"Traumatic brain injury leaves an often-invisible, life-altering wound" Davenport

 
"...once he got home, the problems really started. Barnes started drinking, then smoking pot and then inhaling gas from compressed-air canisters. He crashed his car four times."  Davenport

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Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is not a new thing.   Throughout the 20th Century soldiers have been subject to blast effects from artillery, mortar fire, roadside bombs and other load noises that produce a shock wave or weapons which actually drive hard objects into one's skull.

IED's were very common in Vietnam.  All roads in disputed territory had to be cleared every day and kept that way.  We rode around in wheeled vehicles that had the floors packed with sandbags in a probably futile effort to mitigate blast effects.

The point?  There are a lot of people out there with injuries like this from earlier wars. 

Maybe this will explain why Uncle Fred was always a little strange after the war.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100106339.html?wprss=rss_metro

Comments

[BillWade]

320,000 more good reasons not to go to war unless it's absolutely necessary.

[alnval]

Col. Lang:

Thanks for letting us know about the WaPo article on TBI.

Unlike other injuries such as loss of limbs, burns and so on, when a patient has TBI it's rarely obvious to the average person. Davenport's article offers a wonderful description of what TBI is and how it gets in the way of leading a normal life that should be required reading for all of us.

Thanks again.

[Friendly_Fire]

You can see why Ireland is a basket-case economy, this happened in 2004, and no combat whatsoever

fucking lawyers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Army_deafness_claims

[kao_hsien_chih]

One thing that I'd heard, but have no firsthand knowledge of, is that the effects of various injuries are much more deeply felt today because far more people survive the injuries today than in previous wars. I imagine this might be true with traumatic brain injuries as well, since, even if not directly from the damage to the nerve system, other injuries (and difficulties in evacuation) would have led to far greater mortality among combatants. I'd greatly appreciate your comments on this.

Thank you.

[mlaw230]

Friendly_fire: How in the world do you blame this on the F'ing lawyers? Perhaps the F'ing officers, or the F'ing government, but the lawyers? How cliche.

[Fred]

When Gates complainted about health care costs eating the DOD alive this is they type of thing. His and other politicians comments seem to me to be setting the stage to provide essentially no benefits at all. If they want to cut future year health costs stop selling cigarettes in the PX.

[Carl O.]

I think one of the important differences between his war and previous wars is the porportion of those fighting who go back for 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even more tours. the cumulative effect of this must be enormous.