As his wife Sheila held Lonnie Kilpatrick's hand, he died

Sad update to WFLA News Got Vietnam Veteran Justice

Finally awarded Agent Orange benefits, veteran succumbs to cancer the VA missed
By: WFLA Staff
Updated: May 07, 2018

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. (WFLA) - As his wife Sheila held Lonnie Kilpatrick's hand, his daughter Kassie recorded some of his last words.

The Navy veteran said there is a reason for everything - his struggle with the VA, his impending death.

"Make something out of it, make it count," Lonnie said in a weak voice.

We met Lonnie in February, shortly after he learned Stage 4 kidney cancer had spread through his body.

"That hit me like a ton of bricks," he told us from his bed in Holiday in February.

For good reason. For four years, doctors at the VA at Bay Pines said his back pain was arthritis and disc related.

"Just couldn't get nobody to take it serious that, hey I've lost 50 pounds," explained Lonnie at the time.

The VA treated Lonnie for kidney cancer in 2013, pronounced him cancer-free, then missed its recurrence.

"You know you're going to lose him and that could have been prevented if the VA had followed up," said daughter Keri Ackerson.
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Song for First Responders PTSD Winner ECM

Powerful music video earns Kevin Davison first ECMA win

Kings County News
Ashley Thompson
Updated: 5 hours ago

Tribute to First Responders - Official Music Video by Kevin Davison

KENTVILLE - Kevin Davison’s gripping music video offering a glimpse into the harrowing jobs of first responders has earned the local country crooner his first ECMA win.

Davison was nearly in a state of disbelief as he walked up to the stage at the East Coast Music Awards ceremony in Halifax May 6 to collect the hardware reserved for Video of the Year winner. “I was totally shocked,” he said in a brief phone interview May 7.

“I literally didn’t even have anything written down.”

A paramedic and volunteer firefighter hailing from Kentville, Davison was nominated for the video for When Those Sirens Are Gone – an anthem for first responders that has been heard throughout the world.

The video, directed by David Pichette, earned Davison a nomination in a category contested by some of the best in the business: Heather Rankin, Ria Mae, Rose Cousins and Wordburglar.
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Kevin Davison won his first East Coast Music Award May 6 as the successful nominee in the highly contested Video of the Year category.

Davison released a rough video of him performing "When Those Sirens Are Gone" on Facebook. What was meant as a message to his fellow colleagues that they were not alone in their struggles with PTSD, in just 3 months, has not only raised awareness but has caught the attention of hundreds of thousands on social media around the globe. 

Female Soldier gave birth in latrine--in Afghanistan?

Doctor used 'feelings' over test results to clear Indiana soldier for deployment
WTHR 13 News
Sandra Chapman
May 7, 2018

It's a case so rare and so shocking that the United States Army refuses to talk about what happened to Pvt. Ashley Shelton.

The 20-year old private from Indiana gave birth to a near full-term baby boy in 2012.

She was in Afghanistan – in a combat zone.

Why did the military put a pregnant soldier into a war zone?

With her permission, 13 Investigates obtained Pvt. Shelton's medical files, and what they revealed takes the questions in her case to even greater heights.

A series of pre-deployment pregnancy tests were positive or indecisive. But the doctor involved in her case noted that he didn't "feel" like she was pregnant and he signed off on her deployment.

When Ashley was in Afghanistan she was shocked to learn she was giving birth to a baby boy inside of an Army latrine.

She was assigned to an aviation unit and worked around dangerous chemicals and helicopter exhaust fumes. She exercised and wore heavy body armor every day. She took malaria pills and had both anthrax and typhoid vaccines.

Exposures to those vaccines, Pvt. Shelton now believes, impacted her son Benjamin. He has trouble walking and suffers from developmental delays. read more here

Soldier stuck at airport, watched baby born on cellphone

Soldier watches daughter's birth on FaceTime after flight delay
WCMH
May 7, 2018

(WCMH) - When flight troubles stopped an army soldier from getting home for the birth of his daughter, he did the next best thing, watched on FaceTime.

Brooks Lindsey was watching his wife, Haley Lindsey give birth to their daughter, Millie, KTVU reported.

“This Army soldier was on my delayed flight home yesterday to MS. He had to watch the birth of his daughter on FaceTime. He was crying and our hearts were breaking. We all gave him space. When we heard the baby cry, we all rejoiced for him,” said Tracy Dover, another traveler who was in the airport at the same time.
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Was Mindfulness over hyped for PTSD?

(Note to readers: as with everything else, find what works for you! If something does not help you, find something else to help you heal. Always make sure that you are addressing your mind-body-spirit, no matter what you do.)

Mindfulness may have been over-hyped
BBC
Bruce Lieberman
May 7, 2018

A 2017 article that assessed evidence on meditation as a treatment for PTSD summed up the overall state of affairs: “This line of research is in its relative infancy.”

Mindfulness meditation has been practiced for millennia – and today is a billion-dollar business. But how much does the practice really change our health?

In combat veterans with PTSD, mindfulness-based group therapy increased healthy connections in parts of the brain that control ruminating (Credit: Getty Images)

In late 1971, US Navy veteran Stephen Islas returned from Vietnam, but the war continued to rage in his head. “I came very close to committing suicide when I came home, I was that emotionally and mentally damaged,” Islas remembers. At his college campus in Los Angeles, a friend suggested he check out a meditation class. He was sceptical, but he found that before long “there were moments that started shifting, where I was happy. I would experience these glimpses of calmness.”

Forty-six years later, Islas says that he has never completely freed himself from his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which was formally diagnosed in 2000 at the Veterans Affairs (VA) West Los Angeles Medical Center. But he’s convinced that meditation has saved his life.

Various forms of meditation are now routinely offered to veterans with PTSD. It’s also touted as a therapeutic tool to help anyone suffering from conditions and disorders including stress, anxiety, depression, addiction and chronic pain. More broadly, meditation has come into vogue as a way to enhance human performance, finding its way into classrooms, businesses, sports locker rooms and people’s smartphones through Internet apps like Headspace and Calm.

“There is a common misperception in public and government domains that compelling clinical evidence exists for the broad and strong efficacy of mindfulness as a therapeutic intervention,” a group of 15 scholars wrote in a recent article entitled Mind the Hype. The reality is that mindfulness-based therapies have shown “a mixture of only moderate, low or no efficacy, depending on the disorder being treated,” the scholars wrote, citing a 2014 meta-analysis commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
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