by Iva Gutowski

Created on: October 01, 2009   Last Updated: October 05, 2009

My husband served in the United States Army for five and a half years. He had always wanted to serve his country and was a very dedicated and hard working soldier. During his term he was deployed overseas three times. Needless to say, we were separated for many of our "firsts". We missed our first Christmas, first anniversary, etc. He was deployed to Iraq for the first two deployments, and to Afghanistan for his third and final deployment.

I was taking classes at our local community college in pursuit of my nursing degree when he called me. "I got blown up today honey". I thought he was joking. He sounded happy, almost ecstatic. "What do you mean?", I asked. "Well, we were out on a mission today and I was driving one of the trucks today and I ran over an improvised explosive device". I felt panic creep into my heart. He went on to tell me that no one was killed, but that he was at the hospital with the other boy that was riding with him.

My husband suffered a moderate traumatic brain injury. (TBI for short). He had a pretty severe concussion and suffered memory loss. The TBI also affected his moods. He would sound happy when he was mad. He sounded mad when he was happy. He started having a hard time expressing himself. He stayed at the Army hospital for about a month and was then sent back to his unit, although, he didn't participate in missions any longer. Upon arriving home when the deployment was over, he started going to our local Veteran's Administration Medical Center for treatment.

The VA Hospital scheduled him to start seeing a psychologist regularly. They tried many medications to help stabilize his mood. After trying Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin, Trazadone, and countless others, my husband decided not to take any of the medications as they were not working. He started developing more severe memory problems. This whole experience has felt like being married to a very young man with Alzheimer's Disease. He'll often ask the same question every five minutes, or get angry because he forgets something that he was told saying that no one told him in the first place. After the accident, he immediately starting having trouble sleeping, which the doctors do not attribute to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but to his brain not being able to regulate his sleep due to injury from the TBI. Countless sleep medications later, nothing has worked.

To top everything off, TBI's are not researched well enough as of yet, to have a definitive treatment. The doctors tell us that there isn't really much that they can do. This has been frustrating for both my husband and our family. It causes me pain knowing what he must be going through, and there's nothing I can do about it. The only solutions that we have been offered as of yet are counseling, and a PDA to help him keep track of his appointments and work schedule.

Living through a Traumatic Brain Injury is a difficult experience for the victim, and the victim's families. It is my prayer that developments are made within the healthcare community to positively affect the quality of life for those suffering from this horrible tragedy. I have seen countless TBI victims in my career as a nurse as I also worked at the VA hospital and there just isn't much that can be done at this time. WIth persistence and research I believe that in the future we will find those solutions, and people can improve the function of their brains following a TBI and improve their quality of life.

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