Skip to content

I was running on sleep deprivation.

Curtis Thompson, US Army 1968 - 1969, talks about how he knew he had PTSD.

Transcript

Unknown places, time zone changes that affect my sleep,

which is not good, can be very, very bad.

An extremely unpleasant event took place on a work assignment

where I flew to the Midwest week after week and then

on to the East Coast and back to the West Coast

and so I was running on sleep deprivation.

One evening in a strange place, which is very difficult for me

to adjust to this day, at about two o'clock

in the morning I awoke to loud screaming voices in Vietnamese.

I didn't sleep any more that night.

It was just casual laborers who worked

at the hotel having an argument outside the window near my room.

But between that and the hot smell of the parking lot

that was the same material as the tarmac at the airports

in Vietnam, I simply had to go in

and excuse myself from my assignments.

And it unfortunately was not something my employer understood

at all.

I'm hoping things are little better

and people are a little better educated

and frankly the combination of the travel,

the sleep deprivation and the other things

that I should have sought and received accommodation

for as an American Disabilities Act accommodation,

which I later did and the company yielded

and life was a little better.

It was another learning experience.

Published At