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Senator McCain’s Medical Records: Will They Include Psychiatric Records re PTSD?
Apr 9th, 2008 | Comments
That’s what some of the pundits are hinting at. But, I wonder what the rules are for releasing one’s medical records if one is running for the presidency; surely it’s not required.
Senator McCain’s had several brushes with cancer; it’s not his age, but perhaps some think it’s his vulnerability to cancer that ought be weighed.
There’s a saying in the old religious stories that when we were born, God put a number on our heads, indicating the number of years we’d have on earth. No one knows their own number. Probably thankfully, many might say.
Yet number of years lived is no perfect predictor of longevity. I’ve seen, and you likely have too, enough clear-headed ninety year olds who lived past ten difficult diseases to still take a dance or ten at every wedding. And you and I have no doubt seen the too many young fall away like snowflakes in a sudden sun, leaving this earth far too soon.
Did Senator McCain have Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome when he returned as a POW from the Viet Nam war? (PTSD is currently called a ‘disorder,’ but I often use the older phrase ’syndrome,’ for post-trauma recovery process is often more like a set of phases one goes through in order to reset the psyche to know the difference between living in war, and living in peace again).
Did Senator McCain suffer from that ‘disorientation to the present’ when he returned and would he care to tell any more details than he already has about that debriefing and readjustment time?
I think it would honor a soldier best to let him say so, or not… as he wishes.
I’d only merit him with this for now: if the answer is yes, he is braver than most will ever realize in putting back together a vase shattered to a thousand pieces but still able, capable and true. And if he did not suffer with post-trauma, he was the luckiest POW on earth.
PTSD is no simple thing, and each person who is hit with it reacts differently. There’s a host of symptoms and thankfully too, a host of helps that last. Too, there’s a truth I know, and not just clinically. I wrote it into Women Who Run With the Wolves in the chapter called “The Scar Clan.” Somewhere along the line, I can faithfully tell each soul I’ve worked with whose been through a horrific set of shocks… just this one simple reality: “Hang in there… scar tissue is stronger than skin.”
And, often, far more prescient …
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GreenDreams
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archangel
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MsSwin
