general population, which is 19.5 per 100,000.) And just this past week, the Army said it was investigating 24 potential suicides committed by troops in January and another 18 committed in February, up from 11 suicides in February 2008. If those numbers hold true, it will confirm what many have recently started to fear: that, for the first time since the wars began, monthly US troop deaths by suicide will have outpaced deaths in combat, and for two months in a row.
  Among veterans, suicides are exponentially more frequent. The VA announced in September that 46 out of every 100,000 male veterans between the ages of 18 and 29 killed themselves in 2006, compared with 27 the year before. (For women, there was a slight improvement, as it was three in every 100,000, compared with eight in 100,000 the year before.)
  Internal conversations at the VA suggest the situation is dire. According to court documents, when asked by the VA's media adviser in early 2008 whether it was true that 1000 veterans a day were attempting suicide, VA Director Ira Katz sent back an e-mail entitled "Shhh," confirming the number, but suggesting it be kept under wraps until the VA figured out the answer to this question: "Is the fact that we're stopping them good news, or is the sheer number bad news?"
  PTSD is the acknowledged root cause of most of the suicides. The RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research, a nonpartisan global-policy think tank, estimated this past year that 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from PTSD, or about 19 percent of all troops who have served in the two wars. The impact of that astonishing number is difficult to articulate (although Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has theorized that the true cost of the wars, including post-war veterans care, will reach nearly $3 trillion — see "Iraq: Five Years Later," March 12, 2008, at thePhoenix.com). Treatments are slow, expensive, and highly individualized. So even when the Pentagon does diagnose traumatized personnel in time (that is, before they harm themselves or others), it merely doles out quick-and-dirty medications that may hide symptoms — then too often redeploys those troops overseas, anyway.
  Untold numbers of traumatized active-duty US troops — specifically large numbers of those that John McCain praised during his failed presidential campaign for manning the "surge" — are taking prescription drugs with little or no medical supervision. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), mood enhancers, painkillers, and anti-anxiety medicines — Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, morphine, Valium, Ambien, Zoloft — are ill-advisedly helping unfit-for-duty soldiers keep it together on the battlefield. The DoD appears to be aware of this, but its policies allow for such drugs to be taken in combat, regardless of side effects. When the troops return home, doctors and vets say the cash-strapped VA has little more to offer than further medication and group therapy, which hardly assuage a vet's trauma or curb his dependence on prescription drugs.
  March 17, 2009 According to numbers obtained by the Phoenix from the VA via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, of the 5439 Iraq and Afghanistan vets treated (for any symptoms) in Massachusetts since 2003, 277 were treated for prescription-drug addiction. That includes 147 treated in Boston.
"When we started out in 2004, we thought [soldiers' families] would need us a lot more when individuals were deployed, and [figured that] then the guys would come home and, in a couple of months, everybody would be fine," says Dr. Jaine Darwin, co-director of Needham-based nonprofit group Strategic Outreach to Families of All Reservists (SOFAR), which gives free psychological care to families of reservists and National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That's just not what has happened."
Darwin says that, all too often, upon returning, the soldiers cannot relate to their families — their wives, their kids, their parents. They are completely alienated from everything and everyone they knew before. "The fact is that there is no normal," she says. "There's the new normal, and the new normal is how you negotiate relationships between separations and reunions."
Other factors :
Army Special Forces Staff Sergeant Andrew Pogany describes a young soldier's fatal overdose the way you might order soup at a deli: in plain English and without embellishment. "They labeled the kid a liar and a drug seeker, then he went home and
overdosed, and now he's dead."
  Such are the effects of half a decade of dealing with the military justice system. It's been that long since Pogany himself suffered hallucinations and panic attacks in September 2003 — which he claims are a result of taking Lariam, an anti-malaria medication that the military orders troops to take — and just as long since military doctors prescribed sleeping pills to wash away Lariam's side effects. Pogany has seen 17 other servicemen from his former base in Fort Carson, Colorado, commit suicide during that same of time.
  In early 2004, Pogany faced a court-martial (and a possible death sentence) for cowardice. Acquitted, he later that year was medically retired from the Army with an honorable discharge, at which point he moved to Washington, DC, to become an investigator for the National Veterans Legal Services Program, an independent agency that provides legal assistance to veterans with difficulties similar to his own. Throughout his ordeal, Pogany says, he has learned all too well what stress can do to a soldier, and says the military hasn't learned a thing. Troops who evidence symptoms of being what Pogany calls "suicides in the making," he claims, "are being overlooked and they are being ignored."
  PTSD is just one root cause of the spike in US troop suicides. Other theories finger such suspects as, among others, Army-issued medicines (such as Lariam), lowered recruiting standards, and multiple deployments for troops.
  While no direct links have been drawn between either Lariam or increased use of psychotropic drugs and a growing military-suicide rate, their parallel course is, at best, inconvenient. Also eye-opening on the medicinal front, according to the US Army Medical Department's 2008 mental-health report, at least 13 percent of US troops in Iraq and 17 percent of US troops in Afghanistan are taking antidepressants, anxiety medication, or sleep aids. This adds to the New England Journal of Medicine's 2004 finding (the most recent statistics available) that 11 percent of military recruits had psychiatric histories before entering the military and the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center's May report, which found that the same percentage of surveyed active-duty personnel had at least one prescription for psychotropic medication within a year of deploying.
  According to numbers obtained by the Phoenix from the VA via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, of the 5439 Iraq and Afghanistan vets treated (for any symptoms) in Massachusetts since 2003, 277 were treated for prescription-drug addiction. That includes 147 treated in Boston.
  "When we started out in 2004, we thought [soldiers' families] would need us a lot more when individuals were deployed, and [figured that] then the guys would come home and, in a couple of months, everybody would be fine," says Dr. Jaine Darwin, co-director of Needham-based nonprofit group Strategic Outreach to Families of All Reservists (SOFAR), which gives free psychological care to families of reservists and National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That's just not what has happened."
Darwin says that, all too often, upon returning, the soldiers cannot relate to their families — their wives, their kids, their parents. They are completely alienated from everything and everyone they knew before. "The fact is that there is no normal," she says. "There's the new normal, and the new normal is how you negotiate relationships between separations and reunions."

I have been treated for PTSD for several years, now. I do not portend to be in the same class as the brave men and women in our military, today. I do have an understanding of what is going on and I pray for those afflicted.            theblogmeister







 

Obsessed With Death?

  It seems as you read my blog that I have a morbid fascination with death. To the contrary, my fascination is what happens after death. Causing the death of a patient when I was in my teens have given me this curiosity of the reasons one would choose death and the results of death. I was deeply affected by the way my patient, Colonel DeBarge, manipulated me into ending his life. He convinced me that it was the noble thing to do. I did not grant him his wishes without many sleepless nights and deep concerns of my own spirituality. The Bible states thou shall not kill. I had a real hard time rationalizing committing the act that went against my beliefs. You have to understand that I was up against a brilliant mind and one that had all the answers why it should be done. As a teen, I had not the capacity to compete with him on an intellectual basis. I had grown to love the Colonel and his wife, Bunny. When the colonel had finally convinced me that ending his pain was the right thing to do is when the problems of my emotional stability came to light. If you are an avid reader of my blog then you know what hell I went through. It has changed me in many ways. If you are not familiar with my situation you need to go back to see what I am about. I am not a whacko but sometimes feel that I am. You need to judge for yourself. My situation is an ongoing problem and I find that writing about these problems has helped me more than anything else that I have tried. The journey is not over. There are many things left for me to do. I do it with an open mind and with the understanding that we are just small parts of a much larger machine. I will never give up hope. Thanks    theblogmeister

Death Out of This World

This is, by far, the most amazing near-death experience I have read to date. I wish to share it with you as Mr. Horton shared it with me.


My Near Death Experience


Mark A. Horton

I "died" from total kidney, liver, and respiratory shutdown. Coupled with massive internal bleeding and the associated anemia.
Since I was already in a coma, I have no idea when my NDE actually occurred. From reading my medical chart and other sup- porting information and anecdotal evidence, I presume it was on New Year's Eve, 1992. It was that evening that my kidneys had quit, my liver had ceased functioning, and the doctors had told my parents that they should contact a funeral home since it was doubtful that I would make it through the night and if I did, they would have to put me onto a kidney dialysis machine the next morning; the shock of which would probably kill me anyways. During the evening (from what I've read in the chart) I went into full respiratory arrest and was placed on a ventilator. So there I was, kidneys shut down, liver not functioning, fluid building up, getting pneumonia, and a machine breathing for me. I suspect that's when I "left." I have vague, very vague recollections of looking down on a body in a bed with tubes and machines, but I cannot honestly say that it was mine. I was, well, floating is not an adequate description, more like held up, contained, buoyed, sustained in a warm, dry, medium of some sort, suspended without pressure or any feeling of containment, just there. I felt safe, warm, calm, without pain or fogginess at all, completely aware.

Then the "experience" began.

Suddenly dusk became full, blazing daylight, except with a brightness brighter than normally associated with daylight... everything was bright as I was lifted (without any feeling or pres- sure) upwards to a high point (I assume, since I was unaware of standing on anything or for that matter aware of any "body" that I had) I was pure intellect, absorbing information and knowledge through "sensors" or means that I have no concept of. From this vantage point, I had to merely think of a place and time and I was there, experiencing everything about the place and time and people present.
  I have always, I don't know why, had a very strong "pull" toward Scotland. I have some Scottish ancestry, but no more so than English, Swedish, and Prussian, but I don't know why I have such a strong affinity for the land, its history, its culture, and the music. (No sound in this world can stir the feelings that the sound of bagpipes arise in me!) Well, one of my first "trips" was to Scotland, on a high cliff overlooking a grey, crashing sea during a violent thunderstorm. I was there! I could feel the wind lashing at me and the driving force of the rain while I could see and hear the crashing of the thunder and the sea. All I had done was have the merest fleeting thought of the land and I was there! As I've said, I have no idea why I have such a strong tie to that particular piece of space/time.
  I next thought of warm sunshine and I was in a place of bright warm light and comfort. I could discern nothing but a comforting brightness around me (such that "me" was... I still had no "body" that I remember, but had the "feeling" that I was an amorphous, glowing pure intellect... all sensors and no tangible gross physical body to drag me down or contain me. It was a truly wonderful feeling? state? being? Words just don't exist to describe this.) This was very pleasant and comforting and went on for microseconds or billions of years, I have no idea since time just wasn't an operative construct and had no meaning or relevance to existence. I literally had the feeling that I was everywhere in the universe simultaneously.
  This brightness ceased and was replaced with a view of the earth rapidly receding "below" me. I was still enveloped in a sense of warmth and comfort, but "moving" backwards at an ever- increasing velocity; the view of the earth almost instantly gave way to an overall view of our solar system which as quickly gave way to a cluster of star systems that apparently was in one of the arms of our galaxy. I was still absorbing all of this on so many different levels beyond merely what we think of as seeing as I raced outward. I could still sense the location of our planet even though at this distance that should have been impossible in the normal space/time continuum. My overall feelings were of comfort, wonder, amazement, belonging, a sense of "rightness", and overlaying it all what I can only call an overwhelming love, although that word is woefully inadequate to describe those feelings.
Still moving (backwards always for some reason) I suddenly just relaxed completely and allowed "myself" to dissolve (?) open up (?) merge (?) into the "oneness" that surrounded me. The explosion of emotion and (again words are almost useless) over- whelming "love" that I now felt made any previous feelings I had experienced even during this episode, however "long" it had/was/is going on, seem like nothing! I cannot possibly put into words that any human language has that feeling. I was everything, I was nothing. I was everywhere, I was nowhere. I was everywhere, I wasn't. My intellect had expanded to contain every thing, time, place, and even being that was, is, or ever would be! I was unique yet I was the tiniest part of the whole. I know this is sounding like gibberish... it even does to me a times when I read it on paper; but to have been it! Words don't exist to describe the joy and love and warmth. It truly is indescribable!
And I was still accelerating outward, absorbing, observing, and becoming more! Entire galaxies became the size of grains of sand. I saw immense galaxies colliding together. I saw "holes" in space that weren't holes at all, but were filled with some- thing I couldn't comprehend even in my "enhanced" state... proto- galaxies perhaps? And there were so many galaxies to see and feel; but still I could sense where our planet was... I say sense because our tiny Milky Way galaxy had vanished; I could "feel" it there, but could no longer "see" it.
And I kept going outward! I began to discern a curvature to the scene before me and realized that the universe was really a large sphere containing all the galaxies. It became more and more apparent as I moved (still backwards) into the "darkspace" beyond the sphere of galaxies. Still, the occasional galaxy whipped by as I continued moving outward. And then I "felt" a large something or presence behind me. I seemed to slow slightly and hesitate and then was through this barrier and looking down at the sphere that contained our universe. It seemed to be at once transparent and slightly opaque as if I were seeing the energy fields that contained it. The image of the electron shell of an atom seems to fit here.
I was still moving outward and could now make out around the shrinking curvature of our universe, other spheres which could only be other universes. These seemed to be arranged in some sort of order, a spherical shell of universes around a core that I could not see. And beyond this shell, another, towards which I was now speeding. The overall impression I'm left with is of something like those little carved "spheres within spheres" of ivory that one used to see in import shops.
I never made it to the next shell. As I was moving outward to the next shell layer of universes, something started pulling at me and I was suddenly racing back forwards, inward toward our universe and then inside it. The other galaxies within our uni- verse were gone and I had one last "sight" of our arm of the Milky Way galaxy and then I was back. Stunned, confused, sad, having a tremendous sense of loss, I guess at the loss of the knowledge and love and "oneness" that I had been.
My NDE was over.
I drifted in and out of a coma for some time after that, I have no idea of how long. During this time I had a mixture of strong dreams, perhaps some hallucinations if I understand how hallucinations are supposed to be - very vivid, almost concrete dreams in which the "dream-people" have real, solid, bodies and with whom one can hold logical, normal conversations, and I think short "mini-NDEs" in which I was able to experience some small fraction of the overpowering love and "oneness" that I had during my major "trip."
I guess then I started to "adjust" and begin my unconscious attempt at ignoring what had happened to me and trying to "get on with" my life. But still something was missing... that hole was still there and gnawing at my mind. Finally after almost a year I sat not thinking, I guess you could say meditating and letting my mind relax, when everything starting coming back into my conscious thoughts. I could no longer suppress these memories and knew it. So I just let them flow inward, becoming ever more strongly convinced that what I had experienced WAS real, that it wasn't just an hallucination or dream, that we are all individuals and "one" at the same time, and that the only thing important ever is love. Complete, open, giving, incredibly filling love. That is the only thing that matters. All else is superfluous.
I was changed forever. I simply am. We are all one, we are all "God." Or perhaps "God" is all of us. I have thought long on the biblical phrase "And God made man in His image." I wonder if perhaps this really means that man is created and exists in "God"'s imagination which is then man's reality. I am no biblical scholar and will not debate theologies since those are so very personal, but that possible interpretation of the biblical phrase is interesting for me to contemplate. I do not profess to any specific religion at all; never have, and definitely now never will, for they are all right and all wrong... merely man's at- tempt to quantify, regiment, and control even the spiritual aspect of the individual. I now know that living to be kind and love each other is the only true "religion" there is; if one must label something "religion." From what I've read and spoken to other NDEers about, this seems to be an almost universal feeling amongst those who've had NDEs. We may describe what we've "seen" in various religious terms depending upon background and pre-NDE beliefs, but the message of universal love and forgiveness is the same.
  So that is my experience. The aftereffects are still there and growing every day. To say it has changed me completely is at once obvious and an incredible understatement. I still am interested in computer systems and work with them as a profession, but find myself more interested in how they can truly help people as opposed to just being intellectual "toys" that perform functions and that people pay me money for designing and tuning. I've never been outwardly materialistic in the "yuppie" sense of the word, but had cherished certain possessions and worried about them; now I still cherish the beauty in things, but the possession of a thing is unimportant... I find myself giving many things away to others if they express an interest or desire for them. I'm probably labeled as a "patsy." It doesn't matter. I find myself openly crying over the sadness in the world and in people's lives. I share many of the same feelings that other NDErs have... the total lack of fear of death - it's comforting actually to think of it since it'll be a return to that state that I experienced and can now only briefly make contact with, the overwhelming sense of love for everyone and everything around me, the peaceful calm that I feel, even the sometimes painful empathic abilities that now seem to have blossomed within me - if I can somehow relieve another's suffering by taking it from them and into me, I do so gladly.
  In summary I suppose the question many would ask is "was it worth dying?"
I would have to answer joyfully, "Yes!"

If you have an experience that you wish to share please contact me through my email or leave your comment. Thanks                       theblogmeister

No Goodbye

  It was a Wednesday, twenty-two years ago at this very moment when I last saw my brother alive. I was visiting my mother when Chaz walked in with that brightness of life in his eyes and the boyish grin. The first thing that he noticed was my earring that I had put in the day before. "What is this?" I remember him saying as he thumped my ear lobe with his finger. I was a little embarrassed about it, I do not know why. Chaz was a couple years older than I and we were the best of friends. After a little wrestling around and taking some heat from him I told him that I would see him, later. I had no idea that would be the last time I would ever see, or speak to my brother, again. Two days later, he was dead. The life taken in the blink of an eye by an automobile accident. I got a call the next Friday that he had been in an accident and I picked my mother up to take her to the hospital. This was nothing new. He had many accidents. Most because of drinking and driving and this, we thought, was just another car crash, praying that no one else was hurt. That was my biggest fear, that he would injure or kill someone. When we reached the hospital we were told to wait in the ER waiting area. I could see through the doors to the cubicle that my brother was being treated. There was a lot of activity, lots of people in and out of his cubicle. My mom sat in stoned silence. I think she knew. The one thing I was sure of was this would turn out just like all the others. He would be admitted for observation and let go the next day. I tried to reassure my mom that he was okay. I believed that. After about 30 minutes the staff left his cubicle. I was waiting for permission to go see him when a doctor and two nurses came out and asked for the Riley family. I heard the words "We did all that we could do, I am sorry." My mind could not grasp what the doctor was saying. The next few hours were a blur. I had ran my fist through every glass door in the waiting room and ripped chairs that were bolted to the floor out of their moorings. Death had, once again, tore through me as it had before. I had lost my brother, my best friend, and my mind. Why? Why? That is an answer I have yet to learn.     theblogmeister

There has to be a life after this life. There are countless stories of near death experiences. Here is another of many.

   For Laura Geraghty, April 1, 2009, started out just as any other day. It was sunny but cool, she remembers.
Laura Geraghty was shocked 21 times before she came back from cardiac arrest with tales of the afterlife.
The mother of two, also a grandmother, was at her job, driving a school bus for the Newton Public School District in suburban Boston, Massachusetts.
Her passengers, special-needs children, were wheelchair-bound.
Seemingly in good health and in good spirits, Geraghty was finishing up her late-morning run, transporting a student and teacher back to Newton South High School, when she realized she was in trouble.
As she was pulling into the school parking lot, she began having sharp stomach pains. She was able to park her bus, but she kept feeling worse.
The pain "went right up my arm and into my chest, and I said, 'Uh-oh, I'm having a heart attack,' " she said.
The teacher ran from the bus to get help. Newton South's nurse, Gail Kramer, and CPR instructor Michelle Coppola arrived moments later with the school's new automated external defibrillator.
Geraghty, barely conscious, was fading fast. She was weak and having trouble breathing. And then she went into full cardiac arrest.
"Her eyes were wide, and all of a sudden she stopped talking to us," Coppola said. "I grabbed the two pads, stuck them on her, started it up, and I'd say within 20 seconds, she had her first shock."
Coppola and Kramer performed CPR while they waited for paramedics.
At that point, Geraghty says, her body died. She remembers watching the scene unfold -- as if from above.
"I floated right out of my body. My body was here, and I just floated away. I looked back at it once, and it was there."
Geraghty says she saw deceased loved ones, her mother and her ex-husband.
"It was very peaceful and light and beautiful. And I remember like, when you see someone you haven't seen in a while, you want to hug them, and I remember trying to reach out to my ex-husband, and he would not take my hand. And then they floated away."
Next, she says, she was overwhelmed by "massive energy, powerful, very powerful energy."
"When that was happening, there were pictures of my son and my daughter and my granddaughter, and every second, their pictures flashed in my mind, and then I came back."
What Geraghty had was a near-death experience, fairly common in people who go into sudden cardiac arrest.
Geraghty was down for 57 minutes. No blood pressure, no pulse, no oxygen, no blood flow. She was shocked 21 times before she finally came back with tales of the afterlife.
Dr. Kevin Nelson, a neurologist in Lexington, Kentucky, studies near-death experiences and says they're not imagined. The explanation, he says, lies in the brain itself.
"These are real experiences. And they're experiences that happen at a time of medical crisis and danger," Nelson said.
Humans have a lot of reflexes that help keep us alive, part of the "fight or flight" response that arises when we're confronted with danger.
Nelson thinks that near-death experiences are part of the dream mechanism and that the person having the experience is in a REM, or "rapid eye movement," state.
"Part of our 'fight or flight' reflexes to keep us alive includes the switch into the REM state of consciousness," he said.
During REM sleep, there is increased brain activity and visual stimulation. Intense dreaming occurs as a result.
And the bright light so many people claim to see?
"The activation of the visual system caused by REM is causing the bright lights," Nelson said.
And the tunnel people speak of, he says, is lack of blood flow to the eye. "The eye, the retina of the eye, is one of the most exquisitely sensitive tissues to a loss of blood flow. So when blood flow does not reach the eye, vision fails, and darkness ensues from the periphery to the center. And that is very likely causing the tunnel effect."
Nelson is doing studies now to prove that the same effect results from fainting.
"The most common cause of near-death experience in my research group is fainting. Upwards of 100 million Americans have fainted. That means probably tens of millions of Americans have had these unusual experiences."
But Geraghty says this was no dream. "I know I went someplace else. I know I went someplace else other than here."
Dr. Bill O'Callahan, the emergency room doctor who shocked her back to life, agrees. "Cynics out there would say and agnostics would say that's phenomenon that comes from a dying brain. I think that's hogwash. I firmly believe that people experience these events." Cheating Death: Back from the dead
Bob Schriever, co-founder of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association, was refereeing a high school football game seven years ago when he went into cardiac arrest, died and was revived.
He, too, questions the dream explanation. "Why are so many people dreaming the same thing? How can so many people, and there's hundreds of thousands of people who have experienced this, how can we all be dreaming the same thing and describe the exact same thing?"
Schriever says these experiences are so profound that only someone who has gone through them can truly understand.
Seven years later, he is still consumed with his own near-death experience.
"I think about that every morning when I wake up, first thing, during the day, I don't know how many times and every night before I fall asleep. I think about that. People do not understand or appreciate what we go through." Scientist uses poison gas to suspend life
For Geraghty, it's a daily struggle to put the pieces back together again.
"I've been someplace that not everybody can go, and there's not a lot of people you can sit down and have that conversation with," Geraghty said. "My own daughter tells me, 'It's freaky, Mom.' I've literally lost friends over this the minute they hear it." Tweet your own experience and you could win a copy of "Cheating Death"
Geraghty says she became depressed once she left the hospital because her perspective on her entire life changed. She still gets depressed, she says, and is on medication.
"I actually went to my doctor and said to her, 'I think I'm losing my mind. This can't be really happening,' you know, and she said it's OK, it's very hard to understand when you've been through an experience like that."
Geraghty has joined the cardiac arrest group, hoping that connecting with others who understand what she's been through will allow her to come to terms with what happened to her that cool spring day six months ago. And allow her to heal and move on.


Dr. Kevin Nelson tries to explain this phenomena away saying it is the brain reacting to near death itself. My question is why has so many thousands of people have experienced the same thing? My Mother had these experiences in 1969. It tells me simply that there is another dimension that we have. Some are lucky to get a peek and then live to tell about it.    If you have a near death experience and you want to share it please send it to my email.     theblogmeister

We are dying

 From the miracle of birth we start the process of dying. Millions of sperm start the journey to become life. Only a few make it to the fertile egg and the first one to punch through begins the gift of life. The embryo grows and in 9 months the child breaths his first breath of life and a new journey begins. There is no way of knowing how long this journey will last. The one thing we all have in common is that we are all on the same path towards death. The beauty of it all is the fact that not one life will be the same. We will be subjected to different influences and different choices will be made. Some of those choices will shorten our journey while others will make life easier. To quote a well known musician, "There are choices since the day that I was born and there were voices that told me right from wrong and if I'd listened I would not be here today. Living and dying by the choices I made." We do not think about death as we grow. We think that death will not find us until our time on earth has been lived to the fullest. We are not guaranteed life tomorrow, next week or next month. Death's meaning has eluded the greatest minds of generations. Why do innocent children get caught in gunfire of warring gangs? Why do some of the most evil of mankind live long lives? These questions cannot be answered. In my case, the death of a very dear friend by his own hand has troubled me more than my cousin's death of cancer. Both of these deaths have effected me deeply. The death I caused the colonel in 1979 has had a profound affect on my life. I have been tormented by his death and this was his plan. Why has he dominated my sub-conscious for so long? The recent deaths of my family and friends only reinforce the pain that I have been struggling with for over thirty years. Last night I was visited by the colonel, again. His demonic presence fills me with hate. It affects my waking life to the point that I sometimes consider joining him just so I can kick his ass. I know that is not feasible, though. I just want to rid him from my mind and I am trapped in the past and cannot seem to break free. I will not give up.   theblogmeister