TBI care still has many problems, spouse says

TBI care still has many problems, spouse says
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Oct 18, 2007 7:05:08 EDT

An Army wife’s testimony about her active-duty husband’s mental problems caused by a traumatic brain injury suffered in Iraq provided a solid example for the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee about the need to act quickly on improving treatment programs.

Ariana Del Negro, the wife of Army 1st Lt. Charles Gatlin, talked of problems getting help for her husband for the anxiety, hearing loss, chronic vertigo and debilitating headaches he began suffering after he returned home from a 2006 deployment to Iraq.

Gatlin had been hit by three concussive blows from one large car-bomb blast in Kirkuk in September 2006 — one blow from the explosion, a second when the engine block hit him in the back of the head and a third when he hit the ground, Del Negro said Wednesday.

Gatlin was treated in Iraq and returned to his unit but was medevaced from the combat zone four weeks later because of physical and mental problems.

Gatlin initially received treatment at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, where Del Negro said things did not go well, partly because the many specialists who were supposed to be treating him seemed unable to work together.

“No two specialists agreed about what my husband needed,” she said. “We spent our days shuttling from one appointment to the next, only to discover that the recommendations made by one provider were deemed unnecessary by another.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/10/military_disabled_071017w/

It's made worse by medical people who don't understand the consequences.