LAT: Treating war's 'silent injury'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-brain11apr11,0,6650156.story">Treating war's 'silent injury'
By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2007

ENCINITAS, Calif. — At a community hospital here, doctors and therapists are working to help Marines overcome what is often called the signature injury of the Iraq war: brain trauma with no visible wounds.

"It's the silent injury," said Jessica Martinez, an occupational therapist at Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas. "With every blast they suffer, their brain is rattling like a yolk in an egg."

Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Vargas was a high school football player. Now, even though he looks fit, he cannot toss the football with his buddies, let alone be part of pickup games with other off-duty Marines.

"I can't catch anything," he said. "I can't remember any plays."

Vargas, 20, was subjected to innumerable mortar and roadside bomb blasts while patrolling the insurgent stronghold of Hit in the Euphrates River Valley. In mid-January he was shot in the hand and cheek by a sniper and airlifted to Germany and then the United States for treatment.


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