B. Wayne Quist

My Story – B. Wayne Quist

My first PTSD “out of body” derealization experience occurred in Vietnam a few days after I returned to my home base. I struggled to work my way through the unusual and frightening experience of unreality, distortion, dissociation, and derealization. It was like a circuit breaker had popped in my brain. I felt detached from myself and my body, as though viewing reality from a distance, out of my body. It was an unbearable feeling that induced panic. I thought I was deranged and going mad. I had a loaded .45 and thought of killing myself. I told no one, not even my wife or close friends; and not the flight surgeon or my squadron commander, for fear of being grounded and taken off flying status. I slowly worked my way out of it by routinely using alcohol as a coping device, and never told anyone of the experience, until I met Dr. Steve Lansing 50 years later. It was during the Tet Offensive and Siege of Khe Sahn in February 1968. I had landed from an “Air Evac” aeromedical evacuation mission at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam. Dozens of dead and wounded were lying on the tarmac, waiting to be loaded onto evacuating aircraft. Enemy mortars were exploding on the ramp and a young Marine called out to me for a cigarette. He said he was from Minnesota, and I said, “Me too.” I found a C-ration with a pack of Lucky Strikes, but when I got back to the badly wounded Marine, he was convulsing, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. He died in my arms as we moved him. It happened again a decade later in the Middle East. That’s when writing became therapy for my PTSD.