Up to 20% of troops serving in Afghanistan, Iraq have brain injury

Brain trauma common in Iraq
Up to 20% of troops serving in Afghanistan, Iraq have brain injury
By ED KEMMICK
Of the Gazette Staff

When an improvised explosive device blows up, Army Spc. Nicholas Wells said, the first 10th of a second "feels like forever."

The blast is enormous, "and the first thing that hurts is your ears. It's like somebody stabbing you with a screwdriver," he said.

During his one-year tour of duty in Iraq as an Army scout and lead gunner on a Humvee, Wells was close to more than 20 IED explosions. The roadside bombs are a favorite of insurgents in Iraq.

While he was in Iraq, Wells said, nobody thought about the cumulative effects of the explosions. "It was weird," he said. "Nobody told us anything."

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Harvard University budget expert, has estimated that the lifetime cost of care for severely brain-injured troops from Iraq and Afghanistan could rise to $35 billion, according to Discover.

Dawna Lynn Wells said the frightening thing about traumatic brain injury is that so little is known about it. She said it is possible that people who have it might be at higher risk for early-onset dementia or other maladies.

Nor does she know whether her son will recover his short- and long-term memory. "And I don't know if he'll ever sleep through the night again," she said.

go here for the rest
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/01/23/news/state/21-truama.txt

For now, he said, he thinks he'd like to work for the railroad. He wants a straightforward job where he can work outside and where he's not around too many other people.

For my husband it was working in construction and being outside, then he worked jobs where he was also on the road and usually working alone. We met when he was a cable technician. They don't like to be around other people and they have low tolerance for an office job.

PTSD and TBI shouldn't have to be a "to die for" wound.