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The
following book excerpt is reprinted with permission
from author and AAETS member Allen R. Kates,
BCECR. To order, please call toll-free 1-888-265-2732
in the US and Canada. Foreign orders, write
Holbrook Street Press, Box 399, Cortaro, AZ
85652 USA.
Not long after Christine got
home from the hospital, her brief, troubling
dreams escalated into full-blown homicidal nightmares.
When she closed her eyes, she saw herself descending
the dark stairs to the platform, getting on
the train and being attacked by the razor-blade
man. She told me her desire was to stop thinking
about it because she wanted to get better and
return to work. Then, a cop friend unwittingly
helped her sabotage herself.
"Christine, listen,"
he said. "If this stuff has upset you emotionally,
you better not say anything to anybody because
they'll get you off the job."
"There's no way,"
she responded. "This is my life, this is
my career."
From that moment on, Christine
clammed up. She refused to tell anybody how
she was feeling or even admit to herself she
had major problems because she feared her bosses
would take away her job.
Oddly, once she made the decision
to hide her feelings, the nightmares stopped
almost completely. When she did have a bad dream,
it was minor and controllable. This change reinforced
her belief that she was doing the right thing.
In that mind-set, she attended the mandatory
two meetings with the police department psychiatrists.
Convincing them nothing was wrong, her determination
to appear psychologically healthy backfired.
After seven months convalescing, the Transit
Authority doctors gave her an ultimatum.
"'We're putting you back
so you won't become too mentally detached from
work,' the doctors told me. 'Otherwise, you
might become afraid to go back.' I said, 'How
can you put me back to work? I'm still not feeling
well.' I didn't say emotionally I was not well.
I was still on probation and afraid they would
fire me."
At the prospect of being forced
to leave, Christine tasted copper in her mouth.
Pains shot across her chest. She couldn't get
air. Her left arm tingled. Yet she agreed to
return to work immediately. Still enduring physical
therapy, she performed light-duty jobs in Operations
for a couple of months, answering phones, handing
out guns, and disbursing money for toll booths.
"I put 110 percent into it no matter how
menial the job. I wanted to prove 'I'm fine.
I'm just as good as anybody else.'"
Christine struggled to keep
up. To not forget instructions from her superiors,
she wrote everything down on "many little
pieces of paper." After a while, the lieutenant
assigned her to the Operations Desk to perform
high-profile tasks working with the Chief of
Police, Transit Authority officials, inspectors
and the press. The job was considered a plum
assignment and usually only officers who performed
well and had spent considerable time in the
unit merited it.
She felt proud of herself that
her boss had confidence in her ability. Those
who believed the job should have gone to them
and not to a rookie treated her with hostility.
And the pressure started to mount.
Around this time, about ten
months after the attack, Christine, along with
other police officers, was honored during Medal
Day in a ceremony at police headquarters. As
she climbed the stairs of the stage to receive
the Distinguished Medal of Honor and the packed
auditorium burst into clapping and cheering,
she had conflicting feelings. She had heard
that some of her fellow officers were not convinced
she deserved the medal, but others concluded
she earned it. The result was that rather than
feeling heroic for what she did, she worried
that she "was not worthy of the award."
Uncertainty contributed to
growing anxiety when, a few months later, she
was moved again, this time to Dispatch, a part
of the Operations Unit. She told her supervisors
she "needed to feel capable and useful."
She got more than she wished for in a job that
became more frightening than the subway.
She sat in front of an immense
board pinpointing where police officers allocated
to her were located in the subway system. Sometimes
she would cover all of Manhattan or all of Queens,
Brooklyn or the Bronx. Receiving calls for help
from 9-1-1 Emergency operators, she would radio
the jobs to the nearest police officers. She
was their life-support system. If cops were
in trouble, they called her. She was their only
hope, and the responsibility was crushing.
While her other police department
tasks provoked little stress, this job became
a source of dread. Contradictory stories were
still circulating about what happened in the
subway tunnel, and Christine felt she had to
prove to other cops and to herself that she
was capable of doing anything anybody else could
do. "A nervous wreck," she was forced
to take sick leave several times to escape the
intolerable pressure.
Whenever she heard a "1013,
Officer Needs Help," coming from another
dispatcher's station, Christine would "freeze
up" with fear. The calls made her flash
back on her own life-threatening attack, now
one year past, and relive it. The nightmares
returned stronger and stranger than before.
"Some nights when I would
have the nightmares, I would be in the subway
system, in the same place where it happened.
But then it didn't have to happen in the subway.
I mean, I'm dreaming I'm in a store and all
of a sudden I would be fighting with this guy
like I was in the subway."
Christine's nightmares occurred
almost every night around two or three in the
morning, preventing her from getting back to
sleep. She would go to work by six-thirty, exhausted.
Her ability to function began to fail. She started
to stutter. When she had to concentrate on a
call or watch the board, without warning a flashback
would completely distract her. She had difficulty
remembering things.
"I couldn't remember simple
things, like they would say, 'Call him and tell
him to be there at four instead of one.' I couldn't
remember what I was supposed to tell them. I
would have to write everything down.
"Sometimes I would go
through a day and wonder if I got a phone call
or went to the store or dreamed that I did.
I couldn't distinguish the difference. I couldn't
remember what was real and what was a dream.
The taste in my mouth... the coppery taste,
I'd get that all the time." Other police
officers I talked to have described similar
tastes when they've been under stress. One described
it as metallic, another as iron and another
as the taste of blood. A couple of officers
said they could taste the greasy brake linings
from the black and white cruisers or sometimes
smell decaying flesh when they were nowhere
near a dead body. During flashbacks, people
who suffer from PTSD often report they taste
something that reminds them of a traumatic event.
Realizing it was more than
a year since the attack and her ability to cope
was deteriorating, Christine turned to a police
friend for help. He advised her to see a counselor
outside the force. After two to three months
of tests and therapy sessions at the Diagnostic
and Counseling Services Center, the doctor gave
his assessment.
"He said, 'You are destroying
yourself. You have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,
and it's totally taking over your life. I don't
think you should be performing as a police officer.
You should commit yourself to a psychiatric
hospital.'"
Christine told me she stood
up and said, "Sal, if you ever bleed a
word of this to anybody, I will sue you, because
I won't do anything else but this. Nobody's
going to take this job away from me. I'm going
to be okay. I'm just stressed, that's all."
I asked Christine, "After
you were diagnosed with PTSD, were you able
to function?"
"I had something to take
my mind off it," she said. "Robert
and I were going to get married in about ten
months. We were planning the wedding ourselves
and it took a lot of time out of my day, off
time, on time. I was excited and I was able
to force down all my feelings."
Christine's method for suppressing
feelings worked. The nightmares became occasional
again. Nearly two years had passed since the
assault and everything seemed better. But with
the wedding over and nothing to distract her
mind, a tidal wave of feelings washed her away.
The nightmares intensified. Accompanying them
were cold sweats and a racing heart. She was
up every night for months. Everyone at work
noticed she was worn out. She couldn't concentrate,
and they couldn't depend on her. At home, she
was irritable and short-tempered.
"Every little thing would
bother me. Robert was having trouble accepting
what was happening to me, and it was hurting
our marriage. And I stopped doing things. I
stopped cleaning the house. The wash was piling
up. I stopped cooking, which was something I
loved to do. I stopped playing piano. After
I'd gotten hurt, I went on shopping sprees and
I was still doing it, only more. I had enough
of everything, but I would buy and buy and buy.
I have clothes I haven't worn that still have
tags on them. I have shoes that are still in
boxes."
I asked Christine why she went
on shopping sprees.
"Depression and the necessity
to feel something. I mean, this had taken away
every bit of self-esteem. Shopping made me feel
good."
"Did depression affect
the way you acted in other ways?"
"One time I was on my
way to work, going up the stairwell from the
subway..."
"How were you on the subway?"
"The first thing I did
once I was able to walk was go out on the subway
platform. When Robert was available, he would
walk me to the turnstile and come back for me
after work. But I thought if I waited any period
of time, I would grow frightened of it. So by
the time I went to work, I was okay."
"You were going up the
stairwell..."
"I was anxious every time
I rode the subway... There was this young guy.
You know, it's five-thirty in the morning, the
subway's totally empty. I'm the only person
there, and a guy wants fifty cents? I don't
think so. He wants my whole wallet."
"Were you in uniform?"
"Civilian clothes and
I had my gun on me. And he goes, 'I want fifty
cents.' And I say, 'No, my man. No money.' His
shoulders move up and down and he's positioning
himself like in a dance so he can have leverage.
And he says, 'Yo! Just gimmie fifty cents, okay!'"
"What did you do?"
"My gun was in a belly
band and I went to get it. Like, they know.
They already know if somebody's going into their
jacket, what you're gonna take out. You're not
going to take out a 'Congratulations! You're
a winner!' card. And I told him, 'Step back.
Get the hell away from me!'"
"Did you pull your gun
on him?"
"No, but I almost did.
Then the copper taste came into my mouth and
like this whole thing dropped from my head to
my toe, like a blood rush. I was also angry
because I realized I was unable to make a clear
decision. Afterwards, I kept asking myself,
What should I have done?"
Christine attributed her overreactivity
- going for the gun - to depression and being
anxious. She felt less in control, vulnerable
to attack and more prone to act quickly to disable
a perceived threat without considering the consequences
of her actions.
"Were there other times
when you felt threatened?"
"It would happen all the
time," she said. "I was consumed by
people. Especially in the subway. I was taking
the subway every day to work and these homeless
people, they were... they were destined to kill
me."
She laughed. "It sounds
crazy, but some of these people would leave
that impression on me.
"If a homeless person
came near me," she went on, "I would
get the copper taste. I couldn't get air. My
hands would start to tingle and sweat. I'd lose
feeling in my fingertips and get lightheaded.
I'd feel my heart pumping and get really bad
migraine headaches."
"Had you had migraines
before you were attacked?"
"Never. And I was getting
them so badly I was vomiting."
"In these encounters with
homeless people, what were you thinking?"
I asked.
"I was saying to myself,
Oh my God. Am I ever going to be able
to do this? I mean, look at the way I'm
reacting. Just a homeless person. As time went
by, I was slowly getting worse."
"Did you try to alleviate
your stress? You were a runner. Did you work
out again?"
"I tried running again,
but I was hurting myself. Probably because I
wasn't healed enough yet. I tried a lot of things.
You see, I wanted to be the same person that
I was before. You know? I was battling myself
because I couldn't understand why I was going
through this. I was looking at myself as a loser.
I saw myself as a weak person, and I could not
face not being a cop. I've asked myself, Why
can't I accept this damn thing that's happened
and let it go? No, it was taking
me under."
"Did your friends try
to help?"
Christine sighed. "I couldn't
talk to people anymore. Nobody could understand.
I have friends who are female cops. It frightened
them to hear about this, and I was embarrassed
to admit I was having problems. And I have friends
who aren't cops. They couldn't understand it.
And how could I relate my feelings to them when
they couldn't even comprehend what I was feeling?"
"Before the attack, were
you a strong person?"
"Very strong. And I felt
I had to work harder because just by looking
at me, people didn't take me seriously as a
cop."
"Because you were a woman?"
"Yes. People would try
to make me appear as if I wasn't intelligent.
It was important I knew where I stood. To let
people know I was feeling vulnerable, this would
acknowledge something I didn't want to admit.
I didn't want people to think I was damaged.
I wanted them to feel I was strong."
"What about your husband?"
"We were having a lot
of problems in our relationship. For a long
time I felt dead inside. Robert did everything
for me. He paid the bills, did housework, went
grocery shopping, everything. But he couldn't
understand either. Who could? If I myself couldn't,
how could I expect him to?"
"And your family?"
"My parents were supportive,
but there was nothing they could do to help."
Now married and back at work
with no wedding to plan for, Christine made
an error in Dispatch for which she cannot forgive
herself, and even today it makes her hands shake
when she thinks of it. A female officer called
in a "1013, Officer Needs Help," but
the transmission was fuzzyand Christine wasn't
sure what the officer said.
"I'm not sure I didn't
hear it because the transmission was poor or
because of the fear it caused in me."
Having no way to contact the
officer who made the call, Christine panicked.
Fortunately, the officer called back, informing
Christine that the problem resolved itself and
there was no emergency. Christine's lieutenant
castigated her for not responding. Missing a
"1013," the call that saved Christine's
life, was a little too close to home.
Christine said she felt sick
after that and couldn't continue working. "It
killed me to think that, God forbid, if anything
had happened to her I would be responsible.
It was a very bad thing, very shameful for me.
I never wanted to hurt any of my fellow cops.
This makes me feel like I wasn't a good cop.
In reality, I wasn't well."
The 1013 incident brought back
violent memories of the slashing. Her mind replayed
the images continuously, giving her little sleep
or respite from pain. One week later, her feelings
reached a climax. The Police Self-Support Group,
which Christine had attended sporadically, invited
her to join several injured police officers
on NBC's the Today show. "Before
this, my mental breakdown was very hush-hush.
This was the first time I outright expressed
myself on how I felt."
During the interview, one of
the other officers described PTSD reactions
similar to hers. Tommy said he couldn't concentrate
or remember. He cried for no reason. He had
nightmares, cold sweats and was always irritable,
exhausted. Although he experienced flashbacks,
he denied he had problems. Like Christine, he
overreacted to innocent situations and people.
And like Christine, he was in an intermittent
state of unreality. He wept openly on the television
show, and his account made her realize the unreal
was real.
"After the television
interview, I went home and broke down,"
she said. "That unleashed everything, like
opening Pandora's box. All of these feelings
that I had suppressed all this time. Everything
was exposed. Within a week or so, I wouldn't
go outside the house. I lay in bed all day and
I cried."
I asked Christine, "You
didn't go to work?"
"I had to go out sick
from work because I wouldn't leave the house,
and I was crying all the time. I was totally
withdrawn. I didn't want to go shopping for
clothes or even food. My mother or Robert would
have to bring food in. I didn't want to socialize.
And I was drinking a lot too. Drinking at night
to fall asleep."
"Did the alcohol help?"
"No, and during the day
I didn't sleep either. I sat in bed and cried
and I had the blinds closed and rocked myself.
Sometimes I would sit in a chair or sit on the
floor in a corner of the room, in the dark room,
rocking and crying. You must realize that I
was the person who everyone would call to ask
'What do I do?' or 'What do you think of this
or that?' I would always give advice. I was
the strong one. I was the capable one. Now what
was I?"
Knowing she was in trouble,
Christine called Tony Senft from the support
group. Tony could not drive because of his injuries,
and he couldn't get a driver at such short notice.
He convinced Christine to come to him.
"I can't tell you what
it was like to get into the car," she said.
"I fought with Robert. He had to take me
by the arm and then pick me up and carry me
to the car. I was paranoid about everything.
Every little noise startled me. Even the sun,
the sun was hurting my eyes."
Christine put the front seat
down so no one would see her in the car. "I
lay down crying the entire way there while Robert
drove."
Realizing she needed professional
care, Tony advised Christine to see his psychiatrist,
a therapist experienced in helping veterans
with PTSD. The next day her mother drove her
to see his doctor.
"I sat in front of him
and cried," she said. "I couldn't
tell him what happened to me for almost three
sessions. And then he told me he was going on
vacation and I came apart.
"I really feel like I
want to kill myself," she told Dr. James
J. Cavanagh. "I can't stand crying anymore.
I can't stand what this is doing to my life.
I'm killing my marriage. I'm killing everything.
I don't know how much more I can take."
"If you feel as though
you're a danger to yourself," the doctor
said, "I think you should let me admit
you to the hospital."
"The hospital! Absolutely
not," she said. "If I was hospitalized,
I would never be a cop again. They'd consider
me mentally unstable."
The doctor and Christine decided
it was better if she made the decision to go.
"Can you imagine what would have happened
if they forced me? It would be like being arrested.
They'd have to call the police and order an
ambulance. People would come and take away my
gun and shield."
Christine returned home to
her dark room, crying and rocking to try to
soothe herself. Suicidal, she called a friend
who sent her to another psychiatrist. Dr. Joseph
Benezra advised hospitalization. Again, she
refused.
"I went home from that
session and had a terrible argument with Robert,
and he left to go to work. He could not comprehend
what I was going through. I was scared to death
of everything and I was afraid to go out. I
was a prisoner of something that happened to
me and he couldn't understand that. I wondered
why that guy didn't just kill me and save me
and my family from all this.
"After Robert left, I
went into an hysterical fit of crying and couldn't
stop. I took medication the doctor gave me to
sleep and some Scotch. I was hallucinating.
I took my gun and I sat down on the couch in
the living room with the TV blasting and I was
crying, rocking back and forth, and I brought
it up to my mouth and I was screaming- "'God
please take my life from me! I've been through
enough! Please help me. I didn't do anything
to deserve this. I failed as a person and I
failed as a police officer and I failed at my
marriage and there's nothing else in this life
I want. Forgive me for what I'm about to do.
Please help me take my life!'" The phone
rang.
At first she wasn't going to
answer it. She did, and the call saved her life.
It was Tommy, the officer from the Police Self-Support
Group who spoke of his PTSD reactions on the
Today show, calling to see how she was.
She said to him, "I'm
sorry I can't help anybody else because I can't
help myself. The pain is too much for me to
take. Everyone will be much better off without
me around."
He listened, and he talked
to her until she promised to put down the gun.
He wanted to drive out to see her, but she said
no. He told her next time he might not be there
to stop her. This motivated Christine to return
to the psychiatrist. In tears, she told Dr.
Benezra she just wanted to go back to work.
He told her he wanted her to go to the hospital.
Once again, she fought the
doctor, unable to accept that she had moved
from care giver to care needer. A few days later,
she finally agreed to be voluntarily committed
to North Shore University Hospital. On the way,
she took several anti-depressant, anti-anxiety
and sleeping pills. She said, "I didn't
want it to be a reality for me."
Before admission to the psychiatric
unit was granted, Christine was required to
subject herself to a medical examination in
the emergency room. "This was the greatest
humiliation," she said. The resident performed
a gynecological exam. Christine felt it was
an offensive and unnecessary intrusion but didn't
think she was in a position to protest.
Afterwards, an aide took her
upstairs to the eighth floor, the Psych. Unit.
She's not sure what she expected, but when she
saw gray, steel doors with tiny windows, doors
that required keys or beepers to open, doors
that slammed shut behind her, she felt panic.
She couldn't reconcile how a cop could be locked
up like a criminal.
More indignities were to follow.
The nurses directed her to undress and then
took her clothes away. Ironically, her attacker,
an escapee from a Connecticut mental institution,
had failed to kill her, but succeeded in reducing
her to his level, and she couldn't do anything
about it.
Locked away, stripped of everything
she associated with the outside world-clothes,
shoes, a pen, a telephone-she felt abandoned.
"I felt like I lost my battle. I lost my
career." It was two in the morning. For
a few hours, loaded with drugs to fight off
the reality of where she was, Christine slept.
The next morning, she met with
a room full of doctors, nurses and aides. Weeping,
she told them the little she could remember
of the incident. By this time she was blocking
out many details. Never looking up from the
table, she had no idea what the staff members
looked like. She sat there, hunched over, plucking
tissues from a box.
The days in the hospital passed
slowly while she received medication, one-on-one
counseling and engaged in group therapy. She
kept a diary of her ups and downs. Rereading
the entries gave insight into her frightening
misadventure. After earning "points of
improvement" for following rules like taking
medication and attending counseling, she was
allowed to watch television, do crafts and use
an exercise bike. From the moment she was assaulted,
she started losing weight and was now down more
than 25 pounds, weighing 88 pounds.
Christine said the staff was
very protective, too protective. "I couldn't
shave my legs without a person outside the shower
watching me. They were afraid I'd hurt or kill
myself."
She was angry that her attacker
had put her here, locked in with people like
him. "It was horrifying," she said.
"I was in with a lot of really sick people
who were chronically mentally ill, people who
had been in and out of mental institutions their
entire lives. It was very degrading."
The status of the people locked
up with her affected how she responded in group
therapy. She would not open up because several
patients were under arrest for drug offenses.
They were people she was ordered to apprehend
and here she was facing them as an equal.
Her shame and powerlessness
revealed themselves in headaches and troubled
sleep. After the first night, the nightmares
returned. During the day, despite taking several
medications, migraine headaches caused her to
throw up repeatedly.
About two weeks into her hospital
stay, Christine's doctor suggested a method
for breaking her mental block about the attack.
He wanted to administer sodium amytal, a short-acting
barbiturate. It was supposed to help release
inhibitions. Although she was still having nightmares,
they were not about the incident itself. She
wanted to relive it one last time. She thought,
If I can get it out, then that
will be the end of it.
The day the drug was to be
given, the medical staff and several interns
assembled in a room to observe the procedure.
She said she felt like a laboratory specimen
under a microscope. An IV bottle dripped solution
into her arm. The doctor told her to recite
numbers backwards. After the drug took effect,
the doctor asked her questions about herself.
Then he asked her about the incident, questions
like, "Do you know you did everything you
could to come out of there alive?" She
cried and answered Yes and wanted him
to go on. He hesitated.
She pleaded with him, "Please
don't stop. Please take me back." He refused
to delve into the details of the assault, and
for two days after the procedure, she sobbed
uncontrollably.
"I was angry because I
felt he left me hanging. He made me think he
was really going to help me and he didn't. I
couldn't understand why he did that. And I was
angry because it was like I didn't live it.
Do you know what I mean? I thought that if I
went back there subconsciously, maybe when I
awoke it would have been more realistic to me,
and I would be able to deal with it."
I asked her, "Did the
doctor tell you why he didn't take you back?"
"He said he didn't feel
it would have done any good."
Coming to terms with the unreality
of the attack was one of many hardships Christine
tolerated in the hospital. The news that she
was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit caused
her disgrace in the eyes of her friends and
family.
"I've lost friends over
this. I've lost cousins," she said. "When
I was in North Shore, a cousin of mine had a
baby. She was on the maternity floor of the
same hospital, and I went to visit her. They
looked at me like I had some infectious disease
or I was going to pull out a gun and kill everyone
in sight. They were frightened over where I
had been."
After a month in the hospital,
Christine was allowed to leave. Initially, while
still on medication, she saw her main therapist,
Dr. James J. Cavanagh, three times a week. However,
her therapy seemed unsuccessful. She had waited
such a long time before seeking help, denying
her problems, that the symptoms of Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder held on tenaciously.
Christine told me she left
the hospital with more "unexplainable"
issues than when she went in. She was overly
suspicious and forgetful. She'd forget what
she was saying in the middle of a conversation
and while driving would become lost.
But she had made progress in
the hospital. At last she was facing the aftermath
of the assault. Feelings she previously ignored
were in turmoil. She was getting better, only
it felt worse.
Reprinted from CopShock,
Surviving Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
472 pages.
ISBN: 0-9668501-0-6. $19.95
US Copyright © 1999 by Allen R. Kates.
Excerpt From
CHAPTER 1: ASSAULTS
©1999 by
The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic
Stress, Inc. |
