For this VA doctor, TBI and PTSD is personal

After all is said and done, the best "helpers" have a personal connection to PTSD. Here's one of them.

VA Hospital doctor is injured veteran himself
Posted on: May 22, 2012
by Ted Perry

MILWAUKEE — This Memorial Day weekend, we will rightly honor those who served our country and paid the ultimate price. One National Guard colonel who survived an attack is determined to help other veterans.

What he learned about himself makes him a hero in the hospital.

When he was in college, Kenneth Lee got a call from his father. The conversation was brief and direct. His father didn’t approve of his son taking grant money to pay for tuition. To his father’s pride and his mother’s horror, Lee joined the National Guard and stayed in to help pay for school at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. Lee re-enlisted and became Colonel Lee – the top medical professional in the Wisconsin National Guard. In 2003, his unit was called to Iraq. There were some close calls, but none closer than the one on September 12th, 2004.

“Out of nowhere came a suicide car bomber, straight to us, right into our convoy. Next thing I know I wake up in the ER,” Lee said.

Dr. Lee cannot remember that day, and as he takes FOX6 News on a tour around the VA Hospital, he was almost nonchalant about a photograph of the event that almost took his life.

Dr. Lee looks perfectly fit and strong, but there is a lasting effect from that September day. Dr. Lee suffered a traumatic brain injury, and his short-term memory is still week.

“If I don’t have it down in my Blackberry, even though my wife told me four hours ago it’d be out the window. I’ve been going through a lot of notepads and my secretaries are constant reminders to me. They remind me of a lot of things,” Dr. Lee said.
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