E03 – Critical Reading – BTB100

It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s injuries. Even doctors can’t say for sure exactly why he has flashbacks, why he could be standing in a bookstore when all of a sudden he’s sure he’s in Ramadi, the pictures in his brain disorienting him among the stacks, which could turn from stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers.

1. Diagnosing someone with PTSD is something hard to decide.
2. Doctors have no idea what to diagnose Caleb.
3. What causes these flashbacks is it something he hears or sees?
4. The doctors aren’t even sure what Caleb has so how can they accuse the family of having PTSD.
5. Maybe all those shocking and life changing scenes that he witnessed bring back bad memories that cause him to react like that.
6. Places that he is in or little images he may see in his surroundings flash back to the times he was in war
7. Pictures or books may remind him of his time at war and being at the bookstore may remind him of his past.

Sometimes he starts yelling, and often he doesn’t remember anything about it later.

1. PTSD cause lots of problems and maybe yelling is a reaction to him visualizing a flashback.
2. He gets so caught up in his flashbacks that he doesn’t even remember why he was yelling.

They don’t know exactly why it comes to him in dreams, and why especially that time he picked up the pieces of Baghdad bombing victims and that lady who appeared to have thrown herself on top of her child to save him only to find the child dead underneath torments him when he’s sleeping, and sometimes awake.

1. These flashbacks of war could be on his mind all the time so, it is the last thing he thinks of before he goes to sleep.
2. A time in Baghdad could have been a sad point in his life witnessing all these deaths and having it live with him all of his life.
3. These horrible scenes that he has seen like the death of a child is something most people never witness and just being around something like that can make him have nightmares and relive that moment.

They don’t know why some other guys in his unit who did and saw the same stuff that Caleb did and saw are fine but Caleb is so sensitive to light, why he can’t just watch the news like a regular person without feeling as if he might catch fire.

1. People react to terrible scenarios differently
2. The way each soldier was grown up could have been different
3. There emotional side could play a big part in how they react to these events.
4. Caleb could have different views on war and what they should be like.
5. Caleb might not have known what to expect when he went to war and those things he viewed could have harmed him in a mental way.
6. Updates on news might bring back some images he might have seen while he was at war, and they aren’t pleasant thoughts going on in his mind.

Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.

1. Are bad proteins the blame for PTSD?
2. Is it you’re born with these proteins and you’re waiting for something to trigger it to go off like going to war?
3. Does it come from a family tree with long history of PTSD, or just many actions that happen that eventually lead up to PTSD.