The US Army sent my son to Iraq and
brought me someone else home. My son, PJ Banner, came home suffering
and broken, living in the darkness of PTSD. Nighttime was the worst
for PJ and from day one he would have horrible nightmares, sweats, he
would wake up screaming and crying. The nights he didn’t sleep
were because he didn’t want to go to bed and sleep; he was afraid
to dream. There were nights I would get up hearing him walking round
the house. I held him in my arms one night and he cried and he cried.
I said PJ what’s wrong. ” I can’t get the kids out of my mind
mom.” The kids who he gave candy to and had befriended in Iraq
were killed by a suicide bomber and he had to help clean up their
body parts. He could not erase those images from his mind. He would
scream in his nightmares. He cried uncontrollably at night. I would
ask him why he wouldn’t go to bed to get some sleep. He would go
days with sporadic sleep. He would tell me he didn’t like the
sleeping meds they gave him because he didn’t like how it made him
feel the next day. He would wake up feeling groggy, tired and out of
it. Yet when he didn’t take the sleeping pills, he would not sleep
because he was afraid to close his eyes because the nightmares would
torture him. I know when he’d hear a loud noise he would jump or
jerk, not in the usual way. He was terrified and easily startled and
as time went by it became worse.
I want to talk about all the
medications he was on. He had a box that was full of medication that
he was prescribed. Stacey now has this. Every time he went to the
VA it seemed like they changed his medication. I questioned him all
the time about his clinic visits. One time they changed his meds and
he was not acting right so I made him call the clinic. He felt like
he was zoned out if he took certain kinds of meds. He didn’t want
to take them and be zoned out but Dr. Perry would convince him to try
it or just switch it up again. She had him on double the normal dose
of Celexa, which was at toxic levels in his body. He was on 80 mg of
Celexa with Seroquil and 3 other ant-depressants floating around in
his system. There was concern that the VA had put him back on
Seroquel. He had taken Seroquel before and had gotten extremely
erratic in his behavior and was told not to take it again due to the
side effects. The ball was dropped, the VA did not ensure that my son
was safe, he was not given proper medical care and his doctor gave
him a death sentence. His mental health continued to decline. NO ONE
did anything to help my sick son.
He always saw the same doctor, Dr.
Angela Perry, so there should have been absolutely no excuse for not
knowing his previous history. He was taking 21 pills per day
from the VA alone!!!! 32 years old. You do the math. She was my
son’s drug dealer, the person who is responsible for his death.
PJ’s wife, Stacey would call and leave message after message with
Dr. Perry’s nurse begging them to stop giving him all the pills
they prescribed him, to please help him, she would tell them how sick
he was. No one helped; they just continued handing out hundreds of
pills a month. They had him on pain pills for no valid reason, just
because he asked for them. They had taken the pain pills from him at
one point when Stacey made such a fuss and then turned around and
gave them to him again within a month. Instead of giving him Vicodin
they bumped it up to Oxycodone. He made multiple trips to the ER
complaining of asthma but he would tell them his back or head, or
some body part was hurting him. He was seeking pain pills. All of
his ER visits were sent to the VA notifying them of his office visit.
Within six weeks right before he died he had been to the ER three
times. He had also visited the VA during that time. He got a bottle
of 150 pain pills April 29th and there was not one pain
pill left in the bottle by the time he died on May 6. They gave him
all the pain pills he wanted; he thought they would numb his pain.
A few months before he passed away,
PJ had been inpatient at the VA in Salisbury for only a few days, but
it didn’t help at all. He was on more medication by time he got
out. He never had any phone calls or follow-up from the substance
abuse counselor, Cindy or Chi-Chi from the VA. Why didn’t he have a
case worker? Why would the VA release him when he threatened to kill
his boss at Kmart which resulted in his job loss and another weekend
stint in Salisbury? Why didn’t they realize that he was sick and
needed help? Why release an emotionally unstable man who was
suffering so terribly from his PTSD? He kept seeking help and it
turned out to be in vain.
It got to a point where he wasn’t
taking care of himself at all. He got tired of taking all the pills.
He would go from a high energy straight down to low with terrible
mood swings. Even PJ said “mom they have me on too many pills.”
He admitted he was not in a good place. He admitted he was an
addict and he told me “the VA made me an addict and I don’t know
how to get out of this.” He went back to the VA every three months
for a very long time. I was so worried d about all the medication he
was on that I kept up with and divided his medications for him. Every
time you turned around he was having his meds changed. How would you
know how it was working because he wasn’t on it long enough? His
depression worsened, and he was spiraling down even further.
As he progressively got worse, he
started to gravitate to people he thought were his friends, but were
not a good influence or would hole himself up in the house. There
were times when he didn’t take a shower for two weeks because he
got to where he just didn’t care anymore. He would stay in his
room and just zone out or be on so much medicine he would just pass
out from all the chemicals in his body. I had talked to Stacey when
PJ would go through this and I would tell her he had no desire to do
anything. She would once again call the VA to let them know how he
was behaving and would beg them to help him. There were times when I
would try to wake him up for work and he wouldn’t even open his
eyes. He said he couldn’t. He would snore so loudly that I could
hear him clear on the other side of the house with the door shut. I
am pretty sure he was at one point diagnosed with sleep apnea. The
VA could give him all those pills but couldn’t provide him with a
CPAP machine to help him breathe during his sleep. This sure didn’t
help his grogginess during the day on top of the medications, the
lack of sleep, etc. He was a walking zombie.
He tried desperately to get his life
together, to find a job, to function more normally but he just kept
getting knocked down. PJ desperately wanted to be the father and
husband he had been before. PJ went down to employment security
commission several times and they couldn’t find him a job. No one
even followed up with him. They didn’t care. He felt like a
failure. . I have a letter he wrote saying he was a loser saying he
couldn’t get a job, lost his wife and kids, couldn’t pay child
support, and couldn’t pay his bills. He felt like a loser…..he
was in such a deep dark place and could not find his way out.
PJ had attended school when he
returned home but quit due to transportation issues and his PTSD.
When he had to do oral presentations he would get so nervous unlike
he ever had before he went to Iraq. He would sweat and shake and
almost throw up from his anxiety. It all became too much for him.
Then he got a call from on e of his teachers…PJ really enjoyed
school when he wasn’t standing up I front of everyone and when his
meds were working. He was so excited after the call. He told me mom
“I am gonna go back to school”. They were waiving whatever money
he owed to the school so he could go back. He thought his life would
finally get back on track. He only had 2 semesters to go to receive
his Criminal Justice degree. This was two months before he died. The
army career was his livelihood and as much as the experience in Iraq,
them sending him home destroyed his plans, ruined his chance of a
long-term career. Many times PJ mentioned to me that the main reason
he joined the military is so that if anything were to happen to him
that his wife and children would be taken care of. Well, guess what?
That didn’t happen. The VA failed him in life and death.
PJ’s mom (Paul Banner, Jr)
Judith T. Jackson
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