Sacramento chaplain who responded to Ground Zero on 9/11 shares her post-traumatic stress diagnosis
SACRAMENTO -- More World Trade Center responders and survivors continue to be diagnosed with medical conditions from the Sept. 11 attacks.
Twenty-two years ago, Sacramento Chaplain Mindi Russell was at Ground Zero.
Now she is still processing what she saw and learning about the impact it's had on her own health.
CBS13 Reporter Steve Large:
"Almost two years ago to this day, you were finally accepted after how long?" we asked her.
"Twenty years," Russell said.
"Twenty years filling out paperwork, answering question, to get accepted into this program?" we asked her.
"Yes," Russell said.
We met up with Russell at the Cal Expo World Trade Center memorial, where she shared a surprising clinical diagnosis from the World Trade Center Health Program where she is now admitted.
Doctors gave this expert in trauma her own diagnosis of post-traumatic stress.
"And so, I was very shocked when they said, 'You know, you do have cumulative chronic, post-traumatic stress injury.' And it's like, OK, well I know now what I have to work on," Russell said.
Isolation was a symptom of Russell's post-traumatic injury. She only realized it when doctors diagnosed it.
"It was because I was actually understanding and unpacking all of the different things that I was surviving," Russell said. "I was living in survival mode and that is not a lifestyle."
Russell spent 16 days at Ground Zero. She has a collection of mementos from her mission where she served first responders in the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The environment was not as safe as people thought," Russell said. "Just because the smoke goes away, doesn't mean those particles went away."
Russell is grateful she was called on to serve.
"But you have a choice whether you get bitter or better, and I choose to be better," Russell said.
Now decades later, responders and survivors are still getting diagnosed and treated for their time at Ground Zero.
For Russell, Sept. 11 is more than a day of heartache. It is a day for healing.
"There is no trauma that you should have to filter your life through, not one trauma," Russell said.
Russell says she is now writing a book about her own experience with post-traumatic stress.
She also suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as a result of her time at Ground Zero. She can no longer travel to disaster zones.
