- PALO ALTO -- Alec Giess clicked
off an episode of "M*A*S*H" and rose gingerly from his hospital
bed, carrying nothing but the dull, merciless pain on the right side of
his head.
-
- "Punch drunk," is how the Oregon National Guardsman
describes the muddle in his brain.
-
- Rigoberto Oceguera feels that way, too. Sometimes, the
22-year-old Army specialist cries for no reason, just blurts out tears.
He's also found God, though he can't quite explain how or why.
-
- It's been five months and counting since 1st. Sgt. Giess,
44, was ejected from the passenger seat of a 5-ton Army truck that swerved
to avoid what might have been a roadside bomb and flipped on an oil slicked
road in southern Iraq.
-
- Oceguera, from Chico, was headed for a short leave aboard
an Army Chinook helicopter on Nov. 2 when insurgents near Fallujah struck
it down, killing 16 soldiers and wounding 26 others.
-
- Their new duty station, in military parlance, is here
at the Veterans Administration hospital, in one of four VA traumatic brain
injury sites nationwide.
-
- Here come the invisibly damaged, those with brains that,
as Oceguera puts it, "get confused and start wobbling around."
Their numbers are growing.
-
- The swelling toll of dead and wounded U.S. soldiers has
the Palo Alto center bracing for more with traumatic brain injuries. Last
week, the center was directed to add beds to meet the demand.
-
- Traumatic brain injuries are nothing new in war zones.
But Iraq is producing a higher rate of returning wounded than previous
wars, military medical officials say. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center
alone, doctors have identified more than 280 cases of traumatic brain injury
in the past year, most from Iraq.
-
- Medical officials credit better body armor for keeping
brain-injured patients alive, and better screening. But they also cite
the impact of the weapons of choice among Iraqi insurgents - roadside bombs
and rocket-propelled grenades.
-
- "The nature of the explosive devices are different
than some of the past conflicts," said Dr. Laurie Ryan, assistant
director of research for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at
Walter Reed. "We're seeing a lot of blasts."
-
- Doctors in Palo Alto and three other VA sites are studying
blast injuries and treatment for brain-injured soldiers, in a coordinated
venture launched in 1991 and backed by $7 million in annual funding.
-
- Traditionally, closed brain injuries have been overlooked
as doctors tend to more visible wounds, said Dr. Henry Lew, medical director
of the traumatic brain injury center at the Palo Alto VA.
-
- "They really need to be helped more, because they
look normal from the outside, but if you pay attention, you know they're
slow," he said.
-
- Giess spoke in languid, distant tones as he sat on a
bed in the center's physical therapy room. He feels "cloudy,"
he said. Like Oceguera, he searches the air for words as he recounts the
punishment his head took on the road.
-
- "They found me underneath a truck. I remember a
little bit because it hurt," he said. His Kevlar helmet saved his
life, he said. Giess, a contractor in civilian life, broke his collarbone
and crushed a vertebra. He walks like he talks, slowly, with a drooping
shoulder.
-
- After returning from Iraq, strapped down on a Christmas
Eve flight with wounded soldiers stacked four rows high, Giess was sent
home to Seaside, Ore. Only then did anyone -- his wife and two children
-- notice the memory loss and other signs of brain injury.
-
- "He kept saying his ears were constantly ringing.
Sometimes he'd say things that were out of character," said his wife,
Shana Giess. "I thought, 'OK, he just lived almost a year in conditions
you couldn't imagine, with all these guys smoking and cussing. Has the
personality changed?'"
-
- But her husband would often forget things, and the diagnosis,
when it finally came, made sense, she said.
-
- "He's definitely slower than he was. He has a hard
time finding words now. He'll know what he wants to say, but he just can't
get the right word."
-
- Dr. Lew said the center is trying to avoid the mistake
of sending brain-injured patients home to face the "hidden consequences"
of their injuries. The analogy to drunkenness is apt, he said. Brain injury
patients often show a loss of inhibitions.
-
- "The next time you hear about them, they're in prison,
or getting into fights in bars, getting into confrontations."
-
- Oceguera, a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do,
had heavy bleeding in his head and doctors removed his spleen. He also
suffered what doctors call an "open-book" hip fracture: His hips
split outward. A metal rod now runs through them.
-
- "If I walk out a lot, maybe in a full moon, I can
feel the metal ... I have really good reception on my cell phone."
-
- The brain static remains. He said he can't recall anything
two weeks before the accident, nothing during it, and nothing a few weeks
after. Someone had to tell him that he re-enlisted just before the crash.
-
- "I don't remember the accident and stuff,"
he said. "But I feel it. I still get feelings, like death. I feel
like I came back to life."
-
- About 1.5 million people sustain traumatic brain injuries
each year in the United States. Symptoms include memory loss, inability
to control emotions, irritability, sleep troubles, anxiety and depression.
-
- Among the war wounded, the injuries range from moderate
concussions to more severe damage. For the severe, overlapping symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder often complicate diagnoses.
-
- Brain injury patients tend to make their most dramatic
strides in the first six months, and Oceguera and Giess said they have
come a long way. But the damage endures in many cases, Lew cautioned.
-
- "The way I explain it to the families," he
said, "is from the day he was injured, he will not become the same
person as before. It's a miracle he's still alive. You have to treat it
like a new birth date."
-
- Giess hopes to go home this summer. Maybe he'll launch
a fish packing business, if he can. "I'll have to start real slow."
-
- Oceguera hopes maybe to coach Tae Kwon Do. He recently
received a Purple Heart for his combat wounds.
-
- "It's something to remember it."
-
- Even if he can't.
-
- © 2004 Contra Costa Times and wire service sources.
All Rights Reserved. http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/world/8766903.htm
|
