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Paranoia: baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others.
We all fear something in our lives, but with PTSD the fears are usually excessive and often baseless. Imagine going through your entire life never trusting a living soul, not even members of your own family. This is the world those who suffer from PTSD live in. I could have easily said: "Welcome to my world" whenever someone would ask me: "So, what's wrong with Ron?"
As a young woman, Ron often was jealous and always suspicious of me. If I was later coming home from the grocery store than he thought, often due to weather or long lines, he was jealous. He was certain I had met up with some other guy and he often flew into a rage if I disputed his accusations. When dating, mild jealousy seemed flattering to me. But after marriage, it was anything but and it grew worse as time wore on.
Once we divorced and I remarried, left to his own devices, Ron didn't fair well on his own. Being alone left him with too much time on his hands, too much time to think and to imagine all sorts of things that were not true. He got married, for about one minute, to a woman who was apparently not good for him. From what people told me, she had her mental issues too and was looking for someone she thought had money to support her and to possibly inherit if Ron should meet his demise. The demise part is the operative word, in her case. While married, Ron allegedly tried to shoot himself. He missed and shot himself in the neck leaving an almost mortal wound. He had texted the Yates County sheriff's department, telling them to come find his body. Once he was wounded, it seems the new wife did not bother to call 911 on her own. All the people I talked to have expressed the opinion that maybe, just maybe, Ron did not shoot himself, but had help. When someone has PTSD, it is very easy to work on their mind and to place all kinds of notions in their head. They are quite vulnerable to suggestions, good or bad. Small town Penn Yan is full of opportunists of both genders, so it didn't take long for them to crawl out of the woodwork. The oddest thing was the woman he married just so happened to have been married to another man who committed suicide by shooting himself. Odd, isn't it?
Ron ended up in the hospital in a live or die situation and his children took the reins and made sure that bad union was dissolved by way of an annulment. She allegedly had tried to remove money from Ron's banking account, but unsuccessfully. All this took place after he had received his big retroactive settlement of money for his service related disability.
Our oldest son and his wife moved in when Ron recovered and went home, so they could care for him. That worked out pretty well, for a while. But, the paranoia took hold once again, partly due to his PTSD and exacerbated by his now permanent, injury from the shooting. He finally accused our son of all sorts of unfounded wrongs and told them to leave his house. They did. After that, Ron went through a series of VA visiting nurses, they lasted for a while and he would always fire them due to his trust issues. He ended up distancing himself from all of his family of origin as well as his children, certain, in his head, they all were not to be trusted.
This is where the elder abuse started and where a private caregiver and her sister-in-law worked their way into Ron's life and home under the guise they could be trusted caregivers. That fact could not be further from the truth. So, for some reason, Ron hired the caregiver and stopped trusting the VA nurses who were trained in caring for him. but remember, it is very easy to work on the mind of a person suffering from PTSD and apparently that is exactly what the private home care worker did.
Two years before Ron supposedly committed suicide and succeeded, this private worker started working there. Well, once Ron was dead, his children found out that this private worker must have planned to steal his house and everything in it from the minute she walked in his door. We know this because the date on his new will was about the time she started working there. she wasted no time in enlisting a crooked law firm in Penn Yan to have Ron make out a new will, Ron was in bad physical shape, so she conveniently had those crooked lawyers come to his home to make out a new will. It is no coincidence that the worker and her crooked sister-in-law made themselves sole benefactors of everything Ron owned. Lock, stock and barrel. She had, in two years, successfully convinced Ron his entire family was not to be trusted. So divide and conquer was her M.O.
Last summer, Ron supposedly was able to purchase, over the Internet, a black powder pistol and shoot himself in the head. Seriously? His sisters and mother told us that Ron had the use of only one hand, walked with a cane and his other had suffered such spasms that he could not hold anything. Now this guy, in this condition, supposedly was able to load a black powder pistol, with a ramrod, hold it to his head and shoot himself? We all find that hard to believe. But conveniently, the worker had a bout of amnesia, because she could not recall the children's names or phone numbers to call his family until three days after his death. By the time the kids found out, she had also conveniently sent his body to be cremated, thus vanquishing all and any evidence of how he really was able to commit suicide. Now of course, the State Police and Yates County Sheriff did not call for an autopsy, all botched any and all investigations and all of this sounds mighty fishy to all of his family.
Our oldest son had to hire a lawyer to obtain personal, family items. He could not get any contents of the house because the worker and her sister-in-law had wiped out everything from the home. This is a case of elder abuse, if not assisted suicide, which, my friends is as illegal as murdering a person. Why was there no investigation? Why was there no autopsy done? Why was it three whole days Before his children were notified of his death? Ron also had our son install surveillance cameras and video. ALL of which mysteriously disappeared. Strange? To say the least.
Upon our own investigation, we have since discovered that this worker had also obtained another house and property from yet another unsuspecting elderly client. Our son also found out from his lawyer, those crooked lawyers in Penn Yan who Claimed Ron was of 'sound mind and body' when crippled and suffering for YEARS from mental illness, had been named in another dispute of aiding someone else with stealing from another family.
All of this is going into my latest book and my family have not concluded our own investigation into this suicide that smells like a rat in the wood pile. Time will tell and hopefully we can pick up the ball the authorities seemed to have dropped.
The conclusion of this blog is this: If anyone you know suffers from PTSD, Never, Ever allow them to push you away. Always stay in close touch because as they grow older, elder abuse is SO EASY for those private home health crooks to swoop in, place notions into the sufferer's head and Steal Everything they can get. Stay focused and Stay alert. But believe me, my children are Not finished with this investigation.
