Die To Live Again; How a car bomb in Iraq changed my life

May 07, 2013

Die To Live Again; How a car bomb in Iraq changed my life

We all go through love, loss and disappointment. Then, if we are wise, we reinvent our perception of what we think we understand. It is my hope that you learn about yourself and channel your emotions into a beautiful life that’s defined by your words, poetry, art, passions and most of all, your actions. The happiest anyone will ever feel is when they choose to understand and accept their ever changing purpose. I am happy in my life because I chose when I had no choice to DIE TO LIVE AGAIN.

David G. Casler

Dedicated to Todd and Brandon who lost their lives, mom and dad who gave me my life and Mark who saved it.The real hero's are the ones who will never feel the hand shake or hear the accolades. We who survive must honor them who gave their all.

Why do I climb my mountainous mind?

Because I seek the plentiful peek.

That which is never seen without posthumous pain,

And those weak, never did seek.

Why do I risk life and limb?

It’s the only way I can find the tenuous true.

That which has never been hurtfully herald,

And things that were said were quietly on queue.

Why do I seek the constant cold?

Because it lets me feel on my skin the wondrous warm.

That which has danced within my empathetic emotions

And provided no shelter from seismic storm.

Why do I ride the sinuous slides?

Because the only way down is with ferocious fervor.

That which risks all of the Lovers love.

To seek the hand that gratefully grasps.

Why do I not hatefully hesitate?

Because I don’t know the future and I'm scared to longingly levitate.

That which doesn’t call out giving me earful echoes,

A mind stagnates and goes mad without a love’s touch to reasonably resonate.

So, if you ask “Why does he climb?”

It’s simple for me.

To prove that Love, Truth, Sacrifice, Hurt, Risk, and Dedication,

are worth the time.

David Casler

(Memoirs 2007)

It wasn't that long ago that I was running for my life. A distance of time and space or maybe I was running towards my new life. "Time waits for no man." The phrase is almost uncanny. Did you ever think that a life without regrets would be so scary? A life with no regrets is said too quickly. It requires you to actually think of the future, the possibilities and uncertainty. I think people say it in reflection with no projection. That would require understanding of every path that life is going to take them. Life is to beautifully uncertain. Where you stand right now, is a sentence in a paragraph of a long story with no ending.

I am asked how I can write the way I do. I’ve spent many days tearing my mind apart to understand myself. When the bomb went off, a piece of hot metal pierced my skull and settled deep in my brain. It tore its way through my thoughts and fragmented leaving me five reminders of that day. Awakening in a burning car, I was terrified by the inability to speak, to scream for help, to ask what had happened. I really didn’t need to ask, my eyes absorbed the hellish screams. I had aphasia.

In the minutes afterward and now years, I wasn’t deprived totally of my cognitive abilities. So I started typing slowly. My perception of life differed now. I felt like two different people. When the metal hit me, it affected my ability to control my emotions. Everyone has a filter in their brain, it is called emotional intelligence. The ability to balance and understand life and others perceptions of it. The filter in my brain now had holes in it. My emotions ran free from one side on my brain to the other.

The brain when injured can compensate for certain parts that were destroyed. Other parts of the brain mimic and take over functions. I didn’t understand it then but it allowed me to do things I never could like draw, intense emotions, music calmed me almost trance like and now, because I couldn’t communicate through speech I would write, but in metaphors that even sometimes I couldn’t understand. My injury would be my life and my life would be a constant struggle trying to understand myself.

My observations are of life. Life; is the many people interacting and the effects that resonate from that interaction. Here we are. The effects of everything we do have consequences. Are you prepared to accept the consequences, good or bad, of life? President Truman once said "No man is an island unto themselves." Some people feel like islands in that they want to be left alone. Others, in that they think that they have affected no one.

You were born. You were one of a million that could have been born. The fact that you WERE, makes you the strongest. Whether you think it or not, you are. You fought with life and you won the race to be here. The beauty of life is that we feel. We love to feel love and we hate to feel sad.

When we are mad or depressed, there is a lot of power we hold in our bodies. When I would get angry at trying to learn how to walk again, that anger gave me the strength to challenge myself harder. When I felt good, I would meditate on my foot that wouldn't work, I would close my eyes and see and think of my brain making connections, and then I would try to wiggle my toe. It stressed me out when I didn't see the gains that I wanted to see, but I kept on. Now I walk, now I run.

Sometimes life is not about us. The joy we get from helping others, helps us. It was the one of the most important parts of my rehabilitation.

So, what is life? In my opinion, life is but a thought. Simple. A thought derived by a feeling that expands infinitely. The momentum of that thought travels faster then light through our bodies. It brakes itself up into rays that continue to grow and split the farther the thought travels. That thought, is you. Ever growing, ever expanding in knowledge of the world and most importantly, yourself.

Two years after the car bombing in Iraq, in which I was working as a Civilian Security Contractor, I am in Pomona California at the Casa Colina Center for Rehabilitation. Sitting in the medical wing, in my room, I am talking with Fred, my roommate. When I first met him he said "Keep your head up, you’re going to get through this." In the weeks that follow I will learn a new part of myself; that most people are optimistic, but even the strong will require reaffirmation of their views, especially for themselves.

One day I was laying there as the doctors came in to give Fred bad news. They pulled the curtain and I could hear them tell Fred he was dying. Like a child overwhelmed, I walked to him, in front of everyone and hugged him. He would later tell me that the hug meant so much to him. His words meant so much to me. Later Fred and I were talking through the thin sheet that separated us while we lay in our beds. He asked "Dave, do you ever pray to God for you to be healed."

I answered "No, I don't think I have a right to." He asked why? I told him "When the car bomb happened, there was allot that went on, at one point I found myself alone in the middle of all the chaos, head bleeding, me getting dizzy, people screaming and running around, and I asked God to just let me see my kids one last time. Now, I'm not a very religious man Fred, I believe in morals and being good to one another, but in that second, my team came out of nowhere and saved me. I lived and I got to see my girls. Everyday I stay on this earth is a blessing. I have no problem with leaving. When I needed, really needed something, more then myself, I was given it. I can't feel right about asking for anything more, I’m happy."

Fred replied "Dave, you’re very deep and philosophical!" I replied that "Most philosophers are either very wise or full of shit." "Dave, you're not full of shit." Fred said warmly.

Many things while I was in the medical wing changed how I saw my injury. There is always someone else with a more traumatic injury. No ones injury is alike and they have different phases of recovery. But, everyone wants the same thing; understanding, empathy and love.

One day, I woke up to screams, rambling screams. They were nightmarish and agonizing. They sounded like a child's cries. My heart couldn't bare it, so I went looking for the cries. I found them in another room where a son and father were gathered with their mother and wife. She was a stroke victim. The noises out of her mouth were eerily failed attempts to communicate. They scared me as I knew what she was thinking. Sometimes the verbal parts of the brain get fried. I saw it when I first woke up after the bombing, I went to talk but NOTHING but gibberish came out. I looked like a mad man. I grabbed the father and he told me about how she says nothing but this "stuff." I told him "SHE IS IN THERE! In her brain, she is!! She can understand you, she just can't get the right words to come out." He looked at me with hope and had so many questions; he thanked me because he thought she couldn't understand anything.

As I walked back to my room, I started to cry uncontrollably. I didn't know WHY I was crying. It hurt me to see her in the same place I was, the frustrations of my memories of what I had went through years earlier. This is post traumatic stress. Two years later it was hitting me in new ways that made me scared, angry, afraid. To me, I was right back in the middle of Baghdad and the chaos. I learned for me, that I am already very much over-empathetic, taking on to much made me frustrated at my feelings. I would learn to control this is and see it as a blessing. It humbled me!

It was my time to move to the next phase. My transfer to "TLC" the Transitional Living Center at Casa Colina was smooth. My first morning there I was greeted by a woman named Char. She woke me up and said that she had to evaluate my ability to shower. This is normal for every new client. They have to get a base line for what you can and can't do.

Coming from the main medical building, it takes time to adjust to the new routine. Char gave me towels, soap and shampoo and directed me to the showers which were out in the hall. Now, I really didn't like that because I'm used to the shower being IN my room or being at home. The air was cold in the bathroom which irritated me. I turned on the shower and the warmest I could get the water was NOT WARM AT ALL. I was so irritated at being woken up, feeling "made" to take a shower. I put on my cloths and walked out no more then two minutes after I walked in.

Char looked at me with disbelief and said "David, your not taking a shower?" I replied gruffly "No, no I am not, the temperature of the water is unacceptable!" and I walked right into my room. Char said she would get it fixed, and she did. But what had just happened told me allot about myself and my injury. I had gone two years, building up what worked for me in my life; my keys go here, my computer goes there. Because MY schedule was altered it felt VERY upsetting.

From there, it got worse. They didn't understand that my injury was post two years. I had come to Casa Colina because my Cranioplasty had been finished at UCLA, and I needed a place to stay and recoup. So they made long term plans for my care which made me very paranoid that I had gotten myself in too deep and they wouldn't let me leave. This feeling of being trapped made me all the more scared and angry.

The nights were hard on me. My roommate at TLC would snore and yell in his sleep. I would lie in my bed frustrated to tears. I would think "Why am I going through this bullshit because it's NOT helping me." For the first time I was really feeling the PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder they had diagnosed me with two years earlier, or , I was finally noticing it. The day was spent angry and tired. The feeling of isolation was horrible, I felt so alone. I was away from my children and my divorce from their mother was not civil.

One night I had another breakdown. They were always bad, most of the time I went to the laundry room, turned off the lights and cried in a corner. The dark hid me and my feelings and gave me security. This one was different. I had given up. There were no tears, I had broken. I looked at myself in the mirror and a voice came out of my mouth. "GET UP! AND STOP YOUR CRYING! No one is going to understand you like YOU! You can't count on anyone else!" I listened as if someone was talking to me. I thought, "I'm going crazy?!" I contemplated about all the horrible things going on in my life and the miss-perceptions of others. I started to lose control and I heard "WHAT DID I SAY!"

I had broken, and yet my own mind was trying to keep me together. I reflected back to the car bombing, it was the same thing that happened then. It all hit me at once, flash backs of that day. Waking up in the hospital and the last two years, the stress I had gone through. The scar said who I was, it defined me, and without it, no one could give me empathy. Without it, they looked and wondered why I couldn't make sense sometimes.

I was lost. Depression and suicide to me wasn’t some chemical imbalance it was a life expectancy, quality of life thing. How much do I have to look forward to in life, based of the current feelings? What stresses are going to complicate things even more? This leads to a feeling that nothing, money, friends, family is going to be enough. For me, it was thinking that no one would love me or understand me enough to see past my injury and the fact that I have three kids and an ex-wife.

Suicide can be very well thought out. I think most people who consider suicide weigh it out in their mind and they come to a rational (from their point of view) conclusion. That’s why it is so hard to talk people out of it because people who succeed in suicide rarely but themselves in a situation where they can BE talked out of it. It’s not a passing thought; it's a deliberation that has already been thought out. The only way for them to combat it is finding a new angle, one that they did not factor in, in their decision to end their life.* We are almost always too late to intervene in the death of a person who is 100% committed. The seeds of love and friendship have to be water deeply and often or the weeds of doubt will grow in its place.

The truth is; I killed people in Iraq. I don’t have a problem with it. When it happened I didn’t think about it I just reacted to ensure my safety and the safety of others. After it was over and I was back in my room I mentally went through my actions step by step. I prayed for forgiveness. I prayed for their souls and mine and made peace with it. Then, I compartmentalized my thoughts and actions.

My thoughts on how to overcome PTSD (without a brain injury)

Try and figure out what thoughts are causing it and identify how it is making you feel. Sometimes there is a specific scenario from the past that keeps reoccurring.
There is redemptive value in confessing to others what you went through.
Being in a group of people that share the same experiences as you can be rewarding. Team Rubicon is a great resource for many vets.
Forgive! Forgive others and most importantly, yourself. Pray, rationalize the event or do both.
HAVE A MENTOR! Someone you can look up to that can help you, lead you, help you grow as a person.
BE A MENTOR! Take on someone who could use a mentor and help them, lead them and be there for them.
Your life as you knew it may be over but you can have a NEW purpose in life. It may not be easy to find but it IS there. Most of the time you will not choose it. It will choose you and your success will be measured on how well you accept it.

I awoke on my third day and went to the common room and sat down by the fireplace. I was depressed and felt alone. There were many other patients in the room. Most of which were very early in their injuries. All of a sudden I was watching a patient talk to another person. At first I was trying hard to decipher what he was saying, but it was nothing but nonsense. "I know, mall was good, parents said hello, shoes were dirty, really happy, chicken was dry." He blurted out. The other person who was listening just nodded with a raised their eyebrows.

Just then, my life came closer to full circle. I had listened to him and thought "This guy is bonkers." But then it hit me! This guy is ME. I KNOW WHY he is talking like that. His mind is moving faster than his mouth can form the words. He is getting his thoughts out, but his mouth can't keep up, and HE thinks he is making perfect sense. THIS IS ME! This is what I had noticed when people were talking to me and they would get frustrated.

I looked at things that other people were doing and then applied them to my life and the way I was acting or reacting, thinking, talking, and moving. It was something that made sense. WATCH others and learn about yourself. It hit me; Try to understand what they are doing and figure out my own solution to my issues. That was the key to understanding others and more so it's the key to understanding yourself. It's a very painful and introspective growth that is very hard to do.

It was then, that I told my Case Manager I wanted to stay. I didn't need allot of the things that they offered, but I did NEED the environment that they provided. It wasn't the stress of the cold shower water, the roommate or feeling isolated. I took it as a challenge, another snowy hill to climb like back when I was in the Marines. Casa Colina offered me the world, new roommates, private shower. I turned them all down. I would stay right where I was.

When asked why? I said "THIS is helping me. I have gone two years with everything where I put it, how I liked it, using my own strategies. Now it’s two years later, my life was fine before I came here, but now, MY life has been turned upside down and I am going to learn how to deal with THAT stress, the stress of being an adult and not being in control."

Finding control is a hard thing to do when you have PTSD, panic attacks, seizures, OCD and slowed cognitive functions. Typing, right now is tiring. A person without an injury, let alone with one, needs to control their perceptions of life. They also sometimes need a different perception, one to mirror theirs. It is hard not knowing if you are doing the right or wrong thing. Making choices can become difficult.

A person with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) thinks they are thinking cognitively. That's the problem, they are not! To recognize and be unbiased is a life long issue. It takes more then classes and therapy. It requires Cognitive Dissonance to understand what your mind is thinking and what is really happening around you.

Quality of life with a TBI, injury or disease, can be the most important thing of all. With the disabling turn of events that come with the injury, the person's whole life is thrown in to turmoil. For psychologists this is an event that you have read about, talked about and you really think you understand it. No one understands until they have been in that position. All they can do is seek to identify with the person injured.

I was outstanding at what I did for a profession. It was my life's work. Then it was taken away from me in less then a second. What could I want more then what I did? Its like writing your life story and having someone else burn it. It was a steady progression that would have a delightful ending. Now, it's gone. The memories are gone and cannot be replaced. So, what are you to do? How do you go from something you love to loving something new?

This is what it all boils down too. My life has changed and can never be the way I imagined it. I cannot live in that past. It can be filled with regret, blame, anger, depression, suicidal thoughts, and sadness. What I have to do and what all people who are injured or not have to do, is seek a future. Dream and let new things come into your life, more importantly, try new things that you never would have. Use your injury to heal yourself. I love more then I hate my brain damage. It has put me into lives that I would never have been apart of. It showed me who I was and can be.

"My injury is my gift.” I said in a group session. "It has made me who I am.”