RIO LINDA...A LIMBAUGHISM

Bronco = A wild horse?

VA Suffers Losses and Offers Help at Ft. Hood
Two VA Employees Slain, One Wounded during Shooting

WASHINGTON (Nov. 10, 2009) -- In the midst of providing mental health services and other support to the Ft. Hood community following the recent shooting, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) learned about its own losses from the violence. Two VA employees, both serving on active duty with their Army Reserve units, were among the slain. A third VA health care worker on reserve duty was seriously wounded.



"Speaking for the entire VA family, I offer heart-felt condolences to the families of these dedicated VA employees," said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. "They devoted their working lives to care for our Veterans, and they died in uniform, preparing to safeguard our Nation's freedom."



Russell G. Seager, Ph.D., a 51-year old nurse practitioner at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee was killed in the deadly attack. He was a captain in the reserves. In his VA duties, he led a mental health team treating a wide variety of Veteran patients, from the youngest combat Veterans just back from deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, to World War II Veterans dealing with depression.



Seager signed up for the Army Reserve four years ago. This would have been his first overseas deployment. Seager was motivated to prevent the mental health problems of young combat soldiers from occurring in the first place. He was to be assigned to a Combat Stress Control unit to watch for warning signs, such as anger and insubordination, among front-line soldiers.



Seager, who was also a well-respected teacher at Bryant and Stratton College in Milwaukee, leaves behind a wife and son.



VA's other fatality was Juanita L. Warman, 55, a nurse practitioner at VA's medical center in Perry Point, Md. She was a lieutenant colonel in the Maryland National Guard, with two daughters and six grandchildren.
Herself the daughter of a career Air Force member, she held a masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh.



Warman volunteered for "Beyond the Yellow Ribbon," a program to help members of the Maryland National Guard readjust after returning from overseas deployments. She provided mental health counseling and helped develop a program about the myths and realities of post-traumatic stress disorder. She was preparing for deployment to Iraq at the time of her death.



Dorothy Carskadon, 47, a captain in the reserves and a social worker and team leader at the VA Vet Center in Madison, Wis., was wounded in the gunfire that brought Ft. Hood activities to a halt. She is currently in stable condition in the intensive care unit at the Darnall Army Medical Center at Ft. Hood.



As a VA team leader, Carskadon oversees other social workers in providing individual and group counseling for combat Veterans experiencing difficulty readjusting to the civilian community following military service. A new Army officer, Carskadon was preparing for her first deployment.



On an average day, more than 850 VA employees don uniforms to serve military commitments in Reserve and National Guard units across the country and overseas.



VA has been responding to the Ft. Hood tragedy since shortly after the sound of gunfire was replaced by the sirens of emergency responders.



Through official agreements and the shared sense of mission to care for military members and Veterans in the central Texas region, VA has provided clinical supplies, including pharmaceuticals, and sent mental health teams from nearby facilities as well as four fully staffed, portable Vet Centers to aid in counseling military members and families.




Teams of physicians, nurses and other clinical and support personnel were placed on stand-by for possible deployment to Ft. Hood or to receive additional patients following the shooting.



VA operates several clinical and benefits processing locations on Ft.
Hood and routinely has about 18 employees working on the post. Initial actions included confirming the safety and security of those employees.



VA continues to coordinate with the Department of Defense on providing care and support to all those affected by the tragedy.

Deadline to mail troops: Friday



The US Postal Service recommends that if you want to ensure a holiday gift reaches a loved one stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan on time, send it by Friday - the recommended deadline for parcel post.

Mail sent to military addresses is charged only domestic mail prices and Army Post Office and Fleet Post Office addresses are applicable for further discounts, according to a news release from the US Postal Service.

Packages can be sent to military men and women for an Express Mail rate as late as Dec. 18.

To get a full list of the military mailing deadlines, visit www.usps.com/news

SCANNING INVISIBLE DAMAGE OF PTSD, BRAIN BLASTS

By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP) –

WASHINGTON — Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries — signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

It's work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients — civilian or military — who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

"There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care.

Up to one in five U.S. veterans from the long-running combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is thought to have symptoms of PTSD. An equal number are believed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs — most that don't involve open wounds but hidden damage caused by explosion's pressure wave.

Many of those TBIs are considered similar to a concussion, but because symptoms may not be apparent immediately, many soldiers are exposed multiple times, despite evidence from the sports world that damage can add up, especially if there's little time between assaults.

"My brain has been rattled," is how a recently retired Marine whom Hayes identifies only as Sgt. N described the 50 to 60 explosions he estimates he felt while part of an ordnance disposal unit.

Hayes studied the man in a new way, tracking how water flows through tiny, celery stalk-like nerve fibers in his brain — and found otherwise undetectable evidence that those fibers were damaged in a brain region that explained his memory problems and confusion.

It's a noninvasive technique called "diffusion tensor imaging" that merely adds a little time to a standard MRI scan. Water molecules constantly move, bumping into each other and then bouncing away. Measuring the direction and speed of that diffusion in nerve fibers can tell if the fibers are intact or damaged. Those fibers are sort of a highway along which the brain's cells communicate. The bigger the gaps, the more interrupted the brain's work becomes.

"Sgt. N's brain is very different," Hayes told a military medical meeting last week. "His connective tissue has been largely compromised."

There's a remarkable overlap of symptoms between those brain injuries and PTSD, says Dr. James Kelly, a University of Colorado neurologist tapped to lead the military's new National Intrepid Center of Excellence. It will open next year in Bethesda, Md., to treat both conditions.

Yes, headaches are a hallmark of TBI while the classic PTSD symptoms are flashbacks and nightmares. But both tend to cause memory and attention problems, anxiety, irritability, depression and insomnia. That means the two disorders share brain regions.

And Hayes can measure how some of those regions go awry in the vicious cycle that is PTSD, where patients feel like they're reliving a trauma instead of understanding that it's just a memory.

What happens? A brain processing system that includes the amygdala — the fear hot spot — becomes overactive. Other regions important for attention and memory, regions that usually moderate our response to fear, are tamped down.

"The good news is this neural signal is not permanent. It can change with treatment," Hayes says.

Her lab performed MRI scans while patients either tried to suppress their negative memories, or followed PTSD therapy and changed how they thought about their trauma. That fear-processing region quickly cooled down when people followed the PTSD therapy.

It's work that has implications far beyond the military: About a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD at some point in their lives. Anyone can develop it after a terrifying experience, from a car accident or hurricane to rape or child abuse.

More research is needed for the scans to be used in diagnosing either PTSD or a TBI. But some are getting close — like another MRI-based test that can spot lingering traces of iron left over from bleeding, thus signaling a healed TBI. If the brain was hit hard enough to bleed, then more delicate nerve pathways surely were damaged, too, Kelly notes.

NOTE: Lauran Neergaard is the author

Thank you ,,,, A very good article....Two thumbs up here!!

For sure Ron, exactly the type article we really like to see.

I have answered several posts and an email on this topic, so I thought I would share my answer on the topic with the community. There is rumor of changes, and the terms OMB and CBO have been tossed around. OMB is the White House Office of Management and Budget, and they help the President draft a budget to present to Congress and manage the money that is appropriated. The CBO is the Congressional Budget Office. They are the Congressional think tank that helps them look at the financial issues with legislation.

Link to topic

Thanks Dave_M your post is excellent

Dave_M posted: "There is no legislation pending that would change the Tricare cost sharing. The current Health Care bills in Congress protect Tricare, VA Health Care and Champva, and define them to protect the members who receive care via those programs from the proposed taxes and mandatory health care by defining those programs as meeting the requirements of the proposed laws." Here is the link:

Link to topic

Dave_M did indeed was indeed informative and excellent.

Eres Tu!

Any idea what the success rate is of CBO recommendations to actually being implemented into law? I personnaly, as a TFL and Medicare recipient, will feel nervous about what this crowd will do when the final bill is passed. It appears as if much is being done for the VA system, not really enough, but the rest of us may be in jeopardy from the effect of the proposed bill.

Depends on the topic. This report was written for a Congress when there was a Republican majority 4 years ago. It was published in 2008, but took several years to prepare. There are thousands of recommendations and I would guess that maybe 5 - 10% are included in bills and less than half that become law.

quote:

Originally posted by Dave_M:
Depends on the topic. This report was written for a Congress when there was a Republican majority 4 years ago. It was published in 2008, but took several years to prepare. There are thousands of recommendations and I would guess that maybe 5 - 10% are included in bills and less than half that become law.

Well, I guess this is one of those glass half full or half empty, depending on the issue under consideration.

Thanks for the quick response

Rog

BEING RECENTLY I WAS TRANSFERED TO THE ARMY RETIRED RESERVES AND BEING AT THE VA I AM KNOWING HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS I AM NOW AT 90% DISABLE AND I AM MEMBER OF OATHKEEPERS, AMVET, VFW, AMERICAN LEGION, NRA ALL OF THESE ORG ARE GREAT, A NEW ONE IS THE OATHKEEPER.ORG WE HAD A MEETING LAST NIGHT IN DALLAS TEXAS WE ARE TRYING TO EDUCATE ALL MILITARY TO THE IMPORTANTS OF THEIR OATH TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION FOR MORE INFO SEE OATHKEEPER.ORG GOD BLESS ALL YOU YOU IF YOU NEED ANY HELP CONTACT ME

CBO does several things. They analyze bills before Congress, provide budget and economic analysis, and they provide ideas to Congress. To get a feel for the total of their work, you need to look at their site. Also know some things are sacred cows when it comes to ideas. Military retire health is one of them. I would not dismiss a small copay so that it is similar to other supplements you might buy, but I would not expect a share similar to the one proposed.

Here is the CBO site. Congressional Budget Office