Day 5 of 22 in the 22 Veteran Suicides a day Awareness Challenge

And for me a first time obstacle... There are people in the house... namely my son and his friend who is a girl who I do not know if she is a girlfriend or not... (it is not clear if he knows or not, either).



This makes the kitchen counter a less user friendly place for this... think think think...



And a decision is made... the dryer is the same height as the counter and had the bonus quality of having slightly rounded edges! Okay! Here goes...



I still had to split it in two, but the lack of hand pain DID help immensely. Also, the washer noise next to me might have drowned out and grunting, gasping or heaving noises.



Part of this challenge has been to nominate a new person to join this every day. So far I've done this on Facebook and nominated:



Jackie: my buddy here in Michigan

Jeff: one of my writing friends in Missouri

Tammy: a friend in Florida

Linda: a friend in Arizona

Todd: a friend in Washington State (where you only say Washington... its stateness being redundnant—the DC Washington gets a DC after it)



Today I am going to add Alex Cavanaugh: Alex, you can use Twitter instead of FB and you can do it however you want. MOST people pose a video of them doing the pushups, but you can see the work-around I've devised, so however you go is all good. (maybe a video of your knees and feet? I know you are camera shy)





My image of Alex's push-ups





So I have a friend (two actually) who are psychologists for VA systems and Patti, who practices in Texas, suggested I include Military Sexual Assault, as people who have experienced it are at significantly increased risk in the Military.



The VA statistics show one woman in four in the military experiences sexual assault, and one man in a hundred. The rates are higher even than college students for women, possibly because of the ratio of men to women. A person's personal history and the context and consequences of the assault make responses vary greatly.



The symptoms listed for MST are as follows:



Strong emotions

Feelings of numbness

Trouble sleeping

Difficulties with attention, concentration, and memory

Problems with alcohol or other drugs

Difficulty with things that remind them of their experiences of sexual trauma

Difficulties with relationships

Physical health problems