Thanks Wolfsong ... I think this person is knowledgable about combat ptsd ... woman doc, young, but trained with VA hospital and is now in a position to assess people like me. I don't know if the first doc is the one for T or just an intake, evaluation kind of thing.

My uninformed opinion about this kind of doc is that they can't understand me unless they'e experienced similar circumstances. It's like my opinion about the surgeons and doctors who worked on me after combat -- I felt that part of the doc's training should be to get shot and go through recovery before touching a wounded soldier. Some of the docs were tremendous, but others made me wonder if they really had a medical degree (or maybe they had a torture degree).

Anyway, I have made a list with short explanation of things that trigger me, and one of the points is how much I distrust the process and how afraid I am of entering the process.

I dunno, the more I explain it here, the more ready I am to cancel the appointment. I can't believe good can come of this. I've buried the agony for so long I'm good at it. My wife knows about the appointment and supposed PTSD evaluation, but even during our conversation she was telling me that I don't really have those symptoms. She thinks my waking after 3-4 hours sleep are just some kind of stress related thing, too much on my mind. She doesn't know the dreams that cause the awakening. She doesn't know that I have learned to wake up if those dreams begin. She doesn't know how much crowds bother me or that I want to be alone. I hide all of that. When I mentioned the other day that I didn't have any friends, she said, What do you mean, you have lots of friends ... right, I've let them think I am their friend, but no one is coming through this wall that I've erected and diligently maintain day after day. The whole exercise is wearing me out after all these years.

sorry for the rant