D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2010
Ghosts of the Past
Reflections on trauma, from Vietnam to hiking Apacheria.
By Jerry Eagan
It was on a road trip when I was a student at Indiana University, in 1973, that I first viewed the movie Jeremiah Johnson, at the small, exclusive theater of the swanky Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. At the time, I didn't know I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Vietnam, much less PTSD from emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse from my mother. I'd first seen the West hitching from Indiana to San Francisco, a week or two after Woodstock, in 1969. Looking out the windows of cars, trucks and buses, I'd felt something go tilt inside at the vast emptiness "out there." That "tilt" angled even more during the trip back west in 1973. It was at the end of that film that a few lines of dialog altered my life forever. As a consequence, I determined to become a modern pioneer headed West, where I could live among the mountains.
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The author on the day he leff for Vietnam in 1966. |
Flash forward to April 2002, when I began work at the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. I'd gotten sober and clean in 1982, and much water had flowed beneath a variety of metaphorical bridges by then. Unable to find work as a certified alcohol and drug counselor, I had a back-up job as a $19 a day volunteer at the Cliff Dwellings. Disability from Vietnam and my Civil Service retirement annuity allowed me to work only four days a week. One, sometimes two days, I hiked with a simpatico guy named Bob Bissett. I also hiked alone. Only introverts would understand that for some experiences, solitude and solitariness deepen spiritual experiences as the sublime beauty of being alone in this country.
Faster forward to Dec. 21, 2009, when I found myself at Providence Cone, a stand-alone mountain 25 miles east of Deming, searching for a particular example of remarkable petroglyph art. Before leaving, though, I'd had a "premonition" that something was not quite right. I'd honored that gut feeling by emailing precise instructions on how to find me to my friend Dennis Jennings; I'd hoped he'd read them and meet me. Honoring that "directions" premonition was only one such feeling I'd honored recently.
Solitary hikers had better honor those premonitions, if they want to live and hike again. An overarching premonition had built up over all of 2009 that I needed to hike with someone, and I had done so more often. It just didn't happen that day. My "Hiking Apacheria" article, "Slip Sliddin' Away" (February 2010), outlined my fall, injury and rescue. But it's important to share the trauma of the rest of the story, the trauma, still unfolding today.
Phase two of my trauma process began when I was left alone at the admissions desk of the Deming hospital. Anticipating, I gave the clerk my Blue Cross/Blue Shield ID card, for I'm fortunate enough to have good health insurance. I've been through this drill a number of times in my life. That done, I rolled the wheelchair I'd been put in to a waiting room. My mind clicked into "the admissions trip" stoicism one learns entering hospitals: A familiar psychic numbing crept into my mind, and I pulled back into silent waiting. Stay quiet, watch and learn, was the thought. Other than asking for a small cup of water, I sat there and watched the other people who'd been brought by someone there.
Within a few minutes, I was wheeled into the ER. The place was crowded and busy. A couple of aides helped me mount a gurney, and I laid back, wondering when my wife and Dennis might show up. It was totally dark by then, and they'd had to search for my truck in near darkness. I restrained any hopeful impulses I might have for them joining me. I was 19 when I got so badly wounded in Vietnam. I spent a year in Army hospitals, and had developed a fierce "anti-dependency" on having friends or relatives be by my side. It was a lonely experience, but it was what it was. All the PTSD work I'd done for 20 years, though, allowed me to experience some limited hope that they'd show up, so I wouldn't do this alone.
After I'd reached my truck, I'd reinforced the splint I'd fashioned out of one of my knee pads, and duct tape with a disabled veteran's license plate, which I kept under the driver's seat of my truck. I'd used the last of the duct tape on that "improvement."
"That's far out, man! You really set your ankle yourself, huh?" an assistant asked me.
"Actually, I reset it three times, before I got back to my truck."
"Holy crap! That's far out, man!"
The on-call doctor, Dr. Bassam Al Homsi, quickly clarified that this was more than a sprain. As I lay on the gurney, the broken ankle was at right angles to my right leg. I will never forget looking at my right arm the day I was shot in Vietnam. It, too, had been twisted nearly off by the Chinese SKS 7.62 semi-automatic rifle the VC had used on me that day, November 3, 1966.
Dr. Homsi assured me, unfortunately, that the break was bad enough to require surgery. I braced myself as a nurse used a stethoscope and some other device to determine if there was a pulse in my leg's nerves and blood vessels. I was relieved when the nurse gave a thumbs-up. "Houston, we have a pulse," she said, gauging the look on my face as "worried."
Having nearly lost my right arm in Vietnam, I was deeply relieved that I'd keep my right foot. In that former trauma, I'd told God: If the arm has to come off, so be it. Please, let me live, even if I lose my right arm.
Dr. Homsi said he'd alerted the on-call orthopedist, Dr. Valentin Antosci, that he believed I should be admitted and surgery undertaken the next morning.
By now, Dorothy and Dennis had arrived. Dennis observed the injury, as I'd expect someone trained as an emergency first responder would.
"Uuuuh. That's ugly," he said.
"You're the third person to say that," I replied.
"Sorry," he said.
"No problem." Actually, it was pretty ugly!
Dorothy and Dennis also appreciated the improvised splint I'd made of my disabled veteran license plate. The flat, thin aluminum license plate is firm, but not so rigid as to be impossible to bend. I'm convinced that if I'd had two license plates and more duct tape, I could have walked off the ridge and driven myself to the hospital. There it is again: Take care of yourself if you want to survive.
Dennis left, but Dorothy accompanied me to my room. It was comforting to have her there. Dorothy is wife number three. Put any 10 Vietnam vets in a room, and I'd wager we'd total 30 marriages. How many kids? How many wives? If you only knew the crazy crap I'd put wives number one and number two through, as a guy who for decades would have never thought, much less claimed, he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Vietnam. Now, I was able to relax, and embrace: no more flying solo.
Men (and now, most likely, women) call for their mothers or fathers for a reason, when dying on a battlefield. There's no lonelier experience than to die among strangers, or even friends, 10,000 miles from home, and know you'll never going to see loved ones again. My survival mechanisms developed in those Army hospitals had been to isolate and insulate against giving in to bouts of depression, crushing loneliness and homesickness that sometimes I felt was impossible to live through.
It was threatening to snow, so I told Dorothy to head back to Silver City. I accepted that for the next few days, I'd be in Deming, not Silver City. It felt awkward, but I've done enough trauma work that I was able to deal with my anxiety.