Local veteran honors fallen officers in viral song York Daily Record.com Abbey Zelko November 7, 2016
Veteran and singer-songwriter Dave Bray, of West Manchester Township, released a viral single this year called "Last Call" in memory of fallen first responders. (Photo: Submitted)
Three times, the dispatcher called out the officer’s badge number.
And three times, there was no response. Just an empty silence that filled the airwaves.
“There’s nothing. Just that brutal loss, that hollow void that remains on the air,” said Dave Bray, a Navy and Marine veteran from West Manchester Township. “It’s haunting, definitely haunting.”
Bray wasn’t there when 34-year-old police officer and Iraq veteran Bradley Fox was killed in the line of duty outside Philadelphia in 2012. But when he later heard the recording of Fox’s “last call” – an on-air tribute for fallen police officers and first responders – he felt the emotion.
Bray knows what it’s like to put on a uniform and serve, without knowing if he'll come home.
He served in the U.S. Navy as an 8404 FMF Corpsman for the 2nd Battalion/2nd Marines for four years. And while he said he never felt like his life was in imminent danger, he could never know for sure.
“None of us ever know what’s going to happen,” he said. read more here
Brigham and Women's continues search for rightful owner of US Army ring
Becker Hospital Review Written by Emily Rappleye
November 07, 2016
With Veterans Day nearing, Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital is re-launching a search for the owner of a U.S. Army ring found about two years at the facility on 75 Francis Street.
"The BWH safety and security team has worked diligently in hopes of finding the ring's rightful owner but has been unsuccessful to date," the hospital wrote Friday in a Facebook post with photos of the ring.
The initials R.E.Z. are inscribed inside the band of the ring. One side features a banner that reads "Airborne" above an eagle's head, suggesting the owner may have been from the 101st Airborne Division. read more here
Wow, you'd think that researchers would figure out what was done before. If it worked, they'd still be doing it and we would have seen the results. Guess they hope we didn't notice.
Volunteers wanted for PTSD study of treatment some call a miracle STARS AND STRIPES By JENNIFER H. SVAN Published: November 6, 2016
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — A treatment involving the injection of a local anesthetic next to a bundle of nerves in the neck has eased post-traumatic stress symptoms in some patients in as little as 30 minutes with dramatic, lasting results.
Now, the Pentagon is funding a study at three Army medical centers to determine if the technique — long used for the treatment of pain — is truly effective in treating PTSD.
The results from the largest random, controlled trial using the stellate ganglion block could revolutionize the way PTSD — considered a mental illness — is viewed and treated, according to doctors familiar with the experimental procedure.
“It really is the tipping point,” Col. James Lynch, command surgeon for U.S. Special Operations Command Africa in Stuttgart, who has seen firsthand the promising effects of the shot, said about the current trial. read more here
Does this sound new to you? I bet it doesn't because we already read this "research" back in 2010. Remember this blast from the past?
Stellate Ganglion Blocker Offers Hope for PTSD Treatment only that study came out of New York. I just checked and the link to the report is still live.
JAB TO THE NECK TREATS PTSD? By Dr. Jay Adlersberg and Eyewitness News July 28, 2010 3:17:47 PM PDT NEW YORK -- All it takes is one loud noise to trigger a flood of awful memories. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts one in every six soldiers coming back from Iraq, and nearly eight million Americans in all. Standard treatment means therapy and medications that don't always work and have side effects. Now, one doctor is treating PTSD with an injection that he says can block the painful memories. "I was firing a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). When I pulled the trigger, it malfunctioned, and it blew up in the tube. Injured seven marines and killed three, all good friends of mine," said John Sullivan, an Iraq Veteran.
Thirteen surgeries, several skin grafts, and two years of therapy later, Sullivan is in a much more peaceful place, but that doesn't mean he's safe from the effects of war.
"I was riding on a bus with my uncle going to a baseball game, and the tire blew out?started having a panic attack," Sullivan said.
Sullivan was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death. According to the National Center for PTSD, statistics indicate that approximately 7 to 8 percent of people in the United States will likely develop PTSD in their lifetime. For combat veterans and rape victims, the chance of developing PTSD is as high as 30 percent.
Untreated PTSD can have devastating, far-reaching consequences. It can prevent someone from functioning in daily life and can ruin relationships. Economically, PTSD can have significant consequences as well. As of 2005, more than 200,000 veterans were receiving disability compensation for this illness, at a cost of $4.3 billion. This represents an 80-percent increase in the number of military people receiving disability benefits for PTSD.
Anti-anxiety meds didn't work for Sullivan, so he's trying an experimental treatment: an injection to the neck to stop PTSD.
read more here
The Real 'Hacksaw Ridge' Soldier Saved 75 Souls Without Ever Carrying A Gun WVPE By ELIZABETH BLAIR NOV 4, 2016
Doss saved 75 men — including his captain, Jack Glover — over a 12-hour period. The same soldiers who had shamed him now praised him. "He was one of the bravest persons alive," Glover says in the documentary. "And then to have him end up saving my life was the irony of the whole thing."
Desmond Doss is credited with saving 75 soldiers during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the Pacific — and he did it without ever carrying a weapon. The battle at Hacksaw Ridge, on the island of Okinawa, was a close combat fight with heavy weaponry. Thousands of American and Japanese soldiers were killed, and the fact that Doss survived the battle and saved so many lives has confounded and awed those who know his story. Now, he's the subject of a new film directed by Mel Gibson called Hacksaw Ridge.
A quiet, skinny kid from Lynchburg, Va., Doss was a Seventh-day Adventist who wouldn't touch a weapon or work on the Sabbath. He enlisted in the Army as a combat medic because he believed in the cause, but had vowed not to kill. The Army wanted nothing to do with him. "He just didn't fit into the Army's model of what a good soldier would be," says Terry Benedict, who made a documentary about Doss called The Conscientious Objector.
The Army made Doss' life hell during training. "It started out as harassment and then it became abusive," Benedict says. He interviewed several World War II veterans who were in Doss' battalion. They considered him a pest, questioned his sincerity and threw shoes at him while he prayed. "They just saw him as a slacker," the filmmaker says, "someone who shouldn't have been allowed in the Army, and somebody who was their weakest link in the chain." read more here
An Army officer from Frederick who fought and conquered his own depression Frederick News-Post By Nancy Lavin November 5, 2016
“You think you’re not going to not promoted if you’re active military and you come forward with PTS. But I did, and I have been [promoted.]” Lt. Col. Robert Reed
Drinking saved Robert ‘Rob’ Reed’s life.
Reed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was serious as he explained how his inebriation botched his suicide attempt. He was so drunk that fateful night in 2008, he didn’t realize he’d looped the rope with which he intended to hang himself around a rotten tree limb, he said.
He jumped. The rope snapped. He was still alive, on the ground of his then-home in Virginia.
Reed, 41, who lives in Frederick, had no qualms in a Tuesday interview talking about his attempted suicide, or the depression, anger and alcohol abuse that led him there.
“It was hell,” he said, recalling the frequent combat, death of both Afghan and American members in the small, embedded training team he led.
Returning home in 2008, he began drinking heavily. He slept in a trench he dug in his front yard, just like he had while in Afghanistan. When his then-wife left for a business trip, he tried to hang himself.
Tattoos cover both his forearms, reminders of those lowest of lows and the messages of hope that helped him along his journey to recovery. He lifted the sleeve of his Platoon 22 shirt to reveal more inked designs.
A flag with a Biblical line his training team read before embarking on missions covers his right shoulder, his deployment dates below it. On his left shoulder sits an eagle, accompanied by the dog tags of his dad, a Korean War veteran. A heaven and hell battle scene plays out below it, and a lit candle beside a Bible. read more here
