TBI continues to trouble the military

TBI Continues to Trouble the Military
By Grace Hood and Jim Hill

The solider readiness center at Fort Carson, CO.

Grace Hood / KUNC

In the wake of the 2007 Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, then President George W. Bush promised the “best possible care” to wounded soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Years later, the military is still struggling to treat and diagnose the most common war wound: Traumatic Brain Injury.

An NPR News investigation, in partnership with ProPublica, has found that military leaders are refusing to carry out a testing program as Congress ordered. Military's Brain-Testing Program A Debacle is the latest in the NPR/ProPublica series entitled "Brain Wars: How the Military is Failing its Wounded."

This issue isn't just contained to Washington, as investigations and reports from Fort Carson have shed light on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and it's deleterious effects here in Colorado.

One soldier, Shawn Lynch, had to fight for his diagnosis of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. Grace Hood and Micheal de Yoanna found a tale of frustration in their investigation:

In reflecting on his experience, Staff Sergeant Lynch said he feels like the system never gave him the benefit of the doubt until his final appeal. But that's not how the Army sees it. When asked about Lynch's long and winding case, Col. Terrio at Fort Carson said: "That's exactly what we were working for is to make sure that if there was this chance that he could have possibly of sustained a traumatic brain injury that that would get documented for him."

In October, Colorado Public News, reported that the Military Lags on Promising Treatment for Brain-injured Soldiers. Another Colorado veteran, Margaux Vair, suffered from TBI and has found relief through oxygen treatments.
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Silver Spring family throws hero’s welcome for young Marine

Silver Spring family throws hero’s welcome for young Marine

22-year-old returns home for a visit after seven-month tour in Afghanistan
by Jeremy Arias, Staff Writer

Jeremy Arias/The Gazette Lance Cpl. Grant Romano Gates (left) and his mother, Donna Romano (right), celebrated Gates' return from a seven-month tour of duty in Afghanistan last week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday in Silver Spring.

For one Silver Spring family, the holidays came early this year as Lance Cpl. Grant Romano Gates returned home from a seven-month tour of duty in southern Afghanistan with the U.S. Marine Corps.

“He’s my sloppy kid, it’s so obvious that he’s here; his things are all over the place,” said a smiling Donna Romano, Gates’ mother, as she watched her son make himself a plate of food in her living room Sunday afternoon. “But I don’t care.”

Gates, 22, left home almost a year ago to begin training at Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego. Within months of arriving in California, Gates’ unit — 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment — was deployed to Afghanistan, Gates said. A machine-gunner in the infantry regiment, Gates spent most of his time in the Sangin Valley of the Helmand Province, a long sliver of land on Afghanistan’s southern border with Pakistan, where clashes between the Taliban and U.S. or NATO forces still are common.

“People ask me, ‘Why would you ever want to do this?’” he said Sunday, reflecting on his time overseas. “It’s what I wanted to do when I first joined, what I’ve always wanted to do. We did a lot of good out there; we took a lot of casualties, but I know overall that we did a good job out there.”
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For many returning women vets, fight not yet over

For many returning women vets, fight not yet over
By HOWARD ALTMAN
The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 29, 2011
Last month, Josefina Reyes went to work for Tampa Bay Crossroads, a rehabilitation and counseling center that came into being in 1977, the year she was born.
DAVE KRAUT/STAFF

Josefina Reyes was a homeless veteran until she found help and a new career with Tampa Bay Crossroads. Now she counsels women with more stress than she had.

Reyes serves as an intake counselor for women veterans, most of them homeless or headed that way, and helps assess their problems and begin to find solutions.

For Reyes, who served three years with the Army, leaving as a corporal in 1999, this is familiar territory.

Until recently, she, too, was homeless, unable to translate her military experience as a truck driver and vehicle fueler into the civilian world.

Now, instead of being on the receiving end of counseling, Reyes helps guide women out of the downward spiral.

There's no shortage of need.

There are about 300 homeless women veterans in Hillsborough County, according to Sara Romeo, chief executive officer of Tampa Bay Crossroads.
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Colleges Face Challenges With Influx of Military Veterans

UPDATE
For Veterans' Day, I asked students at Valencia College what professors could do to help them enter into the next part of their lives after combat. Here's what they had to say.





Colleges Face Challenges With Influx of Military Veterans

By Sandra G. Boodman
NOV 29, 2011
This story was produced in collaboration with

When Brian Hawthorne enrolled at George Washington University as a 23-year-old junior after two tours in Iraq, the former Army medic was unprepared for the adjustment.

"I felt like I was on another planet," he said of his first semester in 2008. Hawthorne recalled feeling whipsawed by the abrupt transition of "going from an environment where people around you are dying every day and trying to kill you" to a campus where he was surrounded by people who didn't know anyone in the military.

Academics provided no refuge. "I was very worried because I couldn't concentrate," said Hawthorne, who had graduated near the top of his Westchester County, N.Y., high school class. "I would read one page and forget what I'd just read." In danger of flunking out, he sought help on campus and was referred to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the District, where doctors quickly diagnosed a mild traumatic brain injury caused by his proximity to bomb blasts.

Hawthorne's experience is emblematic of the challenges — social, academic, psychological and medical — facing the rapidly growing population of veterans who are flocking to colleges around the country, and the health demands placed on the schools they are attending.

Propelled by the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which took effect in 2009, 2 million veterans, many of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan, are eligible for generous benefits that can amount to a full scholarship. At George Mason University, Virginia's largest public school with more than 32,000 students, for example, the number of veterans has almost doubled, from 840 in 2009 to 1,575 last spring.


also

Vets on Campus Face Unique Challenges
November 29, 2011
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS -- Army veteran Ben Miller remembers the isolation he felt when he enrolled at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the fall of 2009.

"I would show up on campus, talk to absolutely no one and go home," said Miller, 27, who did three tours in Iraq as a counterintelligence specialist. "I didn't feel like I really belonged."

With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down and enhancements to the GI Bill, colleges and universities are expecting a surge in veteran enrollment unseen since World War II.

But some academics and veterans' advocates are warning that many colleges are unprepared to deal with the unique needs of former service members. Many veterans face a difficult transition to civilian life, ranging from readjustment issues to recovery from physical and mental injuries.

And they say without special attention, many will fail to graduate.

"If colleges are not prepared to help transition Soldiers from combat you do run the risk of losing an entire generation," said Tom Tarantino of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "The GI Bill isn't a thank you for your service. What it really is is a readjustment benefit. It is giving them the opportunity to do something that is constructive for their mind and their body, that gives them a mission and allows them to move forward in life. It's a backstop so you're not walking right off the plane from combat in to the civilian world. It was designed to be a soft landing."
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A life of service may be honored by a city

Many combat veterans returned home from war ready to do even more for the sake of others. Many went to work as police officers and firefighters. Some went to work for the cities and towns they lived in. When they were no longer able to do those jobs due to the service they already provided the nation in war, they ended up with a loss of income as well as a loss of ability to continue the "mission" of serving others. This is an idea that should be support across the nation. This is about taking care of the men and women that always took care of others.

Lynn council set to tackle disabled vets pay
Originally Published on Tuesday, November 15, 2011
By Chris Stevens
The Daily Item
LYNN - The City Council is expected to discuss a proposal that calls for paying retired city employees - who are also veterans - an extra benefit if they retired with a disability.

Lynn resident Lorraine Bourgeois hopes that if the proposal passes it will bring an end to a decade-old battle to get veterans the money she believes they deserve.

"It is too late for my father, Norman Bourgeois, a retired firefighter or my uncle ... they died," she said. "So the best way to honor (Norman Bourgeois) is to finish this struggle because he initially started this 10 years ago."

Norman Bourgeois, according to his daughter, pushed the city to adopt Chapter 157 of the Acts of 2005, which would allow a community to retroactively calculate veterans benefits into pensions for retired state or municipal employees who ended their careers on disability.

Bourgeois took up her father's fight four years ago and will ask the council's subcommittee on Veterans, Youth and Elderly tonight to approve the act. It has already been approved by the city's Retirement Board.

Retirement Board Administrator Gary Brenner said the board voted 3-1 with City Councilor elect G. Buzzy Barton, Claire Cavanagh and Richard Biagotti voting in favor, John Pace voting against and Chairman Michael Marks not voting. Brenner said it would cost the city $269,000 to pay the retired veterans retroactively.
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Fort Bliss: 2 soldiers killed in Monday shootings

UPDATE
Two Fort Bliss Soldiers Die in Domestic Dispute
by: Julie Fisher 2 hours ago
November 29, 2011
Two Fort Bliss soldiers are dead after separate shootings in a domestic dispute. El Paso Police say Fort Bliss Soldier James Steadman shot two people, then was killed by a third woman at a seprate location.

Steadman reportedly shot Lykisha Gooding, killing her. Before shooting her, he wounded Kelvin Gooding who answered the front door.
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Monday, Nov. 28, 2011
Fort Bliss: 2 soldiers killed in Monday shootings
Police believe shootings are connected

El Paso Police Departmnent, Fort Bliss

EL PASO, Texas —
Two soldiers who Fort Bliss officials said were involved in Monday's shootings died from gunshot wounds. Police investigators believe both shootings, the first in Far East El Paso and a second in the northeast, are connected.

Around 6:42 a.m. on Monday, police found an unidentified woman, 39, dead inside an east El Paso home in a gated community on the 3700 block of Coco Palm Drive near Montana Avenue.

Police spokesman Darrel Petry told KFOX14 the woman died from a gunshot wound. A man at the scene was taken to a hospital for a gunshot injury. Petry said the extent of his injury is unknown at this time.

About two hours later, police officers responded to an aggravated family fight at an apartment complex on the 8900 block of Kenneth Drive around 8:34 a.m.
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NATO trucks in limbo after Pakistan retaliation

NATO trucks in limbo after Pakistan retaliation
By Riaz Khan and Sebastian Abbot - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 27, 2011 8:49:56 EST
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Hundreds of trucks carrying supplies to U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan backed up at Pakistani border crossings Sunday, leaving them vulnerable to militant attack a day after Islamabad closed the frontier in retaliation for coalition airstrikes that allegedly killed 24 Pakistani troops.

As Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani attended the funerals of the victims, including a major, the U.S. sought to minimize the fallout from the crisis, which plunged Washington’s already troubled relationship with Islamabad to an all-time low.
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Afghan officials: Fire from Pakistan led to attack
The account challenges Islamabad's claims that the attacks were unprovoked
updated 11/27/2011 1:15:45 PM ET
Print Font:
ISLAMABAD — Afghan troops and coalition forces came under fire from the direction of two Pakistan army border posts, prompting them to call in NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, Afghan officials said Sunday. The account challenges Islamabad's claims that the attacks, which have plunged U.S.-Pakistan ties to new lows, were unprovoked.

It also pointed to a possible explanation for the incident Saturday on the Pakistan side of the border. NATO officials have complained that insurgents fire from across the poorly defined frontier, often from positions close to Pakistani soldiers, who have been accused of tolerating or supporting them.
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Target Shoppers Step Over Walter Vance As He Collapses, Dies

That warm fuzzy feeling people used to have Christmas shopping for someone else has been replaced by greed. Imagine Christmas morning giving a gift to someone knowing you walked over a dying man to buy it!

Black Friday: Target Shoppers Step Over Walter Vance As He Collapses, Dies

The Huffington Post Tara Kelly
First Posted: 11/27/11

A Black Friday shopper who collapsed while shopping at a Target store in West Virginia went almost unnoticed as customers continued to hunt for bargain deals.

Walter Vance, the 61-year-old pharmacist, who reportedly suffered from a prior heart condition, later died in hospital, reports MSNBC.

Witnesses say some shoppers ignored and even walked over the man's body as they continued to shop, reports The Daily News.

Friends and co-workers saddened to learn of his death, expressed outrage over the way he was treated by shoppers.

"Where is the good Samaritan side of people?" Vance's co-worker Sue Compton told WSAZ-TV.

"How could you not notice someone was in trouble? I just don't understand if people didn't help what their reason was, other than greed because of a sale."
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Think you know what women do in the military? Think again.

Think you know what women do in the military? Think again.
Armed Sources
Blogging military and veterans news with Lindsay Wise
Meet Katariina Fagering: a Marine veteran, warrior poet, artist and mom openly coping with post traumatic stress.

I interviewed Fagering last week for an article about Women’s Inpatient Specialty Environment of Recovery (WISER), an acute psychiatric in-patient program at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Houston. The 45-year-old Heights resident and mother of two is one of a growing number of number of female veterans seeking health care at VA hospitals and clinics nationwide as more women join the military and take on de-facto combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Marine Katariina Fagering talks to local women in Iraq in 2006. Photo courtesy Katariina Fagering
During Fagering’s 2006 deployment, she went door-to-door with another female Marine to talk to Iraqi women — a mission her male counterparts couldn’t do because of cultural taboos. This type of “engagement” carried out by women attached to male infantry and special forces units has become an integral part of the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s dangerous work. Fagering’s friend, Maj. Megan McClung, was the first female Marine officer to be killed in the Iraq war. She died in a roadside bombing in 2006, devastating their entire brigade. “Everyone knew her, she was an exceptional athlete, more energy than humanly possible, smart, funny, and a mentor to so many,” Fagering said. “It’s hard to talk about.”
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War drawdowns wreak havoc on Guard soldiers' lives

Here is something else that we just don't think about. When National Guard and Reservists are deployed, their entire lives back here are changed.

War drawdowns wreak havoc on Guard soldiers' lives

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two months ago, Demetries Luckett left his job in Michigan, turned in his cable box, sent his daughter to live with her mother, and headed for Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

As a 1st lieutenant in Michigan's National Guard, he was being deployed to Afghanistan.

But just a month after he arrived for training, the Army decided Uncle Sam didn't need him after all.

Now Luckett's unemployed and back home in Harper Woods, Mich. — a victim of the Obama administration's ongoing effort to pull at least 33,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by next fall.

Unlike active-duty soldiers who are stationed at U.S. military bases across the country and can be sent on a moment's notice to a conflict anywhere in the world — the nation's citizen soldiers have civilian jobs and lives they have to set aside when they get those deployment notices.

And unlike active-duty soldiers, Guard members may have little to go back to, if their country changes its mind.

Luckett is not alone.

In the last 60 days, as many as 8,900 Army National Guard soldiers were either sent home early from Iraq or Afghanistan, or were told that the Pentagon's plans to send them to war had either been shelved or changed. As a result, U.S. military and Guard leaders have been scrambling to find alternative missions for many of the soldiers — particularly those who had put their lives and jobs on hold and were depending on the deployment for their livelihood.

"If you're a 25-year-old infantryman, and you're a student at Ohio State University, and you decide not to register for school in July because you were going to mobilize, and we say your services aren't needed anymore — that becomes a significantly emotional event in that person's life," said Col. Ted Hildreth, chief of mobilization and readiness for the Army National Guard.

Guard members scheduled for deployment, he said, often quit or take extended leaves from their jobs, put college on hold, end or break their apartment leases, sell or rent their houses, and turn their medical or legal practices over to someone else. And in some cases, in this flagging economy, Guard members who may be unemployed or underemployed are relying on the year-long paycheck, which can include extra money for combat pay or tax-free benefits.
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Top Marine Says Service Embracing Gay Ban Repeal

Top Marine Says Service Embracing Gay Ban Repeal

By ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer
MANAMA, Bahrain November 28, 2011 (AP)

Since the lifting two months ago of a longstanding U.S. ban on gays serving openly in the military, U.S. Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.

"I'm very pleased with how it has gone," Amos said in an Associated Press interview during a week-long trip that included four days in Afghanistan, where he held more than a dozen town hall-style meetings with Marines of virtually every rank. He was asked about a wide range of issues, from his view of the Marine Corps' future to more mundane matters such as why he recently decided to stop allowing Marines to wear their uniform with the sleeves rolled up.
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Local Woman Raises $40,000 to Help Wounded Warriors with a Cookbook

Local Woman Raises $40,000 to Help Wounded Warriors with a Cookbook
Gladys Rodriguez gathered recipes from Marine moms, wives, family and friends before she self-published a cookbook.
By Mitchelle Stephenson

Gladys Rodriguez is an American in love with her country. Sure, she loves her husband and her children and her job, but she really loves America in a way that only people who have lived in other places can.

The Crofton resident said it is the home she “chose.”

Rodriguez and her husband immigrated from Cuba (via Chile) in 1970 and took the oath of citizenship on July 4, 1976 at Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

Rodriguez works full time in Davidsonville at Homestead Gardens.

But spend a few minutes talking to Rodriguez about her story and she quickly moves the conversation to her enthusiasm for a charity close to her heart.

That charity is the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, which helps wounded warriors and their families with financial assistance and other necessities.

Rodriguez has raised more than $40,000 for the Semper Fi Fund through sales of a cookbook that she self-published with recipes from military wives and mothers.
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Hunter kills himself after accidentally shooting friend

If you still don't understand what guilt can do to a person, read this and it may help you understand veterans with PTSD along with the recent report that guilt is a huge factor in their suffering.

The report says that after accidentally shooting Birch, Bolgnani killed himself according to another person there.

Two dead in Vermont hunting accident
By WNYT.com
Two hunters from Bennington County, Vt., are dead after an apparent accidental shooting-suicide Saturday afternoon.
Vermont State Police say they were called to a location off of Howe Pond Road just after noon for a call of two men with gunshot wounds.
Upon arrival, troopers found the men, Benjamin Birch, 39, and Timothy Bolgnani, 49, both of Readsboro, dead.
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PTSD veterans focus of Leverage episode

Last night while watching Leverage I thought about how right they were along with how most people wouldn't know it. Most of the programs for PTSD are nothing more than research with veterans being used as lab rats. When the report that Half of Vets Returning From Iraq and Afghanistan Need Medical Attention alarm bells should have shaken the entire country but they didn't seem to wake anyone up. This didn't wake anyone up either. Almost half of military suicides came after seeking help

Medications are given but found to either not help or in many cases, do more harm than good like Hundreds of Soldiers & Vets Dying From Antipsychotic--Seroquel

While the number of servicemen and women taking their own lives went up, no one was asking about who was being held accountable, what research programs were canceled for failures or what was being done to get it right for a change.

There is a lot of money to be made off veterans suffering. The Leverage episode focused on that as well. It should leave everyone wondering who is making money off of our veterans being tortured by what is supposed to be helping them. The people working for the VA can only use what they are given, only know what they are told, so if they are told this medication works, this program works, they use it. All of them are based on research done by companies making money off developing them.

'Leverage' Recap: 'The Experimental Job' (4.11)
November 27th, 2011 9:57pm EST
By: Brittany Frederick

TNT's Leverage crew returned tonight with the first of seven remaining season four episodes - and "The Experimental Job" made me glad to have them back.

When a homeless veteran dies in the middle of a party full of rich kids, the police write it off as a heart attack. His daughter thinks differently; she tells Nate and Eliot that her dad was part of a university sleep study involving PTSD and she's suspicious.

She has a reason to be: Hardison singles out a well-connected, BMW-driving kid named Travis (Jonathan Keltz), who also happens to be a member of the university's "Order of the 206," as in the 206 bones in the human body. No, that's not ominous at all.

The backdrop allows Nate, Parker and Hardison to go back to school, the former as a substitute professor and the other two as students. While Hardison befriends Travis, Parker gets to poke around in the research lab, where she gets trigger-happy with the button that electro-shocks a poor volunteer.
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SWAT team's shooting of Marine causes outrage

Nov 27, 1:49 PM EST

SWAT team's shooting of Marine causes outrage
BY AMANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Jose Guerena Ortiz was sleeping after an exhausting 12-hour night shift at a copper mine. His wife, Vanessa, had begun breakfast. Their 4-year-old son, Joel, asked to watch cartoons.

An ordinary morning was unfolding in the middle-class Tucson neighborhood - until an armored vehicle pulled into the family's driveway and men wearing heavy body armor and helmets climbed out, weapons ready.

They were a sheriff's department SWAT team who had come to execute a search warrant. But Vanessa Guerena insisted she had no idea, when she heard a "boom" and saw a dark-suited man pass by a window, that it was police outside her home. She shook her husband awake and told him someone was firing a gun outside.

A U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq war, he was only trying to defend his family, she said, when he grabbed his own gun - an AR-15 assault rifle.

What happened next was captured on video after a member of the SWAT team activated a helmet-mounted camera.
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