Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/198753
10/11/06 1:10 AM Page 15 The Battle at Home The number of returning soldiers struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder is skyrocketing even while the U.S. fails to properly fund their care. Will we step up to treat, or lose, a whole generation of veterans? And how can RNs help? by caitlin fischer and diana reiss In 2004, Reserve Sgt. Jared Myers of Lawrence, Kan. suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of Iraq. He's pictured here with his mother, Judy Smith, who admitted him to the Veteran's Affairs Hospital. AP PHOTO/LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD PTSD soldier Jared Myers was shipped home to Lawrence, Kan. and that August received a Bronze Star for fighting in Iraq. Myers left behind the scorching, war-torn desert—but not the haunting images of fellow GIs slain when the poorly-armored Humvee he was driving was car bombed. In the year following his homecoming, Myers' mood swung from elation to unfathomably deep depression. He couldn't sleep, and the little rest he got was broken up by harrowing nightmares. Though still eager to reenlist, Myers told his local paper that he "basically crashed" in November, ending up in the Dwight D. Eisenhower VA Medical Center in nearby Leavenworth. In veterans hospitals across the country—and in a growing number of ill-prepared, underfunded psych and primary care clinics as well—RNs like Albuquerque's Laura Berg are treating soldiers like Myers and picking up the pieces of a tattered army. The triage nurse and her clinical specialist RN colleagues have witnessed the guilt, rage, emotional numbness, and tormented flashbacks of GIs just back from Iraq and Afghanistan—as well as a burgeoning number of nightmare-wracked vets of previous wars, whose half-century-old trauma have been "triggered" by images of Iraq. REGISTERED NURSE 15