Brain Injury Epidemic for Troops in Iraq

[Clara T]

Army of Iraq war veterans 'suffering brain damage'
From Jonathan Rugman in Palo Alto, California
THE hardest part of Jason Poole’s day is his early morning confrontation with the face staring back at him from his bathroom mirror. In the past 18 months, plastic surgeons have rebuilt it five times.

“I used to be handsome, you know,” says the 23-year-old US Marine, who was on foot patrol in western Iraq in June 2004 when he suffered terrible injuries in a roadside bomb blast. He adds: “But hey, c’est la vie.”
He has earned a Purple Heart medal for valour, but the twist to this Marine’s story is that when he fought in Iraq he wasn’t American at all, but British. Born in Bristol, he moved to California with his parents at the age of 12, and signed on the dotted line aged 17 in exchange for help from the Marines with college tuition fees and his application for US citizenship.

Corporal Poole cannot remember the explosion itself. He was in a coma for two months and is permanently brain-damaged. Two Iraqi soldiers and an interpreter were killed, but the Marine’s body armour saved him. He is now deaf in one ear and blind in one eye, and his face is a maze of skin and bone grafts held together with metal plates. Shrapnel was embedded in his skull and his brain injuries were so severe that he has had to learn to walk and talk again.

“We are talking about a brain-injury epidemic,” says Nurse Jill Gandolfi, who cares for Corporal Poole in a rehabilitation unit run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs in Palo Alto. The official number of brain- injured Iraq veterans is more than 1,700, but Harriet Zeiner, Palo Alto’s leading neuropsychologist, believes that well over 6,000 such injuries is a far more realistic estimate.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2037633,00.html

Damn

[varkam]

1. It's heartbreaking.

Recovering from brain damage is arguably harder or at least as hard from losing a limb. I remember reading an article in the NYT about a soldier named Jason Poole - it's unbelievable to me that people can persevere through such challenges. In the article, it mentioned that while the body armor saves lives, it's also being picked as the reason for so many brain injuries coming back.

It's disgraceful that our soldiers are still fighting and dying in Iraq.

[genie_weenie]

2. IF * mentions our honored wounded/dead again, I may go all Cheney

Whenever, I run into a RW who points to the "relative" low count of killed, the first thing to point out is the dramatic increase in traumatic brain injuries and horrendous limb amputations. In all previous wars, including Vietnam these wounded vets would usually die, sometimes on the battlefield, sometimes in transit. I think there is a study which shows the rise in the rates of wounded with amputations/brain damage is equal to the fall in deaths. I am however, unsure of this...

[Stephanie]

3. god

[txindy]

4. He's made a remarkable recovery so far, esp. with his vocabulary

I mean, he had to relearn everything and he learned "c'est la vie?" That's impressive. Seriously.

[Wilms]

5. K&R n/t

[Clara T]

6. kick n/t

[lonestarnot]

7. kick