Ch 4
Transition
Fort Hood... Breath it in. The air not only felt fresher and cleaner than any breath I had inhaled the previous months, but had it’s own taste and feel about it. The hairs on my arms tingled at the crisp sensation it had long forgotten. My American air was in me again, and with it too felt the rush of new life. The color of the sky even seemed more vibrant, radiating, no snow of black ash as we were used to each and every day prior till this moment.
Of Course, new life means new problems, and we all carried back more baggage than checked in on our way back. While suicides started claiming life’s almost immediately, a large portion drank ourselves into submission the first few months. At first in the name of celebration, soon though anyone you asked said it was simply to sleep at night. Me personally, well I drank more than my fair share. Three DUI’s within a year, got court-martialed from the Army. Could have rightfully landed in prison but the judge had more leniency on myself than I did. That is another story in itself, though it will be touched upon a few times….
The unit was on a much needed month leave after our deployment as of Christmas 2007. I was with my family in Ft Worth playing with our three year old daughter when the first total lockup in my spine happened. After a visit to the emergency room on Christmas Eve, I was in a neck brace for a couple of weeks. It was the butt end of several jokes about how my three year old took down a man who had just gone thru everything, and I must say many were made by myself.
Back at Ft Hood my stay was only a few months and I was seeing a chiropractor regularly. A few half hearted evaluations and x-ray‘s were done and it was determined I had dysfunctional disk throughout my neck. In addition to medications the standard treatment became electroshock therapy and popping all of my vertebrae throughout my spine aside from my neck. The Chiropractor let me know he had seen four patients die in his time from having an artery severed while having their neck popped, so I was in line with his thinking in just avoiding the problem.
This emptiness of enthusiasm went even as far as dental work. For a few years I had inconsistently complained about “wisdom teeth” (one dentist at FT Hood did x-rays and said I had five wisdom teeth) but originally had planned not to let dental work interfere with deployment or training before hand. I did question this lack of effort more than once on my way out of the Army (not only dental but medical overall) but was satisfied with the answer that the VA would take care of me and to just “wait it out and you will get better treatment anyway“. After all, the Army was busy as it was and had more than enough problems in addition to those out processing. I brushed aside these rising health concerns with a vigor and security in knowing that soon things would get better.
I still pushed myself as hard as possible. Managed to best my entire platoon on runs and the like. On weekends drinking was easy to avoid with my family in Ft Worth, but on week days at Ft Hood, I would drink until I passed out. While never late for any formation or detail, times were changing quickly and to curb what was tarnishing our unit a few “scapegoats“ were picked out. Personnel would go “missing” for the morning (day even) rather than show up to formation with alcohol in their system. I was not one of them, and in being so made myself available for the wrath.
(I did know it was a problem, A lot of time and effort was put into preventing it. Got papers signed by Company Command to go for treatment by the end of my first week back, spent over three weeks trying to get into the Army Substance Abuse Program (ASAP). Even got a signed timetable from my Platoon Sergeant to document the effort, but due to “inefficiencies in the system”, I fell victim to my own demise.)
Anyways, one day I was a civilian again. I moved back to Ft Worth where my family was and was on the other side of it all. After a month of moving and settling our attention turned to getting myself medical treatment finally. Where as we had thought the worst was over for us, a more dangerous threat was rapidly ascending on the horizon faster than anyone could imagine. I was now entering the VA system.
