Every once in a while, the universe provides a reason to truly hate George Bush. I try not to be a hater; its not good for your emotional health and makes you interact with your fellow human beings in a less productive way. But George Bush, I feel, is truly deserving of my hate. I don't even know if I believe in God/Goddess/whatever, but if it exists and if Hell exists, I truly hope George Bush is going there for lying the country into the Iraq war. Today's reminder, the one that makes me physically ill, the one that rekindles my rage at Bush and his mafia colleagues is
this:
Morning rounds at the Tampa veterans hospital, and a phalanx of specialists stands at Joshua Cooley's door.
Inert in his bed, the 29-year-old Marine reservist is a survivor of an Iraq car bombing and a fearsome scramble of wounds: profound brain injury, arm and facial fractures, third-degree burns, tenacious infections of the central nervous system. Each doctor, six in all on a recent day, is here to monitor some aspect of his care.
To describe the maimed survivors of this ugly new war, a graceless new word, polytrauma, has entered the medical lexicon. Each soldier arriving at Tampa's Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center, inside the giant veterans hospital, brings a whole world of injury. The typical patient, Dr. Scott said, has head injuries, vision and hearing loss, nerve damage, multiple bone fractures, unhealed body wounds, infections and emotional or behavioral problems. Some have severed limbs or spinal cords.
The multiple wounds have required medical balancing acts and unusual cooperation across departments. One quadriplegic patient was so weakened by recurring infections that doctors had to wait a year before removing shrapnel from his neck. In other cases, the risk of new infection has delayed treatment of the spasms that some paralyzed patients suffer, which can require an implanted pump to inject medicine into the spinal column.
Of some 90 soldiers with extreme injuries who were treated in Tampa over the last year only one has died, of a rare form of meningitis. The drama here is more excruciatingly drawn out: Over months and months of painstaking physical and psychological therapy, the patients and their families start learning the boundaries of their future lives.
Corporal Cooley, a 6-foot 6-inch former deputy sheriff, arrived in Tampa on Sept. 29 after more than two months at the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington. His doctors and relatives were encouraged when, after another couple of months, he wriggled his fingers and feet, and answered yes-no questions with blinks.
"They got him to make noises the other day," offered his wife, Christina. "He's doing really well." At "rehab rounds" one recent day, assorted therapists took up Corporal Cooley's case, reporting on small steps forward and compromises along the way.
The speech therapist said he was responding to questions with blinks about 30 percent of the time when she was alone with him, but less if distracted. She described her gingerly efforts to train him to swallow, using thin pudding, apple sauce and ice chips.
The respiratory therapist said his tracheotomy had to be changed to a larger, cuffed device that would allow them to expand his lower right lung.
The speech therapist groaned, "That will make it harder to swallow." They agreed that the lung had to take priority, but the speech therapist added, "Let's get rid of that cuffed trach as soon as possible."
I'm not criticizing Ms. Cooley, but it speaks volumes about her husband's wounds that she finds hope that he is making noises.
Sgt. Antwain Vaughn, 31, an Army combat engineer who took a roadside blast in the face on Aug. 31, arrives late and in a wheelchair. A padded helmet covers a large indentation where his shattered skull will receive a metal plate.
Sergeant Vaughn came to Tampa after two months on a ventilator and feeding tube. In addition to brain damage, facial fractures, pulmonary problems, blood clots and infections, he lost an eye and has trouble with complex tasks, something the card game could help.
Here he has learned to swallow and eat and in daily therapy, when he is feeling up to it, he is working to reclaim a life. But this time, he will not join the game. "My head's hurting a lot," he quietly tells the group.
Head injuries have also left some soldiers in a peculiar psychological box. Before Iraq, most head injuries at the Tampa hospital involved car accidents, said Dr. Rodney D. Vanderploeg, the chief of neuropsychology. Though it may seem counterintuitive, soldiers with penetrating brain injuries, in which a fragment crashed through their skulls, are far more likely to remember the attack and its bloody aftermath, perhaps including the deaths of friends, he said.
These memories often cause great psychological stress. But psychotherapy becomes especially difficult if injury has impaired a patient's insight and understanding.
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For the worst off, the ongoing annual costs -- largely hidden costs of this war -- can easily be several hundred thousand dollars or more.
"We expect to follow these patients for the rest of their lives," Dr. Scott said. "But I have a great deal of concern about our country's long-term commitment to these individuals. Will the resources be there over time?"
Goddamn you George Bush, goddamn you Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jonah Goldberg, Richard Perle, Rush Limbaugh,...the list could literally be a fucking mile long...for damning these people to hell on earth. You fuckers have cripple our nation for decades and I can't understand why. For money? For power? For some damned untreated psychosis? These soldiers are trapped in damaged bodies with brains that won't do what they are supposed to, tortured with relentless pain. Their families and loved ones are torn apart, helpless to change anything. To be sure, this is only a small part of the worldwide devestation that Bush's war has brought to us. I'm sure the suffering of the Iraqis is greater.
For what?
I'm serious, this makes me physically ill.
For me, this is a call to arms, a call to throw out the callow politicians, regardless of political affiliation, that enabled or continue to enable this tragedy. To never give up.