I remember exactly where I was when the reports started pouring over the internet of the tragedies September 11, 2001.  The world was rocked.  A nation experienced the horrors of terrorism en masse trauma.  The New York skyline was changed forever.  Pentagon took a direct hit.  Heroically a plane full of people changed their target to an open field.  The events blasted from every monitor in the computer lab that I worked in.  Over and over and over from every side I watched the planes crashing…crashing…crashing.  I felt nothing.  I watched numb, barely conscious of the horror on every side.  How could I be so heartless and cold that I felt nothing?  The week before I was diagnosed with cancer.  My world was already shattered.  It took me days before I processed what happened.  I picked up People magazine where it reported the people that came and helped.  Chefs feeding firemen.  Volunteers coming from every state.  Mobilization of a nation pulling together to heal a gaping wound.  Sorrow, grief, sadness, fear, swirled and swayed in the dust and smoke. Emotion over load.  Shortly after doctors reported incidences of PTSD all across the nation.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=19168

10 years later: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/nyregion/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-from-911still-haunts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

9/11 changed everyone’s view of PTSD and terrorism.

A memorial to those that died on 9/11.  A flag for every person that died that day.