P1 First Person: To the disabled police officer: ‘You are not alone’

By Police1 Member Nick Dial

I graduated the police academy in January of 2006. It had been a live in academy, requiring that you stay five days a week with your weekends off. I was a newlywed and faced the challenges of being away from my new wife for eighteen weeks five days a week. This however was worth the sacrifice, I had been ecstatic when I found I had been selected for hire by a local Sheriff’s Office as a Deputy, and my wife had nothing but support for my career to be.

I excelled in the academy, graduating with a 4.0 GPA. I was proud and determined to do well as a police officer and felt strongly about helping others in need. I knew I was not going to become rich by any means from this job, but that was ok. I had a strong desire to be able to look back at my life and feel I made a difference for the better. I had always had strong feelings about protecting those in need, and regardless of the dangers involved, being able to help those in my community was a huge reward that money could never replace. Handing an abused child a teddy bear after responding to a domestic violence call and being there to help them in their time of need is an experience in itself that can never be measured in financial terms. This is why we do this job, and it begins to define who we are as individuals.

If there was ever a quote that defined the ambition of a police officer, for me it is this:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
— Edmund Burke

The first time I heard this quote I was inspired, once it’s in your blood, you are never the same. Just like the athlete has an internal driving force to exercise and compete, the officer has that internal force that pushes them to want to help. If there is a cry for help in the middle of the night, we want to be there.

I later transferred to a city municipality. At the age of 24, my wife was pregnant, and I was a father to be. We had just purchased our first home within the city and things couldn’t have been more perfect. I was a five minutes’ drive from the station, and would not have to worry about a long commute home after pulling a fourteen hour shift on graveyard. I loved my new department, it was smaller than I was used too, but it had somewhat of a family feel that was very appealing to me. The sergeants were attentive and it showed how they really cared for their officers on the road. Soon after working there, they held a training class for officers to get qualified on use and carry of an Electronic Control Device (ECD). We sat down, watched the video, and were encouraged to experience the effects of the device.

While I was not jumping for joy to be zapped, I surely did not want to be viewed as a sissy! Besides, I was young and invincible...right? I had an officer on each side of me to ensure I didn’t fall. They hooked the device up to my back and let it fly. All I can say was WOW! I felt like I had been folded in half and stuffed under the bed. When the ordeal ended, it was clear things were not right. My back was in horrible pain, and was throbbing as if I was being attacked by a jack hammer. My Lt. noticed I wasn’t recovering like the others had, and asked if I was ok. Of course, I said I was. I was not going to give away that I was hurt, I’m a tough guy remember?

The next morning was not so great. I had been up all night in excoriating pain. I ended up sleeping at an odd angle in a lazy boy reclining chair to take pressure off from my back. I got about three hours sleep, woke up and got ready for work. When I came to work, I had mentioned to my sergeant nonchalantly how I was hurting. He told me I should immediately get it looked at. I was quite surprised at how concerned he seemed, but I did as he said and went in to get it checked out. Turns out I had a severe back stain to the thoracic spine region. Due to the fact I did not want to miss work, especially as a new officer at this department, I continued on working and decided to deal with the pain.

It was about six weeks after my injury that I began to notice strange symptoms coming on. I would have the occasional spouts of dizziness accompanied by a brief shortness of breath. I shook it off and kept working as if nothing happened. Finally, one night while toward the end of my shift, I responded to a domestic violence call as a backup officer. While at the scene, I was standing outside when everything began to spin. I became dizzy, shaky, and was terrified as to what was going on. Never before had I experienced such a sensation and total loss of sensory input. I managed to clear the call, get off duty and went home. When I arrived home, my wife could tell something was wrong. With my symptoms failing to reside, she drove me to the emergency room to be seen. This is where my Journey as a disabled officer truly began.

I laid there in the hospital bed with anticipation as to what was going on with me. When the doctor finally came in, he stated everything looked fine and could find nothing wrong. I sat there both puzzled and amazed that symptoms so strong and terrifying could not be explained. I left the hospital in sour disappointment and headed home confused and rattled by my experience. The next day, things did not get better as I had expected. I woke up feeling fatigued, cloudy, and vulnerable. I felt as if I was in a dream, and everything around me was foggy and surreal. I thought perhaps I should go for a walk. I walked out the front door and attempted to go get the mail. I made it about twenty feet before I was stopped dead in my tracks. My surroundings were unstable, foggy, and left me with a feeling of being disoriented. I turned around to head back into the house, but fell to my knees as I made my way back in.

Here I was, a young 25 years old police officer, in great shape, and I was crawling to get into my house! It was clear something was seriously wrong, and my quest to find an answer began. I went to my doctor who ordered everything from EKG’s, EEG’s, CT’s of the brain, heart, lungs, etc. They could find nothing clearly wrong. I became more discouraged and frustrated by the lack of information. If there was nothing wrong, why am I feeling this way? Soon after came the “it’s all in your head” mantra. Apparently many times when some doctors draw a blank as to what is happening, this becomes a popular thing to say. Of course, I knew better than this, and continued my search for answers.

This whole ordeal began to weigh heavily on my job performance and relationships at work. I began to miss a lot of work as a result, and it was affecting my popularity at work. The other officers began to view me in a negative light. They knew I had claimed I was having health issues, but they didn’t understand the extent of it or how it was affecting me. One reason for the frustration was due to the fact that we were short staffed. When I had to go home due to my condition, or was unable to make it into work, this meant that others on my squad had to pick up the slack and make up for the calls of service I would not be there to take, resulting in an increased workload for the rest. I understood this and did not take lightly the fact I was putting a burden on my squad. This greatly affected my self-esteem along with my sense of self-worth to the department.

I had been doing well and excelled while in Field Training. Now I was letting my colleagues and command staff down, and there was nothing I could do about it. If there is one thing an officer cannot stand, its loss of control and the ability to fix the situation. Here I was, trying to live up what was expected of me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My body had enacted a mutiny on my spirit, and no matter how bad I wanted to operate the ship, the crew refused. In spirit, I wanted nothing more than to go back to work and provide for my squad, department, and family. However, without my body’s cooperation, I was running on borrowed time and this reality became clearer with every passing day. I continued to push myself to get by day after day, but the more I pushed, the more I began to slip. The brain fog caused me to become forgetful. At times I would forget to turn in a report, or forget to complete a task requested by my sergeant. I had always been a happy upbeat guy, always joking around and laughing with those around me. Soon I became quiet and inverted. My sergeant asked if things were ok, he had noticed that I was not myself, and showed concern. I told him I was fine; however I was far from it. In fact, I was waging a war within myself, and it appeared I was losing.

As time went on battling this condition, I began to battle with my reputation as well. Soon, some officers at the department began to doubt me as an officer and my ability. Despite the fact I was able to maintain good patrol stats for my days on shift, I began to hear rumors that some felt I was putting up a front and faking my condition. I was devastated when hearing this. I had moved here with my wife, bought a home, and had planned to be here for the long haul. With my wife 8 months pregnant and ready to bear our child at any time, why would I risk everything, including my home? However, when faced with added pressures, people don’t often concern themselves with such logic. All they knew is that when I was not on shift that meant more work for them. To be honest, I don’t blame them for feeling this way. I understand the stresses that come with working extra calls and hours, and it can wear a person’s patience thin. What struck me at the heart however, was the cold front I received from some I perceived as being friends.

Many I had enjoyed being around, and thought of as friends were nowhere to be found. It felt as if they had written me off, and that sense of abandonment caused me more distress than this health problem ever could. I was even told that one officer I worked with stated he would not speak to me until I “earned his respect back.” Apparently becoming ill was enough to fall out of grace with some around me. This caused even more anxiety for me. On the outside I looked healthy enough, but on the inside I was falling apart and in agony. The command staff was very understanding, and my sergeants went out of their way to help in any way they could, however this provided little comfort when I knew some of the fellow patrol officers thought low me. I found myself slipping into a depression. I was struggling to keep up at work, I had no answers as to why this was happening, and the future of my ability to provide for my family was uncertain. What was I going to do?

On March 28th 2007, I became the proud father of a perfect little girl. For the first time in my life I experienced the amazing emotions of parenthood. The delivery of my child had conveniently called me away distracting me from my personal struggle at work, but it had been short lived. The very next day, while lying next to my wife and daughter in the hospital, my cell phone rang. It was my sergeant and he stated that they were short on manpower and really needed me to come back to work as soon as possible. He asked if he could count on me. Of course, I wanted to live up to his expectations and that of my squad, so I told him I would be there. Rather than take any paternity leave, I returned to work to help my already-strained squad. I continued to work battling my health as well as the streets.

Soon, however, it became apparent that this may not be a safe or smart thing to do. After it appeared my symptoms became worse after eating certain things, I went to see endocrinologists. They ran labs and found that my hormone panel was severely out of harmony. My Cortisol was low, my adrenal glands were sluggish, my blood sugars were erratic, and my testosterone was low. After finding this out, I spoke with many specialists concerning this, and they were baffled as to why a young man in my shape would be suffering from severe hormone imbalances. Many of them asked if I had experienced any major trauma before my onset of symptoms. I explained that I had been subjected to training which resulted in a back injury. After hearing this, many doctors felt I was suffering from what is known as a hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal-axis deficiency, as well as an autoimmune disease, including fibromyalgia and chronic Epstein Barr.

They explained that just like a traumatic event to the body can cause the onset of an autoimmune disease such as diabetes, the injury I sustained and shock to the nervous from the ECD was no different. Everybody’s physiological make up differs, so the effects on the body can be tricky, especially when electricity is involved. The ECD and any perceived negativity surrounding it for many in law enforcement is taboo. There seems to be a sense of obligation to defend the device no matter what the circumstances may be. I was even ridiculed by fellow officers about sustaining an injury even though they themselves had never taken a full hit from the ECD.

I’ve personally met other officers hurt in training by this device. One was only 25 years old when he suffered three fractured vertebras in his neck as a result from training, officially ending his career. While I think it’s a useful tool and plays an important role, I do understand the fact that like many other less lethal devices, there are risks involved, many times, these risks are unknown. I have learned this the hard way. While many may want to argue this, all I can say is, take it up with the doctors who make this diagnosis and many other officers who have become disabled due to an ECD-related injury.

I was informed by my doctor that the low Cortisol was a concern because it regulates many things in the body such as shock and inflammation. I asked what would happen if I was hurt at work, i.e. shot. She stated it would not be good, and my body could fall into a status of shock, resulting in death due to the inability to compensate with adequate amounts of Cortisol. This raised some serious questions in my mind on what I should do about my job.

While ending my shift one morning I was dispatched to a call of an unresponsive man in a vehicle. After arriving on scene it had become apparent that the man was deceased and most likely had been since the night before. After securing the scene I returned to the station. I was getting ready to debrief the morning shift and went into dispatch to retrieve the logs. I began to feel dizzy as if I were going to pass out. The dispatcher looked at me and said I was pale and did not look well. I walked down the hall only to stop short and ask my sergeant to call emergency medical services. Ten minutes later, I found myself in front of the morning shift sitting in a chair, no shirt, hooked up to an EKG, and getting the full triage by EMS. While it was silly to feel such a way, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. I felt weak, vulnerable, and all of this was in plain view for my colleagues to witness. While overall I appeared to be ok, they said my blood pressure was very high and should get to a doctor. Later, after some testing, my BP appeared to be fine, and chronic high BP was not a concern, just simply another incident of terror with little insight as to why or how to fix the problem.

A few weeks later I was dispatched to a domestic violence call. While there I began to become dizzy, shaky, and thought I was going to black out. It had become clear to me that no matter how bad I wanted to keep working, no matter how bad I wanted to prove myself, my body was finished. It had let me down, and no longer was willing to humor me in my continued pursuit of redemption to myself or my department. The war I had been waging was coming to end, and I had to accept the fact I would need to sign papers of surrender. I thought long and hard about this decision. What would I do? How would I provide for my family?

However, it was the bigger questions that made those first questions irrelevant. Could I live with myself if a fellow officer was hurt or killed? What good at all would I be to my department or my family if I were killed? Being a street cop requires you to be on the ball. You have to be ready for anything, and if you are battling a health condition that detracts away from your ability to perform, you not only put yourself at risk, you put those around you and the public at risk as well. Finally, I concluded for me to continue to push the issue was reckless and selfish; I went to my Lt. and explained my dilemma. He understood my feelings and listened well. He encouraged me to stick it out and stated they would like for me to stay, but I knew I had to focus on myself and get my health squared away if I were ever going to continue my career. We shook hands, parted as friends, and I began the long walk down the hall as a medically resigned officer.

There was some relief in the fact that I no longer had to worry about letting down my squad, however what I wasn’t prepared for was the emotional impact of no longer being able to work. I was so sick with erratic symptoms, I could not even have a light normal job due to the fact I was simply unreliable. Many times throughout the day I would have to lie down and wait for my flare up of symptoms to pass. It would stop me cold in my tracks and leave me waiting for relief to come. While this was hard in of itself, being ripped from my career was even more painful. I would lie awake at night, thinking about calls I was missing and wishing more than ever to be able to put on my uniform and go back to work. I began to miss everything about my job. It had become such a cornerstone of whom I was that I felt as if there was a huge hole in me, and everything that went missing with that hole was effecting me severely. If this is who I am, who am I now? I am a protector, what does a protector do with no one to protect? This caused me to slip into a great loss of identity.

I became very depressed, and the happy person I had been before was not looking back at me in the mirror. Instead, I saw a man who was lost and had more questions than answers. When I became ill, I lost 30 pounds in three months along with my muscle mass. I could not even fit into my uniform properly without excess material. I tried compensating by doing reserve duty, but this ultimately proved to be futile. I could not even muster the strength to get my required sixteen hours a month of patrol time in. With my wife being a stay at home mom, and myself as the bread winner of the family, I could not even provide for my own household anymore. Our new home was going to be lost to foreclosure, and there was nothing I could do to fix the situation. For someone who was use to going to work and fixing problems, I was again assaulted by the reality this was something I could not fix. This caused rocky waves in our marriage and we really had to pull together as a couple to make it through. Eventually my wife had to step up as the primary income earner for the household while I took on the role of homemaker. That in itself was a heavy psychological blow to my self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

One of the hardest parts for me to deal with was the loss of friendships. I always tried to maintain a healthy balance between my law enforcement friends and non-law enforcement friends. Sometimes officers have a tendency to surround themselves with only that of friends in law enforcement, or they lose touch with their old friends when they get into this career. While you work, it’s normal to have good working relationships and friendships with those at your agency. In fact, you could even say at times these friendships are taken for granted. While working, I enjoyed a good relationship with many at the department, but as my health declined, so did the connection between my colleagues.

I went from feeling like one of the guys to feeling like an outcast. Going from socially accepted to loner is a hard thing to deal with, and I felt feelings of anxiety I hadn’t dealt with since junior high school. I was in with the “click” so to speak, and now I felt isolated and shut out. The phone stopped ringing, the texts messages trickled to a halt, and eventually any reminder of the fact I served as an officer was limited by my memories and the unused uniform in the closet collecting dust. At times I have reached out, called, or texted to see how old colleagues have been. The few special ones I still hear from. The majority sadly faded away along with my health. Eventually, I was forced to get on disability and have been fighting my poor health for five years and counting. The question for officers who experience this through a disability resulting from ill health or injury is, “What comes next? What does one do to make tomorrow the day to look forward to rather than relive the days of the past before you were disabled?”

For me, the key has come down to family and keeping busy. Remember that family is number one. Without my wife there by my side when I hit my downward spiral, I would have been flying blind and may have ended up in an even darker place. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, there is no shame in wanting to talk.

I have spoken to other disabled officers, and the fact there are others just like us who have gone through the exact same roller coaster of emotions is important. You’re not weak, nor are you a machine. You are human and we must remember to allow ourselves to listen to the emotional side of us from time to time. When you work as an officer, you are subjected to horrific things, and see things that many will never experience in a life time. You become all too good at shutting down that natural emotional response one gets to stress, horror and tragedy. You learn to push emotions to the back burner and lock it away for another day. When you deal with a stressful scene, an officer must be able to be the calm one that functions while everyone else loses their cool. If you lose your calm along with everyone else, then you are no good to anyone and the situation will not get resolved.

Remember to continue to challenge yourself. Many of us who went into law enforcement did so setting the bar of achievement high for ourselves; it takes a lot to become an officer and is earned through hard work and dedication. Take that work ethic and apply it to other aspects of your life. I did so by touching up on things I had not done for a long time. I started to paint again and wrote a children’s book titled a “Full Moons Night”. It can be found today for sale on Amazon.com. When I became an officer I had no college degree. I realized that this is something I would have liked to have done, but the hours I was working along with having a family made it difficult. When I became ill, I decided I would not sit idly by and do nothing. I may have fallen victim to a health condition, but this did not mean I had to be a victim! I decided to go to school and earn my degree.

Today I am wrapping up a Bachelor of Science degree in Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. While applying myself, using the discipline that the police force taught me, and working when I felt well enough to get my work done, I have managed a 3.98 GPA and have enjoyed the honor of being inducted into four separate honor societies. I also learned that I enjoy writing, which resulted in the creation of the website www.circlethewagons.net. Here, I enjoy writing articles on many topics I take an interest in, which helps keep me busy when things are slow. I have a beautiful wife who enjoys the fact I am alive and home, and wonderful little girl who loves her daddy. While I may never be able to get well enough to go back to patrol, which I love with all my heart, I can still take the essence of what makes a good officer, apply this, adapt, and overcome. Take what you have learned and run with it. Perhaps you can take you knowledge and educate others who are going where you have been. Educating others or even cadets who are going to the streets is always a worthy cause.

In conclusion, I was faced with some hard decisions, I pictured serving out my career for the long haul, but life can be a funny thing. We must play the cards we are dealt and most importantly, never give up. Remember back to your defensive tactics training, you are never dead. It is not over until it’s over, and becoming disabled is no different. You may be down but you’re not out. Fight back, pick yourself up and come back stronger than before. It’s easy to let the macho alpha ego get in the way of reaching out, but it’s important to remind ourselves we are human! This is why we became police officers in the first place is it not? Did we not answer the call to that human emotion to want to help others in need? I’m not saying you won’t miss the job, I’m only saying we must change our focus. I would be a liar if I told you I still don’t long to put on my uniform and climb into a patrol car. I miss it every day of my life, and even more so I miss the camaraderie I had with my fellow officers.

What I am saying is that you are still relevant, you are still an asset to the community, and your impact on the world is not over. I realized from my ordeal that there was not much out there recognizing the officer who becomes disabled and feels forgotten. If you are reading this and you know a disabled officer, reach out to them. If you are an officer or part of a department reading this, reach out to the disabled cops in your community, see how they are doing.

If you are reading this and are a disabled officer, I wrote this for you. I am here, others like me are here, and you are not alone.