The Vertigo Journey

I got vertigo while I was in Afghanistan. Bad. The docs say it was from a rocket blast that didn't knock me out, and really didn't affect me much when it happened. I got MEDEVAC'ed out.

My last kiss goodbye in the last three weeks before leaving was some bad news. My wife had been having a two month affair. I won't go into the gorey details, but it was just about as bad as it could have been. With this on my mind, I was getting on a plane as a platoon leader for a 47 man Engineer company in the Army.

 

My departure was accompanies by the usual boo-hoos, the wahs, the cries, the moans. I groaned myself, as my dad took a parting shot of me while I was on the bus, rolling out to the airplane. I was glad my wife was crying, but sorry to see my other family members upset. My wife couldn't have cried enough. No amount of tears would satiate my bloodlust at the time. The buses stopped, and we went into the terminal on post, waiting to get on the plane and fly away to Germany. Many hours passed, the last person I talked to was my boxing coach. He always made me feel better about everything. He told me he'd see me when I got back. Nothing to it.

 

Fast forward a bit and I'm on a plane. Terrified. I suppose you wouldn't have been able to tell, but my hands were shaking and I'd spit my way through two cans of Cope Long Cut. I sunk into my seat and thought about IEDs, my buddy Jim watching his friend die, and about my wife receiving the seed of some other guy. Some disgusting, home-wrecking shithead who I would tear apart with my bare hands if ever given the oppurtunity. Then I realized that only a******s think things like that and that I shouldn't think in such ways. I prayed. Hard. For a very long time.

 

Religious conversations with my Warrant Officer, inane babble with our Platoon Sergeant, and general indeterminable thoughts mixed with painful sighs occupied the next few hours of my time. I arrived in Germany and we took a bus with a hinge in the middle of it to the terminal. Cheap trinkets and other bullshit that I didn't care about littered the walls. I tried calling the wife, but she didn't answer.

 

We were in Kyrgyzstan for a few days. The weather there was awesome; cold and rainy. I like being wet for some reason. I was smoking and dipping at the same time, sometimes while drinking coffee. I didn't like the idea of being so far away from civilization. My Soldiers seemed to be in alright spirits. I tried not to let them know that I was nervous. Was I really cut out for this s**t? There are many tougher people than I out there.

 

My f*****g ruck sack got lost. Stupid Army. "Just kidding, I love the Army" I always remind myself after some dumb s**t happens. Its still like that now. I don't know why, but I'm still devoted.

 

Afghanistan:

 

Hot

Smells like s**t, literally

Dry

Dusty

No indoor plumbing in all of Kandahar

Beautiful mountains.

 

Craters everywhere just outside the base. Literally everywhere. Minefields everywhere, even on the base. Who came up with this idea?

 

Our first big missions involved M 19 matting and AM2 matting. S**t loads of it. More than 186,000 square feet of it. Fuuuuuuck. Can't tell you where or why, but it was important. So important that the Marines had to send some CWOs to make sure we did it right. But they were a******s about it. As a 1LT I told a CW5 with over 30 years in the Corps that he could take all his years in service and cram them because a Commission trumps a Warrant always. I HATE pulling rank like that. He was pretty upset. So much so he went to the Regimental Commander, heh heh. But he pissed in our platoon's cornflakes, trying to adjust our schedule and make us work like dogs. Those jerks were there for a month and a half for this project. We were there for 12 months. I don't feel any pity for members of the other services when it comes to deployments. We have the longest. So I wasn't about some c**k-monger tell my acting PSG what to do. 

 

We leave the blissful world of life with the Air Force and the SF guys to go be by the company flagpole. Our awesome C.O. was replaced by some Pointer b***h. I had people come up to me from provinces across the country that had heard about her ludicrous stupidity.

 

I was at the new locale for a few weeks. We had been shuffled around a few times in terms of living quarters. The FOB mayor and our commander hated each other. We were thrown into a giant circus tent (which was a considerable improvement compared to the air conditionless GPs we were living in prior to) that lit up at night. The bad guys liked to shoot 107mm rockets at the giant glowing target; the only white light object in thirty miles in all directions.

 

One particular night I was about to go smoke. We heard the whoosh overhead followed by a loud, earth-shaking bang. Myself and the Soldiers around me look at each other as we hit the ground. "Incoming!" was being shouted. The first one landed close. We were worried the subsequent ones would be closer. I look up to see the thirty foot tall pole of our tent swaying violently, as if the rocket had skipped up the side of the tent and shot away. Luckily it didn't penetrate, or there would be one hudred seventy something corpses lying about in lifeless dereliction of our duties.

 

The ground is rumbling and the mess under my cot of spit bottles, empty Gatorade bottles, and candy wrappers is stalling me from grabbing my IOTV.

 

"Ugh, you f*****g idiot! You deserve to die if you snuff it from these f*****g rockets!" These were my loving thoughts to myself. I'm such a jackass.

 

The next round or two fly in, then the FOB's artillery unit answered back with four 150mm HEs going out. Lots of them. Scuffing up the local desert.

 

Days pass and my sleep begins to be interrupted. I didn't know if it was the medical burn pit next to our sleeping area that dumped literally tons of toxic smoke into our rooms daily or if something else was going on. Too much tobacco? Cut down on smoking and dipping tremendously. Gave up on coffee. After about two weeks, it started to get bad. I didn't sleep. As I fell asleep, I'd get nauseous. About every ten minutes I'd get up because I thought I was going to vomit. The world felt like it was slowly rocking in a clockwise fasion. Usually was aggravated while I was lying down.

 

Then came doctors appointments, arguments with every person above me, and my PSG telling me I had to get out of there or it could become worse. I felt like I was abandoning my post, like my General Orders tell me not to.

 

I stopped eating and I slept about 3 hours a week. My skin turned a tarnish-green color. My eyes were more often than not rolling back in my head. I tried to focus on other things like music (playing my little acoustic guitar saved my life) but eventually even that couldn't do it. I was a walking zombie. I lost 17 pounds off of the 145 that I deployed with. The doctors in the field gave me the Epley and Dicks Hallpike exams and maneuvers repeatedly, but they weren't really SMEs so they didn't know how to administer either of the above correctly. Five months of this continued until finally upon fear of death or injury to others, they shipped me back to Germany. I get there, wait for a while, after two weeks they figure out that I'm not there to be evaluated, I'm there to go back home. I get a CT scan, and MRI, all the fun stuff. They tell me about TBI and how my former work as an amateur boxer didn't do anything to help. I woke up nightly with panic attacks, I couldn't eat, I hated life for a good 9 months in total. I went to a real balance and vertigo doctor and got my vertigo mostly surpressed, but I still see doctors daily. RTD but still trying to cope. I can't ride in vehicles anymore so my Army career is almost guaranteed to be over. I have no marketable job skills, so that's going to be a kick in the jimmies. But I'm not bitching. I'm glad I went. I'm terrified of simple head and body movements and of losing my balance. Oddly enough I run faster now than I ever have.

 

Now I own a house.  A beautiful home. Brand new, tailored just to my tastes, and with great neighbors. I'm putting a recording studio in my basement for the band. But everywhere lingers the fear of that damned vertigo coming back. Of the sleepless nights and of the genuine terror that vehicles are going to roll over or that I'm going to flip upside down and the maddening constant spinning will return. I couldn't handle it again. I wouldn't handle it again. But at least now I know my limits. My quality of living has been diminished because I can't travel anymore, but at least I have all my body parts, some pretty close friends are now left without that luxury now.

Author's Note

I know, not really a clear beginning or end or natural flow, but I wanted to capture the flow of a memory.

Reviews

[Goodbye]

What an amazing ride this is- an honest look at the realities not only of your family life, but being plunged into the chaos of war, then to have the vertigo on top of it, then returning home to the unknown...All of these things we don't hear about on the nightly news.

Grammatically, I would just give it one-two more read-throughs aloud, tightening up some areas, making others a bit more expressive. Very, very good write!

[Claws Of Fury]

This was awesome! I really enjoyed it. Thanks!

[Tabetha Green]

I'm a little bit in awe of you after reading this. Just the fact that you stayed on in that state without abandoning your post..it shows what an incredible leader you are. All in all, a brilliant write and very interesting read.

[GTVile]

Yeah, its a true story. I still see doctors daily so I don't want to vomit all over myself every freaking day. =) But I'm functional again, for the most part.

[Levana Hyll]

Awesome story. Is this a true story? It was gripping from the start, started reading, was pulled in and couldn't stop. Hope you add more. Be interesting to see how this pans out.

[Diane]

I understood your desire to capture the memory. Nicely done.