Victor returned from Iraq last fall after suffering a ‘head trauma’. He was knocked unconscious by the shock of a roadside bomb while on patrol. At first he seemed OK ..just a ruptured eardrum and a little blurring in his left eye. His parents were relieved. He was an honors student in high school. However, after returning to college ..he couldn’t keep up with his studies. He claims he can’t remember a thing he reads. But tests found that he’s not having problems remembering ..he’s having problems concentrating. He can’t tune-in long enough to finish a sentence without being distracted ..either by noise from another room ..or conversations he had earlier that day. He’s acquired some form of adult ADD. He’s also having problems at home. He used to be a pretty easy-going guy ..but now he ‘flies off the handle’ easily. He can’t even tolerate his parents asking him how his day went ..sounds like an interrogation ..so he’s doesn’t answer anymore. He quit going to school ..and won’t go anywhere by car ..he says it looks like other drivers are trying to ram him. He also avoids beer and other carbonated beverages because the fizzy noise they make sounds like bullets whizzing by. He’s getting more heavily into drugs.
6 comments:
These men/boys are coming home very messed up. I have a friend in a VA apartment over on the west coast of the US, and he said there are planty of kids coming home, and we are not being told nowhere near the truth as to what is really going on over there.
I am keeping Victor in my thoughts.
I hear you red ..thanks ..!
This is so unfortunate. I hope he can find the help that he needs. Trauma does strange things. Perhaps, in time, he will be able to tolerate some of the sounds. For sure, he's not dealing with his anger, at this point.
I recently found out that "hearing all the conversations" going on in a room (all at the same time) is an indication of ADD... that, and the inability to concentrate, without other thoughts taking over your mind. It seems that I suffer bouts of it. Sometimes I read the same sentence over several times, before I can get bey9ond it. I used to hate going to the mall, because all the energy there just wore me out, and the noise, to me, was incredible. I still don't care for it during the holidays. The most horrible memory of that sort of thing was when I was eating in a food court, and I couldn't eat fast enough, so that I could get out of there. Truly, I heard every single voice in the room, it was over=whelming. It was as if everyone in the room was speaking through a microphone, yet incredibly unable to distinguish a single word, it was like extremely loud murmuring. I wonder what would cause one to be occasionally ADD?
ADD is part of a normal continuum that we all share. And we move back and forth on it ..depending on how we feel. So, yeah ..we all experience a little ADD from time to time.
Food courts have notoriously bad acoustics .. I avoid them whenever possible .. :)
It has always felt as if it has had to do with my emotional state of mind, at whatever juncture in my life.
I see some of these vets, sometimes on a daily bassis I volunteer to drive the DAV van to the VA Med. centers in Albuquerque, and El Paso, it breaks my heart to have to help these very young, and so messed up kids,I don't touch them, I'm not allowed, but I get them wheel chairs, and oxegent tanks and such,I feel deeply for these kids,they are injured both physically, and mentaly.
And according to GWB, it's all for the Iraqi people.
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