Week 10 Closed Topic

I have waited for a long time to post my closed topic because I wanted to see what most of you were going to write about, I did not want to be redundant and for ya'll to read and try and conjure a comment response to something it seems you may have just read or commented on. I would like to talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I thought that everyone was going to write about it because it had been discussed so much in class so I had planned to write on Agent Orange. Since it hasn't been discussed here yet I feel it is due a few words. When Sam, Emmett and Lonnie are at Cawood's pond Emmett and Lonnie go for a walk and when they come back Emmett is disoriented and shaken. "he just got spooked....It wasn't anything" (38). This is PTSD at it's best. It has been depicted in the story well. Out of nowhere Emmett is back in Vietnam hiding. I had a grandfather that in the middle of the night during storms would crawl around the house on his belly. He never talked about but my grandmother would tell us stories. When I was a child I laughed at them thinking he was just being silly, but now I feel guilty for laughing. Many men who come back from war not just Vietnam experience this mental illness. They will jump at loud noises, not recognize family members and the symptoms go on and on. I have found two websites the first here just gives a few numbers from wars http://ptsd.about.com/od/prevalence/a/MilitaryPTSD.htm. This second has all the information you could ever want on PTSD and how it effects it's victims and how people try to overcome it.http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/index.jsp