Iraq Vet

Iraq Vet Seeks Out the War's Hidden Wounded

Colson refers to himself as the "dog catcher for trauma." His job is to get traumatized veterans into care before it's too late.



  June 27, 2007 · Many troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some will drink too much and use drugs. They'll lose jobs. They'll drive away friends, family, spouses and children. Most of them won't ask for help.

Mike Colson is a mental health counselor for the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Washington state. He believes that with the right medications and counseling, these veterans can learn to live and function while dealing with the mental health problems common to war. His job is to get traumatized veterans into care before it's too late. He jokingly refers to himself as the "dog catcher for trauma."

Colson drives his government-issued car hundreds of miles a day, from military base to military base. He tells scores of men and women just how hard it's likely to be — mentally and emotionally — to go back to civilian life when they have just come from the brutal chaos of war.

At a Navy base near Seattle, 60 sailors and Marines wait inside an auditorium. Before leaving the military, they have to sit through three days of departure briefings filled with information. They're already slumped in their chairs when Colson enters the auditorium, walking with a shadow of a limp. A tough-looking guy, with a shaved head and a dark suit, Colson knows he has one chance to reach the young men and women in the room. He might even save somebody's life.

"To be a warrior, is to be exceptional," Colson tells the group. "But it can come at an emotional cost."

Colson knows there is a stigma attached to asking for help in the military. So he knows he can't use the words "mental illness" or "post-traumatic stress disorder" until he tells them something about himself: He has PTSD.

"Do I look like I have post-traumatic stress?" he says. "Just look at me. What do you think? Why am I able to talk to you? Medicine. That's right, I take it every day. Am I a better person because of it? Yeah. Will I be better next month? I don't know. But I'm better today."

War Experiences Come Home

The Navy sent Colson to Afghanistan twice and Iraq twice as a chaplain. He counseled soldiers who had seen friends die and who struggled with their own nightmares. Colson himself was severely injured in a helicopter crash several years ago. He broke his back and had eight surgeries. When he came home, he was anxious and distant. He put carpet down in his garage and slept there, alone, at night. He was slow to see that these were signs of his own PTSD.

One day, a Navy psychiatrist noticed Colson's "thousand-mile stare" — the distracted and distant gaze that marks those dealing with PTSD.

"He saw it in my face," Colson recalls. "He read trauma like a book… And he saved me. And he medicated me. He took the anger away, he got me to sleep for the first time in a few years."

Now, when he helps others, he is also helping himself heal. But Colson knows recovery is fragile, for himself or anyone with PTSD. And he knows that no matter how many thousands of troops hear him speak, no matter how many he gives his e-mail and phone number to, there will be some he won't reach in time. It has happened in his own family, to his nephew, a Marine who returned home from Fallujah.

His nephew lived far away. Colson called, wrote and even made therapy appointments, but they went ignored. His nephew drank and withdrew. One night, alone in his father's house, his nephew shot himself and died.

In some ways, Colson feels responsible for his death.

"I was a suicide-prevention officer for the Navy, for God's sake," he says. "Let's be honest. I didn't save him. I failed. And that failure will haunt me. When I talk to my sister, it's there. When I walk into a family gathering, it's there."

Stigma Can Cost Lives

He thinks the bravado of military service prevented his nephew from seeking help. He says that in the military, "Readjustment issues, and concerns, and PTSD and that horrible word, you know, mental illness, that's something you never tell anyone and that stigma can cost people their lives."

At another Navy base, Colson gives his speech again. He hopes he will shock more sailors and Marines into getting care. As he speaks, he scans the young faces in the room. He sees a woman with a girlish face in the third row who is blinking back tears. He watches two men who don't laugh at his jokes, but he sees that they're listening — closely. As Colson packs up, the woman in tears and the two men who didn't laugh seek him out privately. Colson will get them appointments at the Vet Center and hope they show up.

When Colson gets to his office the next day, there are four more e-mails from others. It's a handful. But for Mike Colson, it's a start.

The Supreme Court's term has yet a few days to go, but if the time has come for awarding prizes this much is certain. The prize for the court's worst performance since October goes to -- Chief Justice John Roberts for his inept and unconvincing opinion last Monday in Morse v. Frederick , the case of the Alaskan schoolboy.
 

The facts were not in dispute, though you would never know this from the chief's opinion. Let me summarize: On Jan. 24, 2002, the Olympic Torch was to pass through Juneau, Alaska, on its way to the Olympic Games. As the parade passed by Juneau-Douglas High School, a 19-year-old student, Joseph Frederick, unfurled a 14-foot banner that bore a strange device. The school's principal rushed across the street, seized the banner and suspended the student Naturally, he sued. He won in the 9th Circuit, but on Monday the Supreme Court voted 5-4, more or less, to reverse.

It may be useful to look at the facts the chief justice so remarkably overlooked or rearranged. In his very first sentence, Roberts wrongly said: "At a school-sanctioned and school-supervised event, a high school principal saw ..."

How's that again? At this public event, the high school sanctioned nothing and supervised very little. The parade was sponsored by the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Juneau and by several other private companies and private citizens. The school turned out a small band, but that was the beginning and end of the school's involvement.

The chief justice would not let it go. Eleven times he got it wrong. He said the torch-bearing parade was like a "class trip." This was palpable nonsense -- high-octane nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. This was never a school function. The parade never touched school property.

One more point of fact: The chief justice said the Olympic torchbearers were to pass by the school "while school was in session." But this was not so. Not a single class was in session as the torch passed by. The students, including young Joe Frederick, were free to watch the parade, throw snowballs or stay home, as they wished.

What was the lad's offense? On his own time, at his own expense, in his own household, he and his buddies had prepared a portable sign. This was the message on the streamer they attempted to unfurl: BONG HITS 4 JESUS.

"The message on Frederick's banner is cryptic," said the chief justice. He was not sure what to make of it. It was no doubt offensive to some, perhaps amusing to others. It was obviously not actionably "obscene." Ah, but it plausibly could advocate the use of illegal drugs. Think of that! The chief was not amused.

Having garbled the facts, the chief justice proceeded to garble the law. To support his cockamamie theory of the case, he cited to three famous cases of student speech and the First Amendment. These are the Tinker case of 1969, the Fraser case of 1986 and the Kuhlmeier case of 1988. But his cites were irrelevant. Those cases clearly involved student speech within a public school , where classes were in session and the principal's authority was unquestioned.

Roberts' unconvincing opinion for the court was considerably undermined by the pallid enthusiasm of his colleagues. Justice Scalia stayed resolutely mum. Justice Thomas concurred in a single tight-lipped sentence and then wandered off with a treatise on the original meaning of the First Amendment.

Justice Alito, with Justice Kennedy concurring, went to bed with the chief justice's opinion, but they plainly hated themselves in the morning. Roberts' opinion, they emphasized, "provides no support for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue."

Justice Breyer, dissenting in part, sensibly described the court's opinion as "unwise and unnecessary." Then, as he so often does, Justice Breyer wandered aimlessly off.

It remains to be said only that Justice John Paul Stevens earned a pearl in his crown in heaven. Joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg, he wrote that Roberts' opinion for the court "does serious violence to the First Amendment." Its approach is "indefensible." Amen, brother!

On April 20, 1653, Oliver Cromwell spoke famously to the famous Rump Parliament. He could have been speaking to the Roberts Court: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

If Marc Freedman is right, the American workplace will soon undergo its largest transformation since the women's movement. The agents of this change? The many baby boomers who plan to delay their retirement for an "encore career."
 

Mr. Freedman, a social entrepreneur and CEO of Civic Ventures, a think tank, sees a new stage of life beginning where midlife careers end. As legions of older workers seek new challenges – or continue their current work – this burgeoning movement will give them a combination of continued income, greater impact, and added purpose.

Purpose is a word that figures prominently in Freedman's vocabulary. He has even established a major award by that name, the Purpose Prize – a three-year, $9 million program honoring social innovators over the age of 60 who are working to solve critical social problems. These range from global warming to infant mortality, from hunger to high dropout rates for Hispanic students.

This week Freedman announced the 15 finalists in his second annual Purpose Prize. The five top winners, to be announced in September, will each receive $100,000; the others $10,000 each. In addition to reshaping their own lives, the recipients are having positive effects on their communities.

One finalist is using experience from a career in food distribution to redistribute tons of nutritious produce at a San Francisco food bank to the poor. The produce would otherwise go to waste. Another one, in Herndon, Va., is advancing the humane treatment of farm animals through the certification and labeling of meat and poultry. A third is teaching Hispanic parents in Houston computer skills to get them involved in their children's education.

And an Episcopal priest in San Francisco is helping churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques reduce energy use.

Not all encore careers come with exalted purpose, of course. But as the idea of new purpose in later life spreads, the effects can be far-reaching.

First, working seniors can help foster improved attitudes toward older people and counter negative stereotypes that diminish individuals and whole generations. Second, such work can help ease an expected labor shortage, even as it adds income.

But idealism and high hopes are not enough. Those who want to continue making a contribution will need the support of employers willing to retain them or hire them. That can include flexible schedules.

Not everyone will want to pursue an encore career with regular hours and paychecks attached. But purposeful activity can also bring new luster to the word volunteer. Too often this important contribution is saddled with outmoded images of stuffing envelopes or doing menial tasks, when in fact it carries so much potential for reaching out beyond oneself.

As repositories of knowledge, experience, and life skills, encore-career pioneers serve as vibrant examples to younger generations of the possibilities inherent in the later years – possibilities that too often remain hidden.

As Freedman notes, the Golden Years version of retirement-as-leisure that reigned for the past half century is obsolete. With or without prizes as incentives for change, there can be new purpose, pleasure, and satisfaction beyond the 18th hole.

Chinese-made toothpaste tainted with a potentially poisonous chemical was distributed to more places in the United States than initially thought, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
 

About 900,000 tubes of toothpaste containing diethylene glycol, an ingredient in antifreeze, were distributed to hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and some hospitals serving the general population, the Times said.

Initial reports said the tainted toothpaste was most likely to be found in discount shops.

Officials in Georgia and North Carolina were replacing the toothpaste with products made outside China, according to the report. Hospitals in South Carolina and Florida also reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste, it said.

Drug distributor McKesson Corp. was recalling its EverFRESH brand after finding trace amounts of the chemical, the Times said, adding that McKesson could not immediately determine any customers had bought the product.

A spokesman for McKesson was not available.

Earlier this month, Colgate-Palmolive Co. said fake toothpaste containing diethylene glycol was found in four U.S. states, but said the toothpaste posed a low health risk.

A Japanese company has created a home appliance the size of a paperback novel that can warn of earthquakes seconds before they strike.
 

Using the early warning system network and data provided by Japan's Meteorological Agency (JAMA) via the Internet, the appliance sounds off a loud countdown of up to 20 seconds to the moment the tremor begins.

Security firm SunShine Co. Ltd says this should give people enough time to hide under tables, turn off gas and fire sources or even just to move away from potentially dangerous furniture.

Starting October, the JAMA warnings will also be broadcast on television and radio and sent to mobile phones equipped to receive them, which will go on sale later this year.

But the company hopes its 'EQGuard', which will also be available in October, will help people who just happened not to be watching television.

"There are 51 million households in Japan and we expect this system to catch on with at least 20 percent of the households," said President of SunShine Co. Ltd, Kazuo Sasaki.

Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

The appliance sends alerts once it detects primary waves, or the first waves of an earthquake that do not cause major rattling but travel faster than the secondary waves that are responsible for the actual shaking.

The alerts could precede the shaking by 10 to 20 seconds, although the period would be much shorter -- and in some cases absent -- if the tremor's centre is near.

According the regulatory Japanese Electronics Industries Association, which reviews products, the data from JAMA is sometimes wrong and could cause unnecessary panic.

"This system makes mistakes. Its not a hundred percent accurate," said Yoshinori Sugihara, head of JEITA's Emergency Earthquake Alert and Trial Project. "The appliance has warned of an earthquake when there was no earthquake."

"But there is value in knowledge before the ground begins shaking. And those that believe this information is more valuable should buy this to save their lives," he added.

Japan started providing earthquake information to emergency personnel, construction sites and train operators last August, but it had put off making the warnings available to the broader public to avoid panic.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit central Japan in 1995, killing more than 6,400 people and causing an estimated $100 billion in damage. In 2004, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the northern prefecture of Niigata, killing about 40 and injuring more than 3,000.

WASHINGTON - The FBI is asking the nation's scuba instructors to watch for potential terrorist threats.
 

The agency's Joint Terrorism Task Force recently alerted dive shops around the country to look out for divers seeking advanced training, including diving in murky water and in sewer pipes.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko described the advisory as routine and said it was not prompted by any threat.

The advisory asked instructors to be aware of "odd inquiries that are inconsistent with recreational diving." That includes advanced navigation techniques, deep diving and the use of underwater vehicles.

"It would definitely stand out," said Ken Loyst, who sits on the board of the National Association of Underwater Instructors. "Most instructors would take it upon themselves to call somebody and say, 'There's a weird guy in my class.'"

The advisory also referred to requests for diver training "by applicants from countries where diving is not a common recreational activity" and training sponsored by religious organizations, cults, charities and other groups not usually associated with diving.

Loyst, who is also a pilot, compared the FBI advisory to those distributed to aviation instructors.

"I think the FBI is just kind of giving everyone a heads up," he said.

Loyst estimated there are about 1,800 dive shops around the country.

 

A major dust storm has developed on the red planet, blocking sunlight and prompting Mars mission managers to keep a close eye on it, SPACE.com has learned.

It is not known how large the storm might grow, but already it is thousands of miles across. If it balloons, as dust storms have done in the past, it could hamper operations of NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

For now, officials don't think the storm will threaten rover operations, however. In fact, the windy conditions on the planet have blown off large amounts of dust from the rovers' solar arrays, giving them more power. The power boost may lend a helping hand to the Opportunity rover, should officials decide to send it into Victoria Crater.

"We've been watching this storm for about six days now," said Steven Squyres of Cornell University, who is the lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover Project. "It's not unheard of for Martian dust storms to cover half the planet, and this one is now a regional storm."

Squyres wasn't certain of the storm's exact size, but said it appears to be thousands of miles in diameter and "ain't no little hurricane." In fact, "it's one of the most sunlight-blocking storms we've seen on Mars," he said.

According to reports from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which Squyres deemed as Mars' weather satellite, the storm has grown in size and is lifting up dust about 560 miles (900 KM) east of Opportunity, which is presently at Meridiani Planum. "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team is watching this closely, because we worry about dust in the atmosphere obscuring the sunlight," Squyres said.

Experienced amateur astronomers have spotted the storm with large telescopes. Paul Maxson of Phoenix, Arizona, was one of the first to image the storm.

Dust storms on Mars occur regularly, but seldom do they grow beyond regional proportions. A storm in 2001, however, engulfed the entire planet in red dust.

"If the storm continues to get worse, it could cut into our activities," Squyres said. One of those activities, should the team decide it's not too risky, could be the descent of Opportunity into the massive Victoria Crater. A press conference is planned for Thursday to discuss the decision.

"The upshot of all this wind is that the arrays are so clean that the dust is insignificant right now," he said. "But this is Mars, and we can't predict the weather-we can only to react to it."

Diana Blaney, the deputy project manager for the Mars exploration rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said dust levels can significantly impact the rovers' missions. "When big dust storms like this come along, they decrease the energy the rovers can work with," Blaney said.

JPL spokesperson Guy Webster said Mars mission managers will be monitoring the storm's progress and how it may affect the planned descent into the crater. "They've really been paying attention to the storm and been getting regular reports of its progress," Webster said.

"Permanent makeup" -- a kind of tattoo of the lips, eyelids and eyebrows undergone by more than 8 million U.S. women -- can for years disfigure patients who suffer allergic reactions, federal researchers said on Wednesday.
 


Doctors have long known that allergic reactions can occur with such ink injections, the researchers report in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In 2004, American Institute of Intradermal Cosmetics in Arlington, Texas, recalled and replaced inks in its Premier Pigments brand after they were implicated in many of the problems reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

To assess how long the disfigurement lasted, Masja Straetemans of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and her colleagues interviewed 92 women who had problems after the procedure.

More than 9 out of 10 had swelling and tenderness, nearly that many complained of itching, and more than 4 out of 5 had bumps.

They found that the allergic reaction lasted anywhere from five months to more than three years.

"In 68 percent the reactions had not healed at the time of the telephone interview," said Straetemans.

According to the FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, "reports of allergic reactions to tattoo pigments have been rare. However, when they happen they may be particularly troublesome because the pigments can be hard to remove. Occasionally, people may develop an allergic reaction to tattoos they have had for years."

"Consumers and medical professionals should report adverse reactions to permanent-makeup procedures to the FDA," the researchers wrote.

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