Via backchannel, a request to highlight the “signature” wound of the current war: Traumatic Brain Injury.

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month for the Brain Injury Association of America.  Pass the Word, please, as you can and know this is a very probable issue with our injured Vets.

For those who have long supported the Soldier’s Angels Voice Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops (VALOur-IT), this is one of the things the program has been addressing, along with the coputer contact with the world, by providing GPS Units for those wounded service members who are getting out and about. The reason: TBI has an associated symptom of loss of short term memory, and the GPS Units help remind the driver where they were headed.  (Note:  You don’t have to wait until this November to donate to VALOur-IT…SA will be happy to accept donations all year long…even today to help this great cause)

Below is the article Chelsea asked if I could post to help get attention to the cause:

Traumatic Brain Injuries in the Military

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is becoming a common wound of modern warfare. It has even been coined the “signature wound” of the War on Terror. While TBI is becoming more prevalent in wartime activity, many service men and women continue to go undiagnosed. Institutions, like the US Department of Veterans Affairs, are working to make quick and accurate diagnoses in order to prescribe appropriate and effective treatment.

TBI is caused by forced trauma to the head, either by being shaken or hit. The severity of a TBI varies from case to case, but symptoms range from mild concussions to a debilitating state. The majority of TBI’s acquired by military personnel are classified as mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI). Initial symptoms of MTBI consist of loss of consciousness, disorientation, loss of memory, headache, and temporary loss of hearing and vision. They are often partnered with anxiety, irritability, difficulties processing information, limited concentration amongst other problems experienced down the road. While MTBI is most common amongst the men and women of the armed forces, more severe cases of TBI are happening much more frequently and often require the victim to attended specialty rehabilitative nursing centers, like CareMeridian.

The most common cause of a TBI in the military is due to blasts. There are three degrees of blast injuries where a TBI is common; Primary (due to blast itself), Secondary (due to objects being propelled by a blast) and Tertiary (due to a collision with a third party object). According to the Veterans Health Initiative, active male members of the military from the ages 18-24 are hospitalized with a TBI at a rate of 231 per 100,000 and females 150 per 100,000. Based on military force projections this would mean that 4,141 military personnel are hospitalized on average each year with a TBI, and these numbers often rise during wartimes.

The best prevention for veterans to avert the long-term effects of a brain injury is to recognize the symptoms of a TBI. Once the symptoms are identified an individual should take basic precautionary measures in order to begin the healing and recovery process until a more specific diagnosis can be made.

Service men and women give so much to protect this country and they deserve to come home to a happy and healthy life. Creating awareness about TBI will help ensure their long term health. By helping our veterans, their friends and their families recognize the early warning signs of a TBI, treatment can be sought as early as possible.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Canadian military releases brain injury report (ctv.ca)
• The Invisible Wounds of War (edkimmd.blogspot.com)
• “Mild” TBI and the “Silent Epidemic” (edkimmd.blogspot.com)
• What Is a Concussion and How Bad Can It Be? (bleacherreport.com)
• Brain Scans Reveals Invisible Damage Of PTSD (huffingtonpost.com)
• Traumatic Brain Injury and Learning how to Love and Accept Myself Part 7 (secondchancetolive.wordpress.com)

Received for distribution:

The crew of the USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) will hold their 2010 reunion from the 18th to the 21st of March, in Branson, MO.

Specific location:  Lodge of the Ozarks.

Special event:  Memorial service morning of 19 March.  This will be held on the 65th anniversary of the attack off the coast of Japan.

Registration closes 1 March, 2010.

Contact for Questions:
Sam Rhodes  772-334-0366 or
Beth Conard Rowland (daughter of crewman) 740-524-0024  (please leave message)

These men who went to war, preformed well, suffered a horrible blow, yet sailed their ship home may not be around much longer to share their stories.  If you’re close by, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a visitor or two who would thank them and listen to a story of two for history’s sake.  Take your camera and notepad and post the things you learn!

More information on the USS FRANKLIN (CV-13):

The story of the day the ship was struck by a kamikaze off Japan is “Inferno.”

As a warm up to getting your hands on “Inferno,” SteelJaw Scribe provided an excellent synopsis of that horrible day in his 2008 post:  “The Crucible.”

LCDR Joseph T. O’Callahan, USN, ChC was awarded the Medal of Honor for his action on 19 March, 1945.  LTJG Donald Gary, USN, of the Engineering Department served heroically below decks to save his ship and shipmates.  He also was awarded the MOH.

Seaman 1/c Omer Dee Simms, USN died that day, after saving 12 of his shipmates, by relentlessly working to free them from the internal compartment they had been trapped in by damage and fire.  After he led them to safety, he re-entered the skin of the ship to save more people.  He did not survive.  His son graciously shared with me family photos and letters to enable me to post some personal history of the battle not otherwise published.

I picked up a link on Lex’s blog.  It looked odd, since the retired P-3 aircrewman resisted for so long….lo and behold! There was a real blog!

He’s well read, excellent on military history, in particular, Civil War history.

Welcome to the fray, AW1, for when you find this post.:)

Regarding LCS-2.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

I received an email from a member of their Advanced Information Systems Department, letting me know he works with the LCS program and also provided a link to a video of the LCS-2 on the GD website.

Here’s the text of the communique (sent Tuesday, December 22, 2009 2:51 PM):

With an interest in Navy affairs, I have read posts from your blog and thought you might find this video interesting. The LCS or Littoral Combat Ship is a program the Navy is developing for relatively small surface vessels intended for operations in the littoral zone (close to shore). It is “envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals.”. Two ship classes are the first examples of the LCS in the U.S. Navy: the Freedom-class and the Independence-class.

The company I work for is part of the team designing and building the Independence-class which took the unique course of using a trimaran design. When facing pirates, terrorists or other asymmetric threats, this unique and forward design makes the ship fast, highly maneuverable and geared to supporting mine detection/elimination, anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare, particularly against small surface craft. Wanted to share this video we produced in case you found it interesting.

http://www.gdlcs.com/media-center/videos/lcs2-independence

I’m sure he has a vested interest n naval affairs. I call it a paycheck in these lean times.

Anyhow, General Dynamics is putting their workforce in play to even let us little guys know, how special a ship almost as big as an FF(G), with a 57mm gun, is going to work great in the close in, shallow waters, chasing pirates.

Yeah…that’s the main threat of the future. I sure hope the Chinese wake up and smell the coffee and begin to employ small groups of men in small boats, armed with RPGs to take us on. It sure would save a lot of money for them.

I did respond with a polite “I don’t think this ship fits the bill…too big for close in, too little for real sea battles, and and that the 57mm gun was a joke, at best” message.

But who am I, but one blogger of many?

I have been alerted of this recently begun project by FedEx to created a “Digital Wall,” to honor those service members who died in the Vietnam War.

Impact: Huge.
Ease of execution: Easy. Take up to three pictures of those any of the FedEx/Kinko’s offices to be captured for history.

Do you have friends/family members who died in that war? Get them out and stop in. You have until May 13th, 2010 to do this.

No excuses. No cost, just a few minutes out of your day.

Thanks, FedEx, for continuing to honor those who have served, in particular the ones who perished.

The desecration has begun. A ground-breaking ceremony was held at the Shanksville crash site on Saturday. Bulldozers will start reshaping the land this week. Never mind that the only rule for the Flight 93 memorial’s design competition was that the landscape had to be left as it was. In order to complete the full arc of the Crescent of Embrace (now called a broken circle, but still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent), an earthen causeway will have to be built across the wetlands that lie about 50 vertical feet below the crash site.

A contractor posted recently about his decision to turn down work on the memorial, despite economic hard times. Our friend Jeff just could not stomach the idea of helping to build a tribute to the enemy, a sentiment that is easy to understand and much appreciated. To anyone else who might find themselves in this situation, just be aware that there are other options. Someone is going to do the work, and if the pay is lucrative, it could be better for our cause to have that money go to someone who is on our side.

Blogburst author Alec Rawls has succeeded in driving driving quite a bit of Western Pennsylvania news coverage through the purchase of a half-dozen half-page full-color ads in the local Somerset paper. If anybody wants to fund another, Alec will gladly put the ad together. Call it anti-dhimmi jiu-jitsu. We can use the Park Service’s own money against them.

If we don’t succeed, then you have to live with knowing that you helped to build an abomination. There is no simple answer.

On the subject of worthy causes, long-time blogburst participant Curt at the excellent Flopping Aces blog is helping to orchestrate fundraising for Project Valour-IT, which helps provide voice-controlled computers and other technology to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.

Soldiers Angels, which hosts Valour-IT, is also fundraising for the victims of the jihad attack on Fort Hood.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Technology.   Someone commented on a blog elsewhere a few weeks back most of mankind’s greatest accomplishments were driven as a function of the need to conduct warfare. I’ll have to go along with that. While going to the moon has had a vast array of technological advancements, it was to help improve our missile/rocket technology and the abilty to function on the “high ground” That being said, there is technology developments, more like a “fusion” of hardware and software to help our wounded warriors. Laptops and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Life changing, capability restoring. Project VALOur-IT running on raw volunteer power and passion. Join up…serve the cause. Change a life. Invest in a future citizen out of uniform.

Just when you’d thought you’d read enough about VALOur-IT, Jeff Bacon a noted naval cartoonist, has done his duty to help promote the fund raising campaign.

Not only has Jeff jumped in, he connected with Steven Pastis, creator of “Pearls Before Swine” (an excellent cartoon strip, I might add) to jointly promote helping our wounded warriors.

Here is the first frame

YOu have to go to Jeff’s post to see the rest of the story.

And…if you still haven’t been convinced to contribute…please reconsider and chip in a few bucks, and send the information to your friends, family and co-workers.

This post will remain at the top of the posts through 11/11/2009, when the drive ends. Look below for new posts.

It begins today, the drive to make a difference for those who have suffered in defense of the nation, and defense of others around the world.

From a practical need for a blogger and a blog reader sprang a project that has now aided over 4000 wounded warriors in getting some normalcy into their lives. The project blog is here.

Even a few bucks adds up. Times are lean, but consider the “leaness” for those who will never recover what they have lost in the service.

Thanks for helping out.

If you have no preference for a service team to donate to, please drop your funds under the Navy, but know they still go into the same pot at the end of the day.

Do you have a website or blog?

If so, you can “join” a team (Team Navy is a great choice!) that fits your own association, or that of a family or friend.

At the end of the day and drive, all the funds go towards the same cause, VALOur-IT from Soldier’s Angels, helping those wounded warriors by prviding laptops with voice activated software, Nintendo Wiis for therapy and GPS units for those suffering short term memory loss issues from TBI.

If you don’t have a blog/site, please consider passing the word around and condisring donating yourself. Every little bit helps!

The drive begins 10/26 (MONDAY!) and runs through Veteran’s Day (11/11) this year.

Hugh Hewitt at BlogExpo interviewed two MilBloggers, GreyHawk and Chuck Z….and Chuck Z tells about the first voice activated laptop in his hands….the genesis of Project VALOur-IT.

Other MilBlogging history in the interviews…worth taking a listen, at least to tabout the 10 minute in point.

Kick off for the 2009 fund raising campaign begins 10/26. It’s a great cause. Please consider donating.