Transcript
(gentle piano music)
(pool water splashes)
If I hadn't been treated
for moral injury or PTSD, I'd be divorced,
and I would probably be bitter
and filled with a lot of
resentment towards the Military,
and I probably would be projecting
a lot of that resentment
to a lot of people who
have always loved me.
(water splashing and bubbling)
Therapy saved my life.
(gentle music)
My name is Dr. Irene Zoesch,
and I served in the Army
as a Army Physician,
I had a combat tour in Afghanistan.
(gentle music)
I have been driven to serve
as long as I can remember.
I was in the Girl Scouts,
I was in a Social Service Sorority,
and I was a Peace Corps volunteer.
So for me, I've always had
a core value in service.
(upbeat music)
The Military is a calling
to serve your country
and then being a physician in the Military
to serve the soldiers in
the Army and their families.
(tense music drone)
I was deployed to Afghanistan
as a Battalion Surgeon,
I was in a SCIF, which is a secured area,
and you have the ability
to observe activity in the city,
like watching a television show,
but it was in real time.
(dramatic music)
And so when there would be an explosion,
we on, the medical crew
had to wait to be told
if those wounded met
the rules of engagement.
And the phrase that was
used was entitled personnel,
if they were entitled to that care,
we would go and we would respond,
but if it was not entitled personnel,
we would not go out and deliver that care
while we were witnessing the aftermath,
the wounded that I couldn't help.
Not being able to deliver care
is in conflict with doing no harm,
which is the core principle
of being a physician.
That creates a huge internal conflict,
(river water flowing)
and that really is that
crux of that moral injury
is that internal conflict.
I left Afghanistan severely depressed.
By the time I got home,
I was acutely suicidal.
(morning birds chirping)
Initially, I was treated for PTSD
and I got a little bit better,
but I struggled being able to
articulate things with people
that are very close to me, I, stuck.
And then as we explored other things,
then we started to discuss
what moral injury really is.
(birds chirping)
Moral injury is the sense of
having something happen to you
that goes against your core values.
I did do inpatient treatment
at a VA Women's Treatment Unit
and started to talk about my experiences
in the context of that
conflict of the moral injury
and the things that I witnessed,
and that saved my life.
(gentle acoustic guitar)
I do feel more settled in myself,
I'm coming up on seven
years of the same address,
and prior to moving here,
I had a different address every two years,
almost 20 years of a new
address every two years.
I was always seeking something else,
and once I kind of stopped looking forward
and took a second to look back
to address what I might be running from,
then I was able to do
more of that deeper work
related to the moral injury,
it's so much better now,
to be in a space where I have some roots,
where I've got some stability.
I am still on a mission to
serve, I have not left the VA.
My job is a lot of hats.
It is oversight of all academic trainees
and all research
activities at our local VA
and deliver care to veterans.
And I would not have been able
to deal with the stress of those projects
if I had not had treatment
and gotten better.
I love working in the ED,
there's something new every day. (laughs)
I love taking care of veterans
because we all, at some point,
had the same mission,
to serve our country,
and so it's a thread that
binds all of us together,
regardless of what we did.
(gentle music)
It makes me feel happy to
go to work, it sounds silly,
but it makes me happy that
I can pair up my values
with an agency that has similar values.
(gentle mandolin strums)