BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help

Subject: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 10:57 AM

Dr Daniel Pearl of Potomac MD has discovered that Vets who have been subjected to a supersonic compression wave explosion receive such damage to the interface between the grey matter and white matter of the brain that the resulting scarring compels them to commit suicide.

Severe car accidents leading to brain injury has no such component scarring.

From a very limited sample size I must concur with Dr. Pearl.

There is no existing therapy for brain CMT injury over decades suffered by football players. The supersonic pressure wave injuries occur within a few years.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 11:06 AM

source: 60 minutes March 29 2018

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 09:14 PM

Try searching "Daniel Perl brain shock wave interface". There are more than a few studies.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 09:16 PM

Moreover, they are not "beyond all help." We don't know that for certain, but now that the problem has been identified perhaps solutions can be found.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Apr 18 - 11:21 PM

From my limited sample size (helping suicidal Vets) I concur.

Supersonic pressure wave destruction beneath the grey matter creates such a need to escape confused thought that they seem beyond the help of talk therapies that I know about.

Perhaps just knowing about the powerful urge for suicide as a self induced relief from those kind of injuries and suffering could help separate the Vet from seeking suicidal relief. If they could live long enough for time to heal such wounds is uncertain. Coma therapies are also untested.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 06:47 AM

On one hand it is unscrupulous to give false hope and on the other, understanding has been advanced.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 09:52 AM

For US vets there is the added issue that they were told, from birth, that war is fun and has nothing to do with killing people or being killed, it's like a video game, they aren't people they are the enemy, and so on. Europeans remember wars on their soil and actually teach their children that war is horrible.

So the Americans go to war and it's horrible, and they have to kill people, and they have to be almost killed, and it's not like a video game, and either if they're arabs they *are* the enemy *or* I am killing women, children, old people, and men, just because they look like arabs.

I would come home needing more therapy than is being offered.

I would come home needing to be understood, whereas the whole society still seems to think that war should be like a video game and if I can't handle it there is something wrong with ME.

There is something wrong with WAR.

The US needs to understand this.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Apr 18 - 02:24 PM

You suffered the traditional and healed wounds of horror. The scars will shine on for light years like a star you forget about by day.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Apr 18 - 10:32 AM

There's a well-known television and film actress in view lately
named Mary Louise Parker.
She has spoken forthrightly about her deceased father.
Her father's first war was the Second World War,
and he made his life's work the armed forces,
serving in all the other places. Vietnam, even though he was
an older soldier by them.

She remembers his PTSD, the sort that is so severe
that he became another personality,
and then when the episode passed she says
he was like a sleepwalker waking up and looking around
and wondering what happened this time.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Apr 18 - 11:05 AM

The episode of 60 Minutes. The story about "Mancini's Brain" starts at 02:27.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Apr 18 - 08:24 AM

correction: I referenced the football concussion injury as CMT, it is actually CTE.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Charmion
Date: 06 Apr 18 - 10:13 AM

I agree wholeheartedly with Mrrzy's assessment of an important source of PTSD -- shock at how real life differs from one's expectations.

My father was born in November 1919. He grew up in a culture saturated with vivid memories of the Great War and in anticipation of taking his turn as cannon fodder. I asked him once why he had decided to serve in the Royal Navy when all the other male members of his family were soldiers. His answer? "I decided that I'd rather drown in salt water than in mud."

He considered himself lucky to have gone through the war without ever having to face the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. According to its Wikipedia page, his first ship, HMS Wrestler, had a "good" (i.e., bad) war escorting convoys through the Mediterranean Sea when it was dominated by the Axis powers. His anecdotes about that period were all sorta funny -- like being berthed in Gibraltar next to HMS Ark Royal and hearing Lord Haw-Haw on the radio demanding, "And where is the Ark Royal?" as the mess-decks hollered, "Here we are!" What happened to Ark Royal? Sunk by a U-boat in 1941. Dad never told me that; it was too sad to think about, or to tell.

My Dad was at war for five and a half years, much of it in imminent expectation of being blown up and/or drowned. When I began reading about, and then making the acquaintance of, Afghanistan veterans whose lives had been upended after deployments of only six to 12 months, I was astonished; what was their problem? They had heard the bullet pass them by, and lived! When they came home, their homes weren't bombed!

But then I thought of my own military training, and began to understand. As a Cold War veteran, I faced a threat so enormous and potentially devastating that very few people believed in it, and they were considered weird. We trained and rehearsed for battles that never happened, conducting drills that often amounted to going through the motions. Deep down in our hearts, we knew we were safe and, sure enough, we were right. The occasional casualty incurred on a UN peace-support mission -- even the loss of a whole Buffalo transport to Syrian anti-aircraft fire in 1973 -- was as nothing compared to our understanding of nuclear war.

The young soldiers who deployed to Afghanistan were trained by Cold War veterans like me, who joined up for a good career and assumed that "professionalism" would protect their charges from whatever they might encounter. That delusion began to break down in the Canadian forces during the 1990s, with the Balkan wars and Rwanda, but such a useful lie takes a lot of killing.

So, yeah. What Mrrzy said.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Apr 18 - 10:44 PM

I was in (South) Korea while my brother Tony was a Chu Lai (South Vietnam at the time) and my younger brother, Ted, was studying Vietnamese and to be a flying spy for the Air Force.

South Korea was going through what we who were there at the time call "The DMZ War" or "The Second Korean War." (Look for Daniel P. Bolger, "Scenes From an Unfinished War" Leavenworth Papers No. 19 -- it's available from several sources in PDF.) When we left the place we were stationed we went armed because there were people who were actually trying to kill us. Vietnam had the headlines, except for incidents like the USS Pueblo capture and the EC-121 shootdown (happened while I was there, we went to a war footing -- DEFCON 1 from DEFCON 3). Agent Orange was sprayed on the DMZ and elsewhere.

All of my mother's sons came home with PTSD and other disorders in varying degrees.

But not like a friend of mine: newly married the day he graduated from Bible College (a reputable one), he was drafted and made a "black" sniper in Vietnam. 22 kills. He was taught, "Thou shalt not kill." He crawled through areas while they were being sprayed with Agent Orange. He has a fiduciary agent (his wife) because he cannot handle finances. His PTSD and AO related problems have had him in and out of VA hospitals for years. The last I heard this really great guy was slipping away into dementia.

As my brother Tony says, "It's back pay. Nobody could have paid me enough to do what I did."

And when we returned, well, some of the experiences were quite unpleasant.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: mg
Date: 07 Apr 18 - 05:08 PM

IT was at least a double whammy. I think a triple whammy. First, the enemy was quite intent. That is too be expected. Next...how veterans were treated coming back from Vietnam. YOUNG PEOPLE READ THIS. IT IS TRUE. I SAW IT WITH MY OWN EYES. Do not believe people who said we hated the war but loved the soldiers. Some are truth tellers. Some are not. When the roll is called up yonder and when future generations analyze this the truth will out. It is one of the three top evils that America (US portion, but Canada has some things to account for as well) has done..slavery, treatment of Indians and treatment of Vietnam veterans. You expect the enemy to encourage your demise..you don't expect your own country to. Make no mistake, some people wanted us to die. They said so. I am not making this up. Some would call up parents whose sons (not many daughters but some) had died and said he deserved it. The third whammy was the POW situation. We knew there were POWS left behind or taken to Korea or wherever. I personally knew where one had been kept. So we, and I say we although I was not physically in Vietnam but i was really and truly in the war so never call me an era vet...not only had the war trauma but the us disgusting behavior and we had the feeling we had to strap on our water bottles and go rescue the prisoners....

and we never were trained to feel safe. we trained to think we were gearing up for WWIII and if we were sent to Vietnam we would be weaponless and very prime targets for being taken POW.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Apr 18 - 06:29 PM

I guess people have quit trying to discuss the subject in favor of talking about whatever the fuck they feel like talking about. Or maybe the title should have just been about traumatic brain injuries causing dementia.

You know, you could start a thread about PTSD and let this one be about the explosion-caused brain injuries.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Apr 18 - 01:08 PM

Article in National Geographic

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Apr 18 - 09:31 AM

Good article. I must complain again, though... the term IED bothers me. They are bombs, just because they weren't made in some American factory doesn't make them not bombs, and calling them Improvised makes it specifically sound like they aren't bombs. This is all part of the American thing about war being fun and troups not being in danger, of course, the enemy can't do anything to us, we're the great noble Americans.
Barf. And then we wonder why they have ptsd.

Subject: RE: BS: discovery of Vets beyond all help
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 18 - 10:30 AM

Jeri PTSD is a monumental topic of concern so I agree with your frustration that it is drowned out by cat videos and the like.
What I think is important is a buzz kill for many.

btw Magnificent NG link.