June 25, 2007 at 11:19 am · Filed under Life, Meaning, & Selfhood + Politics
Caught a story through Digg about the ‘Most severly wounded’ soldier.
TAMPA, Florida: He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.
Four years ago almost to this day, Joseph Briseno Jr. was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range in a Baghdad marketplace. His spinal cord was shattered, and cardiac arrests stole his vision and damaged his brain.
If he had just died, this story would have never made Digg. Many commenters are using it as a case against war or the state of medical coverage in our country. However, the real tragedy here is not the war or the inadequacy of veterans medical insurance. It’s more complicated.
He is no more a case against the war as the several who have died. Because of enhanced armor and field medicine we are saving more of our troops than ever before. This of course leaves many with horrible injuries yet still alive (the amount of brain trauma from this war is a big issue here). It’s really not surprising that this has happened.
If a lesson is here to be learned it is that our medical technology has advanced further than our ethics. We can keep people alive and even bring them back from death, but often leaving the patient even worse off because of oxygen deprivation. In this case, the soldier is not only paralyzed but blind and has brain damage because of the cardiac arrests that they saved him from.
Resuscitation has a success rate anywhere from 1-30% depending on the celerity and skillfulness of the response. Though even when people do survive many die shortly afterwards or suffer permanent damage to their brain and body. Until we can protect against oxygen deprivation or fuse spinal cords we need to rethink emergency resuscitation and our attitude of “save at all costs.”
April 26, 2007 at 3:35 pm · Filed under uncategorized
Bill Moyers had a special last night called “Buying the War” about the press’s failure leading up to the Iraq war. I don’t watch TV like normal people do so luckliy they posted it, so you can watch the video online.
I started watching it during my lunch break, and it’s really good, detailed, and hard hitting. Of course, little of it surprises me and it’s several years too late, but still I highly recommend it.
p.s. since it’s mostly lots of talking you can also just treat it like radio and listen to it while you work like I’m doing.
March 19, 2007 at 1:40 pm · Filed under Minds, Brains, & inbetween
I highly recommend watching the fabulous Iraq & Back: Bob Woodruff’s Return (or if you’d rather not watch then read it here). It’s an ABC news documentary about the underreported and troubling number of veterans that are returning with traumatic brain injury. Most fascinating is that the reporter for the story is Bob Woodruff himself who suffered from a massive shrapnel blast to the head from an IED. As a result of his injuries, he was in a coma for 36 days and has had a surprising recovery considering the amount of damage in his left hemisphere.
Officially, the Department of Defense says that 1,835 soldiers and Marines have a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but it is likely that many go undiagnosed. When there is a skull fracture or shrapnel penetration then the damage is plain. However, in this new war of protective armor and IEDs often the helmet does it’s job, but the brain is still slammed around violently. In fact, it is estimated that 10% or more of returning soldiers may have sustained an undiagnosed brain injury — that’s at least 150,000 people.
All this is especially troublesome since there is no routine DoD screening procedure, so veterans who think they may have a problem have to apply for neuropsychological testing themselves. Then even if they know they have a problem, it can often be hard to get rehabilitation treatment.
This is compounded by the problem that the effects of the injury may be subtle. Frontal lobe damage can cause shifts in personality or motivation that may not be noticed readily. This is directly connected to the problem with the DoD neglecting troops’ PTSD and other mental health issues.
If you’re interested in reading more about this, Discover magazine had an article about it last month entitled Dead Men Walking. The Smartbrains blog had a post about TBI earlier this month. Relatedly, Dr. J C writes in brainblogger about how most cases of brain trauma are just watchful waiting with the occasional hole drilling to release pressure. We just don’t know enough to do anything else.
Of course, the elephant in the room with all of this is the potential number of Iraqis facing similar problems with even less access to treatment.
