It is another horrible triggered anniversary time for me. I would say that it was just one date, but it is not this whole time from about September until about April, ok, yea, it's a long time. But there were so many things that happened one after another and so I begin to spiral around this time. It's even worse thanks to the VA.
It was 2007 or 2008 and this guy had broken into our house, into my daughter's room she was about 13 and he stated to the cops that he had just "fallen though the screen" into her room. I had my car window smashed in and my purse taken out while I was just running into the church for a second. I did not have it even on the seat, it was buried in the back. So I was not doing well and told this to my VA social worker. Because of the clinic that I was near they did not have a pharmacy so it would be seven days for a new prescription, and if that did not work then it would be another seven days at the least to get another. I was anxious and not functioning really at all. So my social worker's idea is to go to the Waco VA hospital and be there for a day or two to see what med combination will work.
I get there and it seems ok. They know that I am just there to have a medication adjustment. So my husband leaves while I am taken up to the floor to be checked into the ward. I get there and I am told that I have to strip, that I need to take everything off except my underwear and a see-through gown is waiting for me. After I put it on and about froze I asked for another. The next one they gave me had a blood stain on it on the chest when you closed it. So there was a lady who gave me the gown, but she is gone and this guy comes in and I am escorted to a locked down mental ward...yes, you are reading this correctly. Not only is this a lock down unit, there are no women in there, except me. There are no other women patients, there are no women staff! I am locked up with about four other patients. My room cannot be locked and neither can my bathroom. The view of the staff does not include the bathroom, even on the monitors so if I was attacked in there I would have to just defend myself.
As I sat in the middle of the ward not wanting to move, in comes a police officer who had another patient, this patient is a huge male, with chains from his handcuffs to his ankle cuffs, that go through the metal loops on his leather belt. He is not happy about being there and tells them all when he is let out of his cuffs he's going to kill someone. So what do they do? The let him out of his cuffs and leave the ward.
I quickly went over to the closed in staff area and got the attention of one of the guys and asked if I could use the phone. I called my husband who was on his way home and told him to turn around and get me the heck out of there. I did not say it loud and I was more cryptic because I did not want anyone to know what I was up to at the time. I had just described the all male unit and there was another patient that had just arrived in cuffs and was let go. I smiled at the staff and handed back the phone, went back to the table and continued to write in my journal to keep my mind off what was happening to me. I was disassociating, I blocked where I was, I was not mentally there and I did not respond to my surroundings. My husband arrived and on his way into the building he came across a Chaplin, who he befriended and told him that he needed to get his wife out of there, now. So with him working on the other side and me on the inside and in an interview where I was telling them that I felt much better and that I think my meds had not kicked in when I arrived. I talked long enough that a phone call came and it was the Chaplin and I was finally released a few hours later.
As I got into the car I lost it, I sobbed uncontrollably and just shook. This was the VA's help to a person who was having a medication adjustment for anxiety because of her PTSD from MILITARY SEXUAL TRAUMA!!!! That was what was on my file. That was what I had told the intake person. That I was there to adjust meds from being triggered from my PTSD due to MST. So now when I get to the time where I cannot remember things, cannot concentrate, it is back to the time when I was in the middle of it in the military. I freak out. I do not want to ask for help because help was just another trauma added to what I have already been through thanks to the military.
This is what I go through. I do not ever get to forget what happened, I get reminded ever time I go into the VA clinic. I get reminded every time they ask if I was sexually assaulted and then check it on the check list they ask, year after year after year. I have medical problems which when I am discussing them I have to think back to Saudi back to the last assault that happened to me, back to the horrific torture and the murder of my unborn child, all on purpose, all caused by "my brother in arms." I get exams to figure out what is wrong with me (Gulf War syndrome) and then the questions come. Every time I go in for a "women's clinic" annual, or see someone differently I am asked how many times I have been pregnant, and how many of those were "live births"? Many women have had miscarriages and that is a trauma all it's own. Mine was not spontaneous it was forced by my superior and commander.
When I became pregnant, my commander would not accept the urine test, I was made to have 5, one of them with someone standing over me while I peed, like a drug test. He disregarded my physical wavier that is Air Force Regulations when someone is pregnant. I was posted out where the entire area was surrounded by permanent cross bones and skull signs with writing in Arabic (the Saudi government had put them up long before the Air Force decided it was a good idea to put our bomb dump, and for SP's to be posted there). I was attacked, I was forced to work and when I threw up and was coughing up blood I was told that if I went to the hospital that it would just delay me getting out of the country. I was still in the country 13 days after my squadron had been told that I needed to be sent back to the states.
When I went into the tent hospital because of bleeding, I was visited by my supervisor who thought at the time I had had a miscarriage who stated that he was glad he "killed the bastard." While I was on complete bed rest and fighting for the life of my unborn child my commander came in and gave me paperwork for nonjudicial punishment. And when I stated that I was on complete bed rest, the only phone in the hospital was all the way across the tent hospital and that ADC was in Rihad, I was told that was my problem. My first sergeant actually had the gall when he came in to announce that my commander was coming in, that because of my condition I would not be required to stand at attention by my cot, but that I instead would have to sit at attention until I was given permission to be at ease.
By the way, my commander thought it so necessary to make sure that I was given the paperwork for nonjudicial punishment, and the "crime" was so bad, that it was the 15th of January 1991, the day the President had given as a final date. The day that the whole place went into lock down ready for war mode. He took the time away from presumptive war to give me the paperwork. So what was this crime that I was accused of? Not watering and cleaning my dogs side of the kennel on or about 11 January 1991 (I was admitted into the hospital the early morning of 11 January 1991!). Yea, and yes, even though I had witnesses that one was with me when I did it, and the other happened to be a guard who was by the gate and also gave a written statement, and I gave about a dozen names of others who could account for all the days from the time that my dog moved into that kennel, none of them were called in and asked any questions. Even though the commander, Lt Col Sandy Edge put in his statement of my rebuttal to the Article 15, that he had personally called in every witness and talked with them. He lied. He lied on a official document and I had two of my witnesses write up notarized statements saying that they were never talked to from anyone about me watering or cleaning my dogs side of the kennel. He got away with lying and he got away with murder! The Air Force discharged me, he got to retire with full benefits and move into other supervisory positions of grandor. This man, this perpetrator who when i first arrived stated in a guard mount briefing that all women and reservists needed to stay in the states where they belonged. This jerk who was so arrogant that he demanded that he be saluted when our compound sat with buildings which were under construction, full sight of the entire compound, while he wore shinny rank on his desert cammies, and his shinny rank targeted right on his head.
Of course I also that when I was released from the hospital and they had murdered my unborn child, I stated that I did not want to carry a weapon. I was not afraid that I would kill them, I was afraid that I would shoot someone who was innocent. I was very homosidal and he (because I said that I wasn't going to carry a weapon) ordered me to carry one! But the look on my face after he said that, he changed his mind about me being armed. The one intelligent decision that he made. But I would come in and report to him for the decision on the nonjudical punishment on my only day of convelesent leave. When I did, I gave a little speach and then demanded a court-martial. So he called in the first sergeant, they talked and the first sergent took me to the JAG office where he and the JAG officer kept me there and said that I was not going to leave until I signed for the Article 15 and not court martial. I was sick, I was dizzy, I was not able to make any of those decisions at the time. I had to use the restroom to throw up (I should have just threw up on the JAG's desk). But was told once I signed that I would be able to use the restroom, but not until. I was more or less ordered to sign, I did, went to the rest room and threw-up and about passed out. I should have been in bed. I should have been recoperating from all the blood loss, and the blood that I was still continually loosing. But no, I had to be there. JAG lied to me and stated that if I truely did not do what was charged that I could appeal it and that a third party would look it over, and if I did not do it then that third party would overturn the Article 15.
Yea I was more than a little upset when i rebutted the Article 15 and the letter that the JAG wrote that went along with it was that the Article 15 was not a consideration, that when a commander decides that the offence is committed that all that can be appealed is the punishment. All this I told IG when I got back to my base, state side and I was told that those were Social Action concerns.
So when I get to this point that I cannot not seem to not think about it and my body begins to feel as though I am there, and I begin to have the symptoms again, I cannot even go for help at the VA, I am not about to get put into another lock down facility with a bunch of men while I have only on my underware and a see-through gown, I am left to myself. Left to deal with the crying spells, the intrusive thoughts, all of it.
That is what it is like inside MST.
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