The kids let out of school on Friday and don’t go back until NEXT Monday. They have the entire week off for Spring Break. We don’t have any major plans, a few day trips.
What are your plans for this week?
“Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge…” You know the rest!
“Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”
Many of you will recognize that as the epic description that “Grandpa” gives before reading “The Princess Bride” to his sick Grandson. As one of the most quotable movies of all time, it is a fine film that many have thoroughly enjoyed for several decades now.
“As you wish”
Unfortunately, and far less enjoyably, that description also applies to what I experience almost every night when I close my eyes. My particular experience with PTSD has less to do with my waking hours than it does with my non-waking ones. There are some manifestations that take place when I’m up and about, but the worst ones are the ones that play out across my synapses while I sleep. I might talk about the causes of my PTSD at a later time, but I’m not up for that right now. Suffice it to say that I have it.
It is a fact of human biology that we MUST sleep. And those moments are pure torture for me. As soon as I close my eyes I’m almost always whisked away and placed in some form of danger. I’m being held captive somewhere, I’m being tortured, I’m watching people operate on me while I’m ‘awake’, I’m in a house surrounded by people trying to get in to kill me, etc. Those dreams are pretty bad. I toss and turn while asleep (also not good with my back), wake in sweaty panics, and just find no rest.
But those aren’t the worst ones. Part of my PTSD comes from an individual who made some very descriptive threats against my family. The nightmares where those are played out, or where my brain expands on them, are the worst. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my wife raped, or a child killed, or been frantically searching for someone who has been taken, have tried to escape some potential tormentor who is giving chase, or in some other horrendous way watched the mutilation, violation, torture, or deaths of a family member at the hands of some villain (who I occasionally know) that I was unable to stop. Those nights are the absolute worst, and they come far too often.
I wish there were some better treatment for this. Since getting here in SLC sometime in November I’ve been regularly seeing someone at the VA. Supposedly over time things might calm down or stop. It’s been 8 years since I left the Army though, so I’m not holding my breath. Other vets have told me that they find some of the more intense therapies very useful, but they usually entail going over the very raw experiences and reliving/retelling them, and I just don’t feel like I’m up to doing that. Perhaps with time.
For now the best the VA has to offer is medication. At first they gave me something to relieve my complaint that I couldn’t sleep (I guess I failed to leave out that the nightmares were the reason for that) and so I received a medication that was very good at helping me stay asleep. But it made it impossible to wake from the nightmares, so that medication was a serious no-go all by itself.
So they added another one to help with the nightmares… except that they don’t have one that affects the actual nightmares. They give me a blood-pressure medication so that I “will still have the nightmares, but your blood pressure won’t go up so you won’t care about the nightmare.” So I still have the experiences every night, but the drug tries to take the terror out of it. How well would your psyche handle that?
My psyche isn’t exactly in pristine condition. Julie dragged me from the house to a choir/band concert at Caitlin’s middle school (same one Julie attended) a few weeks ago. We sat in the very back (so I wasn’t surrounded by people) and I went through my regular (though probably not normal) habit of marking exit doors, high traffic areas, persons of note, etc. I tried to act nonchalant with Julie and asked her if there was an exit at the end of one corridor and then questioning, “I must be turned around, how would I get from that door back to the car?” I knew where I was, but wanted her to play out the escape path in her mind. I’m sure she knew I was just being psychotic again. :/
But if that wasn’t psychotic enough, as I was scanning the crowd and finding exits I suddenly found myself mentally crawling between seats involved in a gunfight with a group of masked attackers. While everyone else was shuffling in and finding a seat, I was busy returning fire as I tried to push civilians toward some cover, apply pressure to an abdominal wound I took, make my way toward where I thought Caitlin might be on stage, and try to kill some mythical masked SOB with an AK-47.
Of course in real life I was sitting stiffly and starting to hyperventilate about the fact that I was in fact unarmed because I was in a school. Julie could tell and just helped me breathe. She takes good care of me like that. My brain follows that track so frequently while I’m asleep that it easily falls into that pattern when I’m awake sometimes too.
So while the need for sleep is a biological fact of humanity, it is a psychological terror for me that bleeds into my life at inopportune times. It might sound like a simple phrase, but when I add to our family prayer, “please help us all sleep well” you can understand how selfish a request that is. I plead for it every night.
I wish upon the rest of you sweet dreams as well.
Combat Bill Paying – Live Footage!!
I’ve been wanting to be able to add more content here that wasn’t just text. So I downloaded a free video editing software (Microsoft Movie Maker) and picked the first video I could find on my computer to see how it works.
The video was recorded by my IPhone 4S about 2 months ago. I didn’t know ahead of time what I wanted to do with it, but after about 15 minutes of playing around this is what I ended up with. (Keep in mind I’ve never done this)
I know it is low quality, but I had fun just learning what the basic controls were for video editing. Of course I didn’t use multiple videos or pics, didn’t edit sound at all (or add any), so I’m sure I can’t even say I learned “the basics”. But it was interesting none the less.
If you’d like to give me some advice, I would love to hear it. It can be about software to use, cameras to think about obtaining, sources of knowledge I should look up, or whatever.
Hope you enjoyed the clip!
The Waiting Place
Nobody hears much from me. I don’t know what is happening, what will happen, when things will happen … So, I keep my mouth closed. I want a sure foundation from which to make my choices and plan my future. Lacking that, I have found myself in this “waiting place” for far too long.
Dr. Seuss describes my situation best as I sit in “a most useless place. The Waiting Place …”
“…for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting. No! That’s not for you! Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying.” (Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go)
And we will escape. In fact, in many ways we have escaped. We are living, we are enjoying. We are growing and learning and loving. I have learned to enjoy the moment. Enjoy what I have now. Yes, I am still frustrated by the lack of planning and preparing I can do from here, but I refuse to allow that frustration strip me of my happiness. When the last fire occurred and I was still trying to process what it meant, someone extended their condolences and used the phrase that my life was ruined. But even in that moment I was able to stop them. This is not my life. It is merely a moment in my life. And yes, it is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. It will be hard to start over again. But this is such a small moment in the lives of me and my family (not to mention the eternal perspective).
Elder Dallin H Oaks gave a devotional address at BYU recently. He stated, “The Future is always clouded with uncertainties … While some abandon progress, you of faith should hope on and press on with your education, your lives, and your families.” And I feel like I am doing just that. I try to focus on the blessings we have here. I am trying to utilize the opportunities available to us while we are here.
The children love being here near family. Grandma and Grandpa have adjusted to our noise level and we love being near each other. Each child has a their own sleepover with the other set of grandparents. We have cousins over at least 4 times a week highlighted with sleepovers and on hand babysitting. There are gymnastics classes, basketball leagues, Zumba classes, track, scouts, young women, activity days, etc. The kids are enjoying school. There are so many opportunities available at these larger schools that just wasn’t an option at our rural school.
And so though “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;” (2 Cor 4:8-9). We, the Jensen family, will continue to “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20). ”
Coming Soon: Thoughts on Piracy!
Canines with a Cause
We are still waiting for the Insurance to make any decision regarding our claim. So we don’t really know what we are doing, where we are going, or when we’ll be there. But yet another possibility has arisen.
Canines With a Cause (CWAC) is a group that works with the VA here in the SLC area to match veterans with service dogs. One of the Dr’s I meet with suggested I check them out because he “can’t recommend a service dog to you highly enough.” He thinks it would do wonders for the PTSD/anxiety/depression that I face. So I sent in an application and went to one of their orientation meetings.
The program has a goal to save three lives. The first is the dogs. They regularly visit all of the shelters and look for dogs to rescue. They have an animal behaviorist who evaluates each animal for behavioral issues. They say she has to say “no” much more often than she gets to say “yes” about a dog.
After finding animals that they believe can be trained appropriately, they move onto saving the second life, a female inmate at the Utah State Prison. They work with the Dept. of Corrections to place the each dog with an inmate who can then start working with the dog and its training toward the AKC Canine Good Citizenship award (AKC CGC). (I’ve worked at the prison and am positive this is a desirable program for the inmates to participate in!)
The animals kept at the prison are transported to the CWAC meetings to work with Veteran’s, the third life saved by the dogs. They hope to find a good match between veteran and the dog. When they find good matches the dog is adopted and becomes the Veteran’s.
The CWAC Course has 3 separate stages. The first one is basically a course training the veteran how to become a service dog trainer. It is a 1x a week course for 8 weeks where the Veteran works with the dogs from the prison and learns how to train them and has time to bond with them. If a veteran already has a dog they want trained they are welcome to do that too.
After this time, they hope that the Veteran has a well matched animal. If not they can still continue on to the next level. The second level is with the Veteran and his service animal and working with them as a matched pair to pass the same AKC Canine Good Citizenship award the dog has already been working toward. This usually takes several months, but there is no time table. You stay here for as long as it takes.
Once passing the AKC CGC test you move on to the third and final level; training to pass the Assistance Dog International service dog test. This again is for as long as it takes to complete, usually several months. But when complete you have a fully trained and recognized service animal.
So I’m thinking of doing this. They say they expect a Veteran/Dog pair to take 18-24 months to complete. One of the issues is that I don’t know if we will be here that long, or if we WANT to be here that long. No matter what decision is made by the insurance, we could choose to stay here for as long as we want. But we also want to either head back to MO or to move onto our boating adventure.
This is something I could start and receive the training and quit at any time. If we go back to the farm then I would LOVE to have a trained service dog to keep with me all the time. But is it worth staying here for another 2 years to do? I don’t know.
And if we end up on a boat, it will already be crowded with 10 of us, so I don’t know if a dog would be welcome or not. Might be fun to have around, might be a complete nuisance.
So for now I’m registered for the next class in a few months. I’ll go through it for as long as we’re here. We might make the decision to finish it and stay here until I’m done. I might stop and move onto a Catamaran in the Caribbean. (Capt. Jax ?) We’ll keep you informed.
I’d love to hear any of your thoughts!