You can’t see Caleb’s other wound, either.
- We can assume that it may be a head injury.
It’s called traumatic brain injury, or TBI, from multiple concussions.
- Had a few concussions.
In two tours, he was in at least 20 explosions—IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs, RPGs.
- Being in 20 explosions can do serious damage to the human body.
- We don’t know how serious each explosion was.
- He was on two tours.
In one of them, when a mortar or grenade hit just behind him, he was thrown headfirst through a metal gate and into a courtyard.
- He definitely suffered a lot of head trauma here.
- His head went through a metal gate which probably weighed a ton.
- Blunt head trauma like this can cause severe concussions.
His buddies dragged him into a corner, where he was in and out of consciousness while the firefight continued, for hours.
- In and out of consciousness for hours.
- Never specified how many hours.
- We don’t know what the extent of his injuries were.
- Was he bleeding from his head?
When it was over, they gave him an IV and some Motrin, and within hours, he was back on patrol.
- Not given enough time to let the body heal.
- Not given proper check up.
- He most likely need something with a higher dosage than Motrin.
The Army has rules about that sort of thing now. Now if you’re knocked unconscious, or have double vision, or exhibit other signs of a brain injury, you have to rest for a certain period of time, but that rule didn’t go into effect in theater until 2010, after Caleb was already out of the service.
- Finally made it a protocol to have a longer rest period.
- Took a long time to have the rule passes and go into effect.
He wasn’t diagnosed for years after he got back, despite Brannan’s frantic phone calls to the VA begging for tests, since her husband, formerly a high-scoring civil-engineering major at Auburn University, was asking her to help him do simple division.
- Information withheld from the family about his test scores.
- Teaching/helping husband with simple division.
- Most likely to have nerve damage in the brain.
When Caleb was finally screened for the severity of his TBI, Brannan says he got the second-worst score in the whole 18-county Gulf Coast VA system, which serves more than 50,000 veterans.
- Had the second worse score in the entire 18 county Gulf Coast VA system.
- System serves more than 50,000 veterans.
- Suffered severe damage to the brain.
But there’s still a lot about brain damage that doctors, much less civilians, don’t understand.
- There are things we still need to learn about brain damage.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
I like what you’re doing here, CollegeKid. Just a couple notes on your first entries.
—We can assume that it may be a head injury.
[I don’t think so. You must mean it’s a brain injury.]
Had a few concussions.
[Probably, but that’s not entirely obvious from the claim as stated. Could excessive heat cause a brain injury? A drug overdose? In infection? They’re all traumatic without a blow to the head.]
I’m suggesting that we’re responsible for the same precision and clarity we demand of the authors whose work we critique.
Consider these obvious and hidden claims:
— “finally screened” means that according to Brannan or the author or both, Caleb should have been screened long before. It suggests that the VA was negligent in delaying his testing.
— “the severity of his TBI” clearly contains the claim that he in fact has some degree of TBI. The fact that he hadn’t until then been screened for it means nobody knew for sure that he did, but the author makes that claim.
— “Brannan says” means that the author has not independently verified Caleb’s score or where it ranked against all other screenings.
— “the second-worst score in the whole 18-county Gulf Coast VA system” is offered as Brannan’s claim that her husband is suffering more than almost anyone. Considering her vested interest in promoting this perspective, we have to be at least a little suspicious of the ranking.
— “which serves more than 50,000 veterans” gives the impression that Caleb was hurt worse than 50,000 other veterans. But let’s be clear. Many of these 50,000 will not have served in combat at all. Many will not have had active engagement with enemy troops on the battlefield. Many of those who did see active fighting will not have been near explosive devices. So we’re not comparing him to 50,000 TBI sufferers.
You may improve this post if you wish, CollegeKid, after comparing it to your classmates’, but you’re not obligated to do so. If you should revise it for re-grading, drop a comment below to ask me to take another look. Your very capable draft indicates you could easily earn an upgrade.
Grade X
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