Veterans and medical care: getting the word out

PZ has an important post up. It's from a regular commenter there, brokenSoldier, who was wounded in Iraq, and has encountered bureaucratic obstacles getting the care and funding he was promised under the contract we make with people who join the military.

Go read it now. It's that important.

and my comment is as follows:

brokenSoldier,

thank you very much for the assistance you provided me earlier with evaluating the feasibility of a pilot program to provide massage for vets with PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury).

Because you helped me with organizing the ideas and assessing the need, I now have a basis for trying to get something started in the Seattle area with logistics, funding, etc.

I hope that soon I will have some news for you about preliminary results, and I hope that it will make a real difference to the people it will serve. If this does succeed to any degree, it will owe a great deal of that success to you, who assisted in its initial stages. I will keep you informed of its progress.

To the degree that I can get the word out about the larger situation with vets and medical care, I will do so as well, but I don't have the pulpit needed for major penetration. But I think in the course of starting up a program like this, it is a natural topic, and will come up in discussion a lot. So I can't predict if it will get traction, but I will do my best to do so.

To that end, I will also put it on my blog for my reader to see :).

And Molly, I think that the idea of a Manhattan Project for head wounds is a great one! The improvements in battlefield medicine over the last few decades mean that a lot of people who would have died in earlier wars are now surviving with TBI and spinal cord injuries, with lifelong sequelae.

I wish this society cared as much about taking care of the sick and wounded, and about keeping promises/contracts, as it does about developing weapons.

Posted by: thalarctos | July 23, 2008 9:46 AM