Navy corpsman, shot in the head is a study for PTSD

Navy corpsman who was shot in the head is a study for PTSD
By HOWARD ALTMAN
Tampa Tribune
Published: October 7, 2012

A heavy pack on her back, Holly Crabtree looked down the steep hill, wondering how she would get to the bottom.

Fresh off a train that took her and a group of other combat-wounded veterans to a remote river in Alaska, she hesitated for a moment.

The men she was with offered to help, but Crabtree, fiercely independent despite her injuries, brushed them off.

"The one thing that popped into my mind is, 'I am not a ... baby,' " says Crabtree.

"Therefore, I got on my butt and just went down the hill -- like I am going to show everybody that sometimes, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, which is be a guy."

Crabtree, now 32, was a Navy corpsman when she was shot in the head while on an operation in Iraq with Navy SEALs in 2010. Not expected to live, she recovered, but was paralyzed on her right side and suffered a traumatic brain injury that affected her memory, speech and motor skills.

For her, sliding down the hill was an epiphany.

After an arduous two-year recovery that saw her languishing at the James A. Haley Veteran's Hospital, hopeless and depressed, it was the first time she had connected with her old self since nearly dying.
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