Reporting from the war

I saw a very inspirational and at the same time disturbing show on TV last. It was about Bob Woodruff the correspondent from ABC news who was wounded in Iraq (Here’s a story about it in the post.)

The inspirational part was the fact how far Woodruff has come. How much he is back to normal. This was in stark contrast to some of the other patients who had head injuries. It was amazing to see the care he received. How quickly after his injury he was in surgery in Baghdad (37 minutes). The incredible people who take care of him not only in Iraq but in Germany and then here back home.

The disturbing part of the show was what happens to the soldiers with these injuries. The VA centers that are designated to handle these soldiers are fantastic. The problem comes when the wounded return home and go to their local VA. In a recent report the majority of soldiers come from small towns. Therefore their local VA is in all likelihood not going to be state of the art. It might not even have the facilities to treat these people. This was the case in one of the men that were followed. He left the special VA head injury facility and ended up in Dallas which had no place for this guy to go. To top it off, his paper work was lost so treatment was delayed even further. Rehabilitation has to be an ongoing process. If it is stopped the patient slips back which is what happened to this man. They showed how he was in the treatment center and then at his home waiting for treatment. You could see that he’d slipped back. Now with the paperwork all straightened out he is getting treatment but in a private facility.

The Pentagon center of head injuries thinks that 10 percent of returning soldiers may have some sort of a head injury. Some may not even know they have one because the symptoms are not that noticeable. They recommend that every solder be tested when they come back. That is not happening. They had a story in the report on one soldier who felt something was wrong. He couldn’t remember things the way he used to. It took over a year to convince VA doctors that he had a problem.

The VA should be doing a better job taking care of these people. But it also needs to have the resources to take care of them which clearly it lacks. Once again the total lack of planning by the Bush administration is showing through. It is a disgrace that we ask these men and women to put their lives on the line and there is so little thought about how to take care of them when they are injured.

It seems the story did some good. The VA will now be screening all returning soldiers for head trauma