The Tarnished Badge

[BLHutch]

I have a lot of anger over how my life has turned out. I spent 16 years in public safety, first as a firefighter, then as a police officer. I spent the last few years of my law enforcement career as a detective who specialized in arson cases. Then out of nowhere, or at least that is what it seemed like, I developed a serious back condition that caused me to leave that line of work permanently. Now I live in constant pain which varies in intensity from day to day, but is an ever present companion in my life. As is the PTSD. Looking back on my career, I can honestly say that I've had it for a long time now that I can recognize the symptoms. It got really bad in the month or so after I left the job for good. I am angry about what happened to me. I am angry about having to live in physical pain from my back. I am angry at having to live with the mental pain of PTSD. When people look at me, they think I am crazy since I have some kind of disorder. I don't have a disorder. The world does. My personality is perfectly normal considering the shit I have seen in my career. Dealing with everyone else's problems is what made me this way. But now people just say that I have the problem.

I am going to try and get some of this out of my head and onto paper (or internet). I don't know if it will help me or not. But I am willing to take a chance. A lot of what I have seen is bloody, obscene, and vile. Do not read any further if that is something that might cause you to go through your own episode. I would not wish PTSD on my worst enemy.

There is a country song that I can't remember the name of. (Another lovely side effect of PTSD) The character in the song is a police officer and he makes a statement that "The badge I wore had lost all of its shine." I remember the day that happened to me.

 

[BLHutch]

It was a Monday afternoon. My partner and I had just finished interviewing a witness to a case that we were investigating. We got back in the car and the dispatcher came over the radio and sent two patrol units to a report of a gunshot from a residence. I immediately recognized the address. It belonged to a former police officer. Two months ago, I had attended his retirement party. His house was three blocks away from where we were when the call came in, so we drove over there. Normally we didn't respond to calls for patrol but if it was serious and we were close then we would.

We got there before anyone else and when we got out of the car, the neighbor came running over and told us that she had heard what sounded like a single gunshot from inside the residence. We drew our guns and went to the front door. It was unlocked. I went in first. Though I know we did, I don't really remember checking the house. All I can remember now is standing in the garage and looking at him. He had sat down in a chair in the middle of his empty garage before placing a 12 gauge shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. There was blood and bits of hair and skull fragments everywhere. The garage smelled of blood and gunpowder.

As I stood over the body, I felt something dripping on the back of my neck. I put my hand there to see what it was. When I looked at my hand I saw blood and bits of brain tissue. I looked up and saw it dripping down from the ceiling. To this day, I hate the sensation of anything wet hitting the back of my neck.

Why? Why did my partner and I take this call? We didn't have to. It was a patrol call. Why did he decide to kill himself two months after he retired? He's not alone. Police suicides are a dirty little secret in law enforcement. A police officer is 3 times more likely to shoot himself than he is to be shot by someone else, but we don't like to talk about that.

As I am sitting here typing this, I can still see the scene in my mind. I can still smell the blood. I can still feel it hitting the back of my neck I just wish that my mind could forget what my eyes have seen.

 

[Mercy]

Your post is very moving. You are right. Police suicides isn't something we, on the outside. hear about. That's too bad. If appropriate help were manditory for the 1st 6 months afer retirement or after a life threatening incident, there could be much less PTSD and its symptoms. The solid blue line, out of understanding and compation, needs to srop seeing a suicide as being shameful by a colleague and shun his ot her memory and achievements.

Thank you for posting here. There is alot of support from a lot people.

 

[BLHutch]

Sundays are always hard for me now. Every morning I wake up remembering what happened on a Sunday morning in 2001. I was a firefighter/emt at the time. My department required us to rotate assignments between the ambulance, engine, and ladder. (Four months on each.) I was almost done with an ambulance rotation and looking forward to getting back on an engine company. I reported to work at 0600 hours, thirty minutes before the actual shift change time. We went through the pre-shift briefing and then spent some time washing the ambulance and fire trucks. It was shaping up to be a nice calm Sunday morning. We were sitting around the table in the kitchen eating breakfast and watching TV when the alarm sounded.

My partner and I jumped in the ambulance and headed towards the location of the call. The dispatcher told us it was a traffic accident with possible entrapment. The engine responded right behind us. We drove the mile or so to the scene of the accident which was right in front of a fast food restaurant. I remember walking up to the car. I could hear a child screaming from the inside of one of the cars. The driver of the second car just sat on the curb with a dazed look on his face. But the other car with the child was a mess. It had been struck broadside on the driver's side of the car. The impact pushed it into a telephone pole which it hit on the passenger side. When I looked in the car I saw that the driver, a young woman maybe in her late 20s, was dead. Obvious broken neck. Blood everywhere. She had been cut up pretty bad from the flying glass. An little blonde girl, maybe 18 months old, sat in a car seat in the back passenger side of the car, covered in blood. She screamed incessantly.

We couldn't get the doors open due to the damage and so we had to cut her out with the rescue tools. (Some people may call these the "Jaws of Life".) Anyway, I took a blue tarp off the fire truck and crawled, as best I could, in through the window and laid over the child. I used the tarp to protect us from the sparks as the guys worked on getting her out. I tried everything to stop the screaming. I talked to her. Sang to her. Finally she stopped. When we got her out of the car and checked her out, she was okay other than cuts and bruises. Most of the blood on her belonged to her mother. It is a miracle that the child survived. My son was around the same age at the time and that is why I think this one shook me up so bad.

We transported the child to the hospital and went back to the station. To make matters worse, we had a "public relations event" scheduled for a few hours later at a Walgreens across the street from the accident scene. We asked to be taken off the assignment given the fact that we had just worked a fatality there, but the bosses refused. My partner and I had to spend two freaking hours sitting there outside the store checking blood pressure on people right across from where we had just seen a bad accident. This was before things such as "Critical Incident Stress Debriefings" were commonplace.

Every Sunday morning I wake up thinking about the accident. The child's screams still echo deep in the recess of my mind and I can't get it to stop. A mother made a decision that morning to stop by a fast food restaurant and that decision took her life.

 

[BLHutch]

Thank you, Mercy.

 

[BLHutch]

In a few hours I'll face three classes of 30+ college students. I'll be fueled with caffeine and nicotine as I normally am. I don't have much of an appetite for food anymore. Last night I got about three hours of sleep, which is the norm for me. The nightmares come for me at night and I try to avoid them by just staying awake. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't.

Today we start World War 1. I really enjoy teaching about it, but it is very hard for me to talk about the realities of trench warfare and the level of death and destruction that the war brought to the world whenever I spent a career seeing more than my share of death. I've seen what a bullet fired up close can do to a human body. I've seen mangled and broken bodies. And that wasn't in a war, that was on the streets of the United States. I've seen the depths of depravity and what some humans are capable of doing to other humans, even children.

On the plus side, I do get to talk about what they called "shell shock" back then and I explain the process by which shell shock came to be known as PTSD. I have to admit that I do use my position as a professor to call for more awareness of the issue. Maybe some good can come out of that. Who knows. Some days I feel like I am trying to swim upstream.

 

[Mercy]

I developed a serious back condition that caused me to leave that line of work permanently. Now I live in constant pain which varies in intensity from day to day, but is an ever present companion in my life.

About severe longterm back pain, I have a friend who has arachnoiditis(sp?) It means he has a tangle of spinal nerves outside the spinal column from an injury which is continuing up his spine. He has a subcutanious metered morphine pump that goes directly into his spinal column. It doesn't cure or take away all the pain but it does make it more bearable.

The nightmares come for me at night and I try to avoid them by just staying awake. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn't.

There is an older blood pressure medicine called prazosin which isn't much good for blood pressure control. Many people with PTSD find that prazosin prevents nightmares. It may work for you. It does for me too.

Congratulations on teaching people more about PTSD. For college students, recognizing the symptoms of PTSD is important at this stage of their lives. Friends will go to war and come back different. It is great that you can give them information on what may go on...heavy drinking, being verbally mean..I mean 'who cares what's for dinner so quit asking me.' It was the question too far. It asks for normalcy when there never will be any again.

If you think this is appropriate, please include Human Trafficking in your classes. I was trafficked on and off for the first ten to twelve years of my life. I have serious PTSD, flashbacks, Suicidal Ideation, huge startle response, Periferal vision hypervigilance, anxiety, panic attacks and other issues. Ptsd doesn't necessarily begin in adulthood as I'm sure you have seen in the children you have saved.

 

[BLHutch]

Actually Mercy, you will be happy to know that I do include that! I approach it from a historical context but I do make the modern day parallels as well. We talk about the various ways that it has happened in our history, but yes, it is a part of my class. (My students probably get more than they bargain for but it is good for them to be aware of the broader issues out there in the world.)

 

[BLHutch]

So today I was talking about the assassination of Rasputin in Russia during the First World War. I explained to my students that there were a lot of theories regarding the particulars of his death, but it is generally believed that he was shot among other things. I had a student who raised his hand and asked "Have you ever seen anyone get shot?"

Yes, I have. And I'm seeing it again now thanks to you, Mr. Student. I know it isn't the student's fault. I made a statement. They asked a question. It happens. Since they know of my background as a cop, they often as me questions along this vein but never one quite so graphic. They often beg me to tell them a gory story, but I always politely decline and say that those images need to stay in my head and not theirs.

I can't get that image out of my mind now. The rest of the class period passed by in a blur. But I can't get the image of the impact of the bullet and the body dropping out of my head. Eventually it will move on and be replaced by another image. I know that. But damn, I wasn't expecting a godawful trigger question to pop up right in the middle of class.

It isn't the student's fault and I am not upset with him in the least, of course. I am more upset with the fact that when it happened, I couldn't shake the feeling that surrounded me and took over my senses for a little while

 

[BLHutch]

I just don't know how much longer I can do it. Can't sleep. Can't eat. So freaking scared of having a flashback while standing in front of a class. I stumble over my words sometimes. My mind wanders while I am lecturing. Plus, the college is cutting back the number of classes that we adjuncts are allowed to teach. At this point, I could probably make as much money on disability (which I could probably qualify for based on my back condition) as I do teaching. What the hell is wrong with me?

9 months ago I was a detective making good money (better with overtime!). Now, I'm struggling to make ends meet. I have Valentine's Day, my wife's birthday, and my anniversary all happening within the next 15 days. I can't afford to get my wife anything. She means the world to me. I literally would be dead without her. I could not survive the PTSD and the back problems without her help. This isn't fair to her. She didn't sign up for any of this. She deserves so much more than I can give her.

Because of my back, I can't just get another job. Plus, I love teaching. But I'll never get a permanent position at my college. I am one of the highest rated instructors in the entire college district, but some of the full time faculty consider that to be a threat to their position. Plus, they don't want someone with my background. I'm spinning my wheels with nothing to show for it and no prospects.

Having degenerative disc disease is bad enough and is a curse. Having PTSD along with it is almost unbearable. I once believed that God wouldn't give us any more than we can handle, but I no longer think that way. He gave me more than I can handle. It isn't fair, but neither is life.

 

[Mercy]

Hmmmm.m.m.m Cheap loving gestures. Do you have snow? Stamp out two hearts entwined? Make an angel in the snow and tell her she is your angel. No snow? then make hearts out of twigs laid on the ground. Have wrapping paper, red? Cut out hearts and hide them all over the house, under her pillow, put one in the coffee can, put one in her underwear drawer, one or two in her purse. You can write on the back of those hearts whatever you like. Things don't convey love, the effort to find them does. If you have a couple of dollars, go to the grocery store and buy paper doilies, cut them in hearts and maybe color the doilies hide those too.They are funny stuck to the bar of soap in the shower. Cook dinner and do the dishes if your pain allows. It doesn't matter what you can cook, maybe, try scrambled eggs and toast on one slip of paper and dishes on a separate slip so you won't have to stand for too long. Draw a big heart on your bare tummy with her lipstick on Valentine's night.

I can't afford to get my wife anything. She means the world to me. I literally would be dead without her. I could not survive the PTSD and the back problems without her help. This isn't fair to her. She didn't sign up for any of this. She deserves so much more than I can give her

How about going to Burger King and picking up a paper crown for her. She is the crowning glory to you for all she does, Do you think you could make a cake and frost it. Friends, family and neighbors can help you with that. The frost the cake and squeeze out an icing color from the grocery store and make two rings entwined for your anniversary. My favorite gift was a booklet made by cutting paper into strips and stapling one end together. I got coupons for hugs, one for a song ( my H doesn't have a voice, why not?) One for folding laundry, two for dusting one room of her choice. one for chopping onions.You can sit at a table to cut veggies. I'll bet you can find more. Do you have pictures of your wedding? Set the table with them.

I hope I don't sound bossy, just trying to help in the idea department which is hard to get to with PTSD. You are not useless!!!!!

 

[BLHutch]

No Mercy, you don't sound bossy at all and I really do appreciate your input. It is funny that you mentioned Burger King. Please don't judge me for what I am about to say, but I took my wife to Dairy Queen on our first date. What I did do tonight was I stopped and got her a Valentine's Day Card and when she falls asleep I am going to sneak out and put it in the front seat of her car so that she will find it when she leaves for work in the morning. (I will still be asleep.....I hope.)

And no snow here it Texas. At least not this year. We got some ice a couple of weeks ago though. I can sing, or at least I use to be able to sing quite well. But I've been fighting chronic laryngitis so that is off the table for now. You know, I actually had a class convince me to sing for them. (That happens sometimes when you tell them something in passing and think that they won't remember it.) Those kids will probably not remember anything about history, but I know that they will remember Professor Hutch singing "The Fields of Athenry" to them.

My back issues are somewhat different. I can stand up and walk around with no major pain. The one thing that I cannot do is sit. At least not for very long. It causes my left leg to go numb from the knee down and then I'll also get burning pain mixed in with that sometimes too. The main reason that I am okay teaching is that I can stand up pretty much all day. At least for now. That may change in the future, but right now I am having more good days than bad and so I'll take that. It hasn't always been that easy.

Thank you again, Mercy. (And trust me, I'm married to a redhead so I have become numb to bossiness.)