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A Navy SEAL's last act of service: A search for the truth about brain disease and the military
Virginia Pilot ^ | May 29, 2016 | Corinne Reilly

Posted on 05/28/2016 9:51:28 PM PDT by huldah1776

On the afternoon of March 12, 2014, Jennifer Collins checked her phone and found a message from her husband, Dave Collins, a retired Navy SEAL. He’d texted to say that she should pick up their son from kindergarten, and then this: “So sorry baby. I love you all.” Hours later, two police officers showed up at their house in Virginia Beach with news that Dave, 45, had shot himself in his truck a few miles away. Although Jennifer had held out hope for any other explanation, she also knew the moment she read it what the text meant. For months, she’d watched Dave disintegrate into a man she hardly knew. She’d tried everything, but nothing had alleviated his severe insomnia, intense anxiety and worsening cognitive problems. “I was so frustrated that I couldn’t find the answers he needed,” she remembers. It was out of that frustration, she says, that the idea came to donate his brain to research. She was still answering a detective’s questions in her living room that night when she blurted it out: Tell the medical examiner to do whatever is needed to preserve Dave’s brain. She hoped the decision might help others struggling with what everyone believed explained Dave’s afflictions – traumatic brain injury and PTSD…. Snip… “That’s what he’d been diagnosed with,” Jennifer says. “I had no reason to think there was anything else to find.” Snip… …Three months after Dave died, a letter came from the doctor who examined his brain snip… …Dave’s unraveling was chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease best known for affecting former professional football players. Associated with repeated head trauma, CTE causes neurological decay, has no known treatment and can be diagnosed only at autopsy. It is linked to memory loss, personality changes, depression, impulsivity, dementia and suicide.

(Excerpt) Read more at pilotonline.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: activeduty; afghanistan; braininjury; cte; depression; eod; ied; iraq; memoryloss; military; neurodegeneration; ptsd; suicide; tbi; veterans
Must read! Long and detailed. Tomorrow (today)should have part 2.
1 posted on 05/28/2016 9:51:28 PM PDT by huldah1776
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To: huldah1776

sorry, it didn’t give me the preview.


2 posted on 05/28/2016 9:52:00 PM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: huldah1776

Very sad


3 posted on 05/28/2016 10:14:19 PM PDT by cassiusking
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To: huldah1776

Wow. Belated prayers to the wife and family.


4 posted on 05/28/2016 11:11:35 PM PDT by hawaiianninja (Palm note to self: "Prepare for some 2016 house cleaning. Trump/??? 2016!")
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To: huldah1776

This patriot serves, even in death. Thank you, sir.


5 posted on 05/29/2016 5:41:43 AM PDT by jch10 (Hillary in the Big House, not the White House .)
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To: huldah1776; Squantos

EOD ping.


6 posted on 05/29/2016 6:13:52 AM PDT by SisterK (its a spiritual war)
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To: huldah1776

A friend’s son was involved in an incident that killed six servicemen in an attack by a motorcycle detonated by a suicide driver. He was very close to the blast, but apparently unscathed. Upon return to the FOB, the initial treatment was a shower, hot meal and a full night’s sleep. But, it a few days he was showing signs of traumatic brain injury (TBI). As the article points out, TBI is not well understood and CTE probably even less so, especially with blast injuries.

In my day, if you had all of your appendages and no visible holes, you were called lucky and you drove on. That’s what happened with me and in my case, I had no long term consequences (as far as I know). But, in this case, there are consequences and they show up in cognitive tests. The problem is that very few doctors understand this and even the most knowledgeable are just starting to learn what is going on. Soldiers are sent to the shrink who are completely clueless about physical injuries. The bottom line is that medical science doesn’t really what to do about this.

Meanwhile, this troop was medevaced back to the States and is back on the job. He is improving, but that’s probably a function of time rather than medical care. Hopefully, time will allow the brain to heal itself, but if the problem is CTE and not TBI, that may not happen. Someone once told me that Hope is not a method.


7 posted on 05/29/2016 6:55:52 AM PDT by centurion316
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To: huldah1776

This is horrible. To serve, come home whole, and then discover there’s one more potential mental IED in your future. These folks don’t deserve this. The good news is that the VA and the physician’s community is waking up to this...and spending money on the research.


8 posted on 05/29/2016 8:02:39 AM PDT by moovova
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To: SisterK

100% .......grateful. Very grateful.


9 posted on 05/29/2016 8:24:47 AM PDT by Squantos ( Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet ...)
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To: centurion316

Was just reading a neuroscience article where the researchers found evidence of the brain trying to heal itself of schizophrenia. The brain has a high level of “plasticity” but knowing how and when is what is needed. Neuroscience is growing in leaps and bounds.


10 posted on 05/29/2016 9:46:26 AM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: centurion316

Prayers up for your friends son. Sometimes the brain can repair itself.


11 posted on 05/29/2016 4:01:31 PM PDT by SisterK (its a spiritual war)
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