My Experience with PTSD and Depression

I know we already have a thread dealing with PTSD and I thought I would make one to share my experience with it. If it offends I apologize beforehand.

I am writing this to summarize and record some of my experiences and feelings dealing with PTSD and depression. When I started my law enforcement I was like any other young officer I guess, wanting to change the world into a better place and had the piss and vinegar to do it. That first year is always an eye opener.

I started my career in a small rural county in Arizona which also happens to be one of the more depressed counties but will always have a special place in my heart. There were all of 14 of us and that included the two investigators, a sergeant, the sheriff and undersheriff. It is also where I witnessed my first homicide. A grandfather shot and killed his son in law,shot his daughter and emptied the revolver at his two grandkids who were swinging on a play set nearby.

I saw Death pointing a 357 revolver at me and I pointing a sig 220(45) at him. I guess he couldn't hear the quake in my voice as I ordered him with all the authority I could muster to put his weapon down. I remember seeing in my peripheral vision and with no conscience thought the hammer on my sig slowly falling back and the world seemed to slow down. I also remember that Death must have seen my conviction and decided he wanted no part and did as I had asked, sparing me the awful burden of having to shoot someone.

I witnessed a 17 almost 18 year old boy, go from a slightly cocky, trying to figure out my place in the world, kid, to pure evil in the course of three days. He got caught with his best friends girlfriend in bed, grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his best friend three times fatally wounding him. When we caught him three days later, I could hardly recognize the boy I had tried to straighten out. That was the second homicide.

I rememberthe third one as well. A husband literally blew his wife's head off with a 12 gauge shotgun as she climbed through the living room window. Had something to do with she didn’t come home when he thought she should have or something. Didn’t really matter.

I had to sit in on a child molestation interview and hear a father describe how he touched and fondled his 18 month old daughter in the hot tub. I can tell you this that it took all my strength and will power along with a very strong chair to keep me from putting eight rounds of 45 in his brain pan. The investigator told me afterwards that you could hear the chair that I was sitting in popping and cracking on the interview tape.

After 3 and1/2 years I got a job with the highway patrol and moved to a different part of the state. Great job and absolutely loved it. Also started see A LOT more dead bodies. A pedestrian walking down the center lane on the freeway getting hit by a semi truck, a rollover with a kid not wearing a seatbelt sliding out the back window and getting his head crushed by the car. A stolen truck out of Albuquerque rollingover and literally smearing the passenger all over the highway. I think some of the worst ones involved kids. I responded to a head on collision and when I arrived saw an eight year old boy had been thrown through the front window because he was too small for the seatbelt. His dad had gone left of center and hit a truck. Both myself and one of the firefighters checked him several times during the course of the investigation trying/hoping that it wasn’t true. Come to find out I knew the grandparents of the family very well. I was very gratefully that it was on my Friday so I had a couple of days to deal with that.

There was about four years in a row that I was investigating between 25 and 30 fatalities along with assisting other officers with theirs. Also responded to a more than a few suicides. Got a call about a car on the bridge just above Sedona with no one around. Arrive and the car door is open. Look over the side and see someone down on the creek bed. About a 300-400 foot drop. A young 18 year old man gets upset the night of prom at a Phoenix high school. Works at Wal-Mart so buys 30-06 rifle decides to drive up north above Stoneman lake turn off walks to a nice area about 25yards off the freeway puts the barrel in his mouth and touches a round off. Neither one very pretty.

To be honest these things add up and you don’t know how much until something happens to you. I was on patrol , June 30,2010 with almost an hour left on my shift. I was driving by the hospital in Cottonwood. I noticed several cars in the opposite lane including a tan Cadillac. I see the Cadillac enter the painted median and turn his left turn signal on. As I got closer I checked the mirrors seeing a truck in the lane to my right, and loo kback up the roadway knowing my speed is 45 mph or 66 fps as taught in some ofmy accident reconstruction classes. I could see that the Cadillac was being driven by a man with TMB( too many birthdays, duh). I get within 40-50 feet of the caddy and he turns left right in front of me. OH SHIT! Immediate evasive maneuver to the left or I'm going to center punch this guy and probably going to kill him,going to make, going to make it! shit, not going to make it and I felt immediately calm since I had no control over what was going to happen next. Caught the right rear quarter panel just after the tire and the right front of my car. Airbags deploy and I immediately felt pain in the left hand/wrist area. I also can see where I'm going cause the hood popped up. Shit! I was headed into the opposite lanes of traffic. I can barely see the yellow lines indicating the painted median and come to a stop. Reach over with my right hand and get the windows down. Very disoriented and don’t know where I'm at. Get on the radio and get some help coming. SHIT wrist hurts like a%@$#. Vaguely remember someone at the window asking if I was alright and saying yes, go check on the other guy. Next thing that I remember is the ambulance crew on scene. Knew them all so one comes over and grabs my left wrist asking if I'm all right! Hell no! I hurt my wrist! I know, I know,she was just being concerned, and I really appreciated it but damn that hurt. Finally get out of the car and still a little disoriented. Was told/commanded to get on the backboard. Take the short ride tothe hospital and get checked out. Nothing broken( at least unknown at the time) so get released and go home.

I go to the hospital to get check out again since my wrist is still hurting and starting to swell and get sent to a specialist. Come to find out not very many hand and wrist specialists around. Well long story short I ended up tearing a couple of tendons and stretching a bunch of tendons that connect all the little bones in the wrist.

After a year of two surgeries, last one almost five hours and a 7 inch titanium plate withseven screws, and it still not getting better and still in pain, the chief along with my doctor decide that I can no longer continue to be a policeofficer. This is the straw that broke the camel's back. I loved my job, and I was good at it. I would like to think I was one of the good ones. I tried to treat everyone with respect until they decided otherwise and if you were special and needed extra attention you got that too.

I didn’t think getting medically retired would be that big of a deal, but when I was in the chief's office on June 30 ,2011 and got told that my 16 and 1/2 year service was done, I broke down and cried like a baby. Now given that I am 6ft 2in tall and was 220 pounds having fought with bank robbers( literally) , stood toe to toe with the hells angels and peckerwoods( skin heads) you would think I wouldn’tbe bothered by that. I was struck to the very center of my being. I just could not handle it. I had been mentally prepared to take care of almost any situation but this one. It had never even entered my mind that I would be medically retired. I had been hurt before but I always healed up and would be back to work in no time.

That’s when the depression and ptsd hit and they hit hard. I would go for weeks at time just laying in bed staring at the ceiling going over the accident over and over and over again. Then like dominos it would bring up the lastfatal accident /dead body and the next and the next. To be honest I don’t remember the last half of2011 and all of 2012. Like I said earlier I was struck to the core. I have a very hard time dealing with crowds and people in general. I worry about protecting my family and myself, I have a hard time controlling my emotions, they are just all over theplace. Crying when I should be laughing and getting extremely angry Like when someone doesn’t answer the phone. Stressing out over going to the store.

I am extremely grateful that I don’t drink. I have seen what people can do while drunk and am happy that I made that decisiona long time ago and stuck to it. Not really sure I would be here now if I did. Not that I have ever contemplated suicide but while drinking who know what kinds of decisions might be made.

I am also extremely grateful to my very understanding wife. She is the one that has held it together along with running a family of six. I can honestly say that I could not do it without her and that my gratitude towards her is endless. I love her very much!

So now I take it day by day, try to keep my mind busy because it's really easy to slip down memory lane. I don’t have any answers, hell probably don’t have most of thequestions either. I just thought I would relate my experiences and thoughts.

 

It's a shit sandwich for sure man, you never get over it. Just let the past be the past and keep on keepin' on. It will destroy you if you let it. Don't let it.

 

Thanks for sharing your story, i am in LE too and reading others experiences is one way to deal with stuff.
I remember arriving at a homicide scenes, fatal accidents, suicides etc and taking it all in and thinking to myself how this will effect me years later.

 

Wow thanks for sharing your pain and grief. It is better to talk it out. I remember being on deployments oversea during the holiday season and going through a few bouts of depression. What really save my sanity was I had a lot of good Marines supporting me and the Navy chaplain to talk to no matter the time of day.

 

Yes it is and im trying. that's one reason for posting it.

Thanks, not really sure if im in a place right now to volunteer but will keep it in mind.

Well I think if I hadn't been hurt and disabled I would've been a lot better off. I was never mentally prepared for this possibility.

Thanks for your service and im trying...

 

Wow Rob ... Don't know how I missed this until now. My thoughts are with you ... One day at a time brother.

 

Thank you for sharing your story and your years of service. I'm sure that collecting all of those thoughts and writing all of that down for us to read has helped you, even if it's just a little. I think you're in a very delicate place, but that you're at a point where there is still hope for you to get better, and I hope you feel the same way.

Kudos to you for not drinking, and please try to maintain that. You are absolute right in that alcohol will mess things up, for sure.

Continue to share your story, whether it is on here, with a therapist, or with your loving wife. The idea of volunteering is also a good idea. It will help fulfill your purpose in life and will give you an avenue to continue sharing your story. I used to work at a hospital where I'd listen to a war vet tell his stories every week he came in. It was great to hear the stories and I'm sure it helped him heal too.

I have an MS in Counseling, and in grad school I remember very successful stories of my colleagues working with clients dealing with PTSD. To take it head on and attempt to help yourself is a lot of work, but very necessary in order for you to get better. I hope you continue your journey of getting better.

 

X3 Rob... Don't know how I missed this since I posted my story. I understand where you've been and that road is indeed dark. Unfortunately I "did" drink and self medicate. Like you I missed a few years that I will never get back. If you read my thread then you already know the rest of the story.

One day at a time brother. That's the key for me. You can not change the past but you can change the future. I made plenty of mistakes along the way and handled things poorly. It sounds like you handled them in a much more productive manner. It takes a true man to do what you did.

Any time you feel the need to talk send me a PM or hell... we'll talk while killing shit in Destiny.

I had no idea but I'm glad you chose to tell your story.

 

You are my hero, Rob. It does seem it but you are not alone...ever.

 

Today is my baby brother's birthday, and he is seriously screwed up. He was a first responder. He has choices to make, but probably is not strong enough to make them.

For me, 25 years and 9 months out. 15 years of counseling, degrees in psych and philosophy, no drinking and no drugs. I still screwed things up. I was one angry sob.

There are 3 years I do not remember much of, but today I am probably in better shape than I have ever been in. It's a bitch, but it is doable.

 

Keeping you in my thoughts Rob. I can't relate to your experiences or emotions in handling them, but I hope you know you have a lot of guys willing to hold you up and support you during the really bad times.

 

Thats a hell of a story Rob. Keep your head up.

 

That was a good read. I'll keep you in my prayers.

 

Rob,

Two important things to remember. First, no matter who begs to differ, PTSD is not a mental illness. Second, PTSD is more akin to a sports injury than mental illness.

Illnesses are things like cancer, heart disease etc. A person with PTSD played, worked or did something that caused them to suffer an injury. It could be something as simple as buying a plane ticket and being the only survivor after the plane crashed.

But this distinction is important. It happened to you. It did not occur from a genetic defect, exposure to toxins, or poor eating habits.

If you blow out a knee playing football, you learn to deal with it or you let it define your life. Same thing, you got hurt and you either learn to deal with it or it owns you.

Another thing, if you do not have a strong ethical or moral foundation, most likely you are immune to PTSD. The logical conclusion from this is that the good get hurt.

There are two reasons for this. One, PTSD is an adaptive survival response that is no longer socially acceptable and to some degree physically all are candidates for the injury. Two however, is that one must have some strong belief system that is ruptured before one acquires PTSD. This makes the sociopaths pretty much immune.

 

Thank you all for the kind words. I do try to be positive everyday and if not everyday then hour by hour. The wife and kids help too even though they don't know it. I really try and keep them in mind when things are really bad. thanks again for all the kind words it means a lot.