Good afternoon, members of the committee.
My name is David Bona. I'm a veteran who served my country for 14 years. I served in the North Saskatchewan Regiment, the Royal Canadian Regiment, and the Canadian Airborne Regiment. I've been operationally deployed to Cyprus, Saudi Arabia for the first Gulf War, Somalia, and Rwanda.
I've been diagnosed with both PTSD from our operational deployments and an acquired brain injury from mefloquine that I was given while in Somalia and Rwanda. My career ended due to the poor coping mechanisms I developed to deal with the debilitating effects of both the PTSD and the acquired brain injury from mefloquine.
I was court-martialled and released from the forces with a 5(f) release. That's not the nice release, by the way.
I went into the army a private and I left the army a private after 14 years.
I would like to read a letter written by my wife Teresa.
Dave and I have been together for 14 years. I've watched him work so hard and struggle so hard to find some semblance of peace in his mind, to attempt to moderate his mood swings, the anger, the rage. It took me a few years to be able to see them coming, to know when to expect them, then a few more years to truly understand that they weren't caused by me, that I couldn't prevent any of them no matter what I did or didn't do. As well, following the incidents of his rage and anger, of losing it, would be the depression and the guilt, and this is just as awful. The helpless of “Why can't I get...? Is this all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? Is this all?” Then, inevitably, the final question, the one that some would say breaks my heart and makes me angry: “Why are you with me?” The emotional toll on me, on our 11-year-old twins, and our older and now adult children, watch them grow up hypervigilant to Dave's mood swings, the day's long fallout after. Within this all were also times of complete insanity, almost as though a different person had been plucked down into our lives. Furious with his circumstance, Dave would accuse me of impossible things, create an alternative reality with details that were exaggerated or didn't exist to begin with. When I look into his eyes during these situations, and they still occur, it's as though the Dave I know and love has ceased to exist. His colour is off. His eyes are darker and look so mean, without humanity. It is truly very frightening to experience. But the real question is, why wasn't he getting better? He was eating healthy, exercising. He had regular bi-monthly and sometimes weekly psychology sessions with one of the best psychologists in her field for treating PTSD. He spent a month in Ontario at Bellwood for in-house treatment of PTSD. He followed all the protocols for treatment of PTSD—17 years of treatment, 17 years of working so hard every day. Then came a stroke of brilliance—a breakthrough. Three years ago, Dave's psychologist changed his treatment plan to include the protocol of someone with a traumatic brain injury, a new therapy, one that retrains the brain around injured areas utilizing a type of electronically monitored neurofeedback. Results didn't happen overnight, and there were times that things seemed to get worse, but it finally settled in. The time span between rages lengthened, his ability to settle down eventually quickened from a week, to a few days, and eventually a few hours. I'm not a specialist, it is out of my scope to differentiate PTSD and damage done to Dave's brain from mefloquine toxicity, but in my heart, and from close personal observation, as well as testament from his family members as to his personality before he took mefloquine, I believe that all of his moments of insanity are because of the mefloquine. I also believe that the high level of PTSD that he still suffers from is also because of the toxic effects of mefloquine. But I am as hopeful as I am angry. It is overdue for this to be recognized for what it is, not just lumped in the catch-all of what the diagnosis for PTSD has become. These past three years for us are more manageable. It's not perfect but we have hope where we didn't before, all because of a different treatment protocol for Dave. The shame that is placed on these soldiers and veterans for the past 25 years is lifting for some of them, because it's not just PTSD that they are burdened with. Their brains are damaged from the drug that was issued to them.
I'm just going to quickly cover a few excerpts from an experience letter that I posted on the International Mefloquine Veterans' Alliance website. I'm just going to cover one page, to illustrate where the problems started:
The first day I took mefloquine for Somalia, in 1992, I almost immediately felt sick. I had my first seizure that night. My vision would go black and I would see stars, I would feel disoriented and dizzy after. This would happen initially only on mefloquine days, eventually they would occur randomly the rest of the time—lying down, standing in line at super market, sitting at the supper table. The frequency of these seizures was inconsistent, one or two per week, or one or four per month. [After the first seizure] I went in the next morning to [the unit medical station to discuss this with the medics], but overheard a discussion going on about those not taking mefloquine will not be deployed. So, I turned around and walked out. I have continued to have these mini seizures since. The last one was about three years ago. Not sleeping was a constant companion. I thought it was the heat, but in retrospect, it probably was the mefloquine. The ringing in my ears started after a few weeks of taking mefloquine. The ringing would randomly start and stop. Sometimes happening concurrently with the seizures or while driving, laying down or standing in a line at supermarket. I could feel myself changing. My brain becoming more muddled and anger starting to creep in. Throughout the tour of Somalia, the paranoia and anxiety was building. It sucked running convoys out of Mogadishu, I started to stash beer in the grizzly to help with sleeping. The dreams, interesting nights.... The dreams I suffered from were quite horrific. They involved the violent death by my hand of my loved ones and my section members. They were just like they were happening. I would wake up. I stopped sleeping. The day I took the pill, from then on, early in the tour, I didn't sleep, and that continued all the way through to Rwanda.
I'm going to skip ahead. I'll be submitting my experience story to the committee. What I'd like to illustrate now is the interconnectedness between the PTSD and the mefloquine toxicity.
Rwanda—Trauma, trauma, trauma. Again, the first day I took the mefloquine pill, I had a seizure, felt sick and did not bother sleeping—I just drank coffee that night. The sleep issues continued and I started to have serious drinking issues. I just seemed to have lost my ability to drink alcohol.... Throughout deployment, there were daily trauma incidents, two, three, four or more some days. Not sure what to say about that. It sucked. To this day I am haunted by blown up little black kids. ...I did not sleep for first two weeks in Rwanda. I used to do sentry all night and then volunteer the next morning to drive the MLVW to Kigali....
After I came back from Kigali I would unload the truck, turn it in and there would be enough time to go back on sentry. This would happen two weeks at a time, I just could not sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, all I would see was the image of dogs walking off carrying dead babies, and friends shot and blown up. The only thing that I could control that with, while I was deployed, was alcohol. Periodically throughout the tour—it seemed to be on about a two-week cycle—I would get a case of the local beer and lock myself in the back room and drink as much of that beer as I could, until I couldn't even walk or stand. I'd eventually pass out and I would finally get a full night's sleep. Anger, random periods of uncontrollable anger, so angry I could not think straight. Sometimes over the littlest things. I would feel so black, just ready to explode. The depression started to take over—I would bounce between anger and being so depressed that I would sometimes catch myself holding my rifle in my hands, just thinking how easy it would be....
To this day I'm plagued with balance and dizziness issues. I can't even go on the waterslide with my kids. I can't go on roller coasters. I had an opportunity while working for the Ministry of Environment as an initial attack firefighter. I was offered a job as an air attack officer, which was leading in the water bombers for the province. It was an honour that they came to me and offered me this job. I tried for two and a half months to do the job. I was okay as long as the aircraft flew flat and level. As soon as we did a wing-over above the fire to take pictures and record the fire, I would start vomiting. This continued on for two and a half months, to the point where the pilots used to joke on the duration of the mission about how many puke bags I used to fill.
Finally, at the end of that, when no other medication other than.... The next step on the medication for the vomiting was the medication they use for patients on chemotherapy, which was quite harsh on the system, and I finally had to quit. I was 20 pounds lighter.
That will be it.
Thanks. I'm sorry about that.