Topic: Opinions & Commentaries
New article in the NY Times talks of how often concussions are overlooked, yet they continue to use the word “mild”. Personally I’ve always hated the terms mild, moderate and severe, when describing brain injuries because to those who suffer any brain injury, the residual effects can be devastating. The injuries described in this New York Times article are NOT minor, they are major and a prime example that the use of the term “mild brain injury” is an oxymoron.
Clipped from NY Times article:
………..more than three years after coming home, Mr. Owsley’s days have been irrevocably changed by the explosions. He struggles to unscramble his memory and thoughts. He often gets lost on the road, even with directions. He writes all his appointments down but still forgets a few. He wears a hearing aid, cannot bear sunlight on his eyes, still succumbs to nightmares and considers four hours of sleep a night a gift.
Mr. Owsley is part of a growing tide of combat veterans who come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussions, caused by powerful explosions. As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. About half the soldiers get better within hours, days or several months and require little if any medical assistance. But tens of thousands of others have longer-term problems that can include, to varying degrees, persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems and light sensitivity…………….
Full article can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/26tbi.html
What’s also disturbing about this article is not one time do they refer to what's being done (or what can be done) to help Owsley, Lane, Woods or the other 33,000 they mention. Sure diagnosing the injury is the first step but then giving them proper treatment and the tools to rehabilitate, should be the next. The DoD and VA are having a hard time taking care of the brain injured patients that come in on a gurney, what’s happening to the ten of thousands that walk in the door?
