Medical Release from Service
Heroes Remember
I didn’t just retire, I was medically released from the
Canadian Forces because of an operational stress injury
that stems from mostly to do with my first tour, but the
subsequent tours, going through traumatic events, the fatigue,
the grief and the moral injury of not being able to intervene
in the ethnic cleansing. By the time I finished Kosovo in
1999, I ’d done four tours in seven and a half years and I
was burnt. I was totally depleted and when I walked in the
medical system for help it was discovered that I was dealing
with post traumatic stress disorder. So I didn’t leave the
military the way I wanted to. I wanted to stay in the military
for 35 years, I only lasted 17 because I got injured.
So integrating back into civilian society with a mental
health issue, I mean a soldier becoming a civilian is tough
enough. A soldier becoming a civilian with a mental health
issue is extremely difficult and it’s taken me a long time to
kind of, you know, come back to being a civilian again.
But I say that and I don’t think I’ve ever really been a
civilian, I mean once you’re a soldier, you’re always a soldier.
Even as a Veteran, I still carry myself as a soldier.
I still conduct myself as a soldier and I’m always tapped in
to the soldier network and if there’s something Canadians are
doing overseas militarily I’m always there. First one to read
it in the morning in the news. So it’s kind of weird,
I really don’t think of myself as a civilian.
I think of myself as a Veteran. You know, I was a soldier,
now I’m a Veteran. The last time Ross MacDonald was a civilian
was when I was 19 years old. So for the first couple of years
of my rotation out of the military and integration into
civilian society as a Veteran it was very difficult,
but now with so much awareness on mental health in the forces.
There’s so much more resiliency training. There’s so much
more talk about mental health that the stigma of the 80's
and 90's is slowly dissipating away.
You know, for me now it’s, you know I’ve come full circle to
love my regiment again cause my regiment didn’t dump me.
The system was what it was then and now they’ve learned from
mistakes and what I’m able to do is reach out to serving members
and Veterans that served in the time frame I did and as well
as younger soldiers now just to educate them on taking care of
this, taking care of your head. You know, as well as taking
care of yourself physically. It’s really neat that now I’ve
been able to go through all these, you know, pitfalls of
suffering from operational stress injury and come out the other
side stronger than ever but also, you know, the drive
to make sure that everyone takes care of themselves,
not just physically but mentally.
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