My Subconscious Saved Me
November 9, 2021
It was 6:00 am and 34 degrees (F). I was sitting in a ground blind overlooking a frost-bitten alfalfa and clover food plot for deer that I had planted two springs ago.
My crossbow was at the ready to harvest a buck.
Today’s pre-rut would soon evolve into the chase phase wherein testosterone-fueled bucks relentlessly pursued breeding receptive does.
My cell phone was on vibrate. I could feel multiple notifications received. By 8:30 am, the chance of spotting a buck had diminished significantly, so I checked my email.
Task&Purpose is one of my favorite sites. I intermittently scanned the food plot and began reading “Untold Stories of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division deployment to Kabul” by Haley Britzky.
Within minutes I was back in Vietnam at the 85th Evacuation Hospital, Phu Bai, where I served as a trauma surgeon. It’s been over half a century.
Over the years, I have studied, written, and lectured nationally on my analysis of PTSD and its prevention. Please view https://youtu.be/Q-FDupMy8J8.
However, it was not until this morning in that deer blind that I realized a mechanism I unconsciously employed so many years ago in an attempt to keep in check my PTS.
We were compassionate in my surgical training, chaired by Dr. David Hume at the Medical College of Virginia. Alternatively, in clinical discussions, each patient was referred to by their surgical disease, for example — “The gallbladder in the next bed.”
During my time in Vietnam, I was unaware that I hid behind that same detached approach to avoid mourning the gruesome deaths I could not prevent and obsessing over the repercussions of the wounded’s injuries. My subconscious suppressed remembering names. I did not consider how a deformed extremity or rerouted internal organs would affect the patient’s life.
Anyway, most of “them” would be medivaced to Saigon, Japan, or Okinawa within twenty-four hours. Out of sight, out of mind.
Without exception, every soldier was treated “like gold” with the most excellent skills, most profound compassion, and unreserved respect. They were loved and, when inevitable, were guaranteed death with dignity.
But, this was war. I would be in Vietnam for a year. I had to cope almost daily with the devastation of young men’s (actually boys’) bodies and souls.
I was fortunate to have retained sufficient positive subliminal traits of religion, education, science, and morality to allow my subconscious to keep me functional and keep in check my PTS.
One could not leave that despicable place without some degree of PTS. Veterans deny that fact, but why are they changed forever by the experience and feel that part of them is still there?
I averted the transition to PTSD, the clinical disorder, by storytelling. I shared my memories with whoever would listen to defuse my Vietnam horror. In 2015 I compiled the stories into a memoir — Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally. www.guskappler.com
