Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Iraq-style.

[NightTrain]

Just got an e-mail from my friend Donna and thought this part might interest some of my fellow DUers:

I don't know if I told you this, but my internship this year is at the VA hospital in Newington, where I'm working with vets with PTSD, mostly from Vietnam (yes, they're still suffering after all these years). The ones from Iraq and Afghanistan are just starting to trickle in, and according to the staff who have been there for a while, this group is going to have it at least as bad as the Vietnam guys. It's made me think a lot about what "supporting the troops" means - of course for me it means ending the war so that more don't come home dead or fucked up, but it also means recognizing that the people who are fighting this war are cogs caught up in a machine, much like all of us are in some way, and that given different circumstances, almost any of us could be in their shoes.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. A friend is a psych nurse at the Hines VA Hospital in suburban Chicago.

Her specialty is PTSD in Vietnam vets. As with your friend Donna, she is seeing a lot of new, and much younger patients these days.

We need to pull out of Iraq NOW! Pay them the $$$$ to rebuild that we would spend on fighting. Lots of young guys are going to come back f'ed up. Yet, they have cut the VA budget.