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new York – Lt. Brian Bonsignore of the New York Fire Department spent six months working on recovery at Ground Zero after September 11th. His GPS unit marked the exact location of the remains of the victims.
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“You would come home at the end of the day and you had the smell of death on you, your shoes, your skin pores, your hair,” he said.
Bonsignore developed asthma and PTSD. Birthdays of September 11 trigger symptoms of PTSD.
“You get very sharp with people,” he said. “You get very distant from people. I’ve dealt with it by dissociating myself from it, TV, newspapers, events, and if you relive it, it just piles up and piles up and piles up.”
Dr Sandra Lowe heads mental health services for the World Trade Center health program in Mount Sinai.
“Some people actually have what we call their birthday reactions earlier than usual,” Lowe said. “For some, it is because this anniversary comes as part of a pandemic … Some patients have started to isolate themselves further during the pandemic and have really struggled to mobilize. “
This 20th anniversary which comes in the wake of the pandemic is even triggering mental health problems for the first time.
“We had eight new patients, and all of them needed psychiatric treatment,” Lowe said.
For Bonsignore, the memories are so vivid, but he thinks that for others, the memories fade too quickly.
“I think we have to talk about it, which they did,” he said. “They gave their lives, not me.”
And honoring that sacrifice could be another path to healing.
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