Critical Reading- jsoccer5

“It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s injuries. “

What makes it so hard? There is nothing in this statement to support the fact that this is hard, its just a blank accusation that the reader isn’t smart enough or knowledgeable enough to understand Caleb’s injuries. She doesn’t say what all his injuries are so she can’t say they are all hard to understand. If it is hard to understand them then how does she understand them? In this sense she says Caleb’s injuries but doesn’t specify as to if it’s all or some of them making it seem as if all his injuries are complex and too hard for anyone to understand. What if he has other injuries other then just this mental illness. Lots of time men in the Military have physical injuries as well as mental. Are those just as hard to understand? By her making injuries plural it states there is more than one injury and since this article is only talking about his PTSD it leaves it open to assume there are other issues he is handling which may be making his PTSD more intensified and harder to handle.

“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. “

While doctors cannot say why he is having them, they saying something which is most likely suggesting reasons behind why he is having them based off their medical knowledge and history in the field. It doesn’t say the doctors don’t have any idea of what causes them it just says they don’t know for sure suggesting that they do have some idea, its just not exactly what Caleb wants to hear or maybe hasn’t been medically proven yet. There is also no exact number of doctors who can’t say exactly what causes this. The article just says doctors, which is plural so we know it is at least two. There is also no evidence that these doctors are specialized in this field, for all we know it could be his primary general physician. If he is having flashbacks so severed he can’t remember where he is then maybe he should be seeing a specialist. She then contradicts her self by basically describing what triggers his PTSD by saying that the rows of books remind him of the roof tops on Ramada. As someone who struggles from PTSD I don’t always know why I get flashbacks sometimes and not others but I am aware that certain things will trigger my PTSD, such as crowds so therefor I try to avoid them and I am sure to have methods to handle these problems if for some reason a certain crowd randomly triggers me. While doctors can’t say for sure what is causing Caleb’s they can help him and his family recognize his triggers, such as tall rows of similar items, and help him come up with ways to handle the flashbacks the same way doctors in my life have.

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

There are many people out there who when upset and yelling they don’t remember what they say after the fact. While this could be a side effect of PTSD it is not only directly related to PTSD. Maybe he has consumed alcohol, or is on some type of drug that doesn’t help him remember well. How do we know that he doesn’t remember anything? Maybe he pretends not to remember so he does not have to face the possibility of being embarrassed or having to deal with the problem at hand. There is zero evidence in this statement that he is yelling about something war related, maybe he is just mad and upset about other aspects of his life.

“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. “

Who is they? Is she referring to the doctors he works with? Again she states they, I am assuming she is referring to the doctors but I am unsure, don’t know why exactly he is having these flashbacks insinuating that they have some theories as to why and have shared those theories with Caleb but have told him it could be many different reasons. She then describes a very vivid incident that Caleb has encounters while overseas. By this women being able to describe the event so vividly it seems as if Caleb has described this event to her in detail, insinuating that Caleb has expressed this event as one very memorable event to be that is constantly bothering him and significant in his life. She then goes on to say that this event not only bothers him in his sleep but also when he is awake, making is seem that he isn’t only having flashbacks in his sleep, so the fact that the doctors can’t exactly figure out why he does it in his sleep doesn’t mean much as they are actually looking at a much bigger picture of why he is having these flashbacks at all and what is triggering them. Sleeping during them is only one aspect to the much larger and involved issue at hand.

“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. “

By saying they don’t know what makes him different from other guys in the unit who are fine is like saying we don’t know why this apple is bruised and this other one is half red half yellow. Everybody is effected by situations and life experiences differently so you cannot compare the two. Also it says some of the guys in the unit which could mean two things. One being that they only spoke to a few guys in the unit, which could be really only two other guys, and compared those people to Caleb, while they  didn’t talk to all of the guys in the unit. It could also mean that only some of the guys in the unit weren’t effected but everyone else in the unit has the exact effect, or similar issues as Caleb.She then throws in the fact that Caleb is sensitive to light. This part of the sentence has nothing to do with the other people in the unit being effected or not, it just says they are fine and Caleb is not, nothing about other people in the unit being effected by light. It really truly doesn’t make sense and should either be another sentence completely or not mentioned at all. It is almost as if the writer has used this to change focus on the fact that the beginning of the sentence is being presented as fact when it has nothing to back it, no studies shown. As she goes on to explain the light issue she says the news causes him to feel like he is going to catch on fire. Why is it just the news and not all of TV shows. While yes TV is light, which would make sense for him to be sensitive to watching TV, it makes no sense as to this relating to him to having trouble watching the news and nothing else. It seems as if the news is a trigger all into its self. Maybe the type of news brings back memories. We don’t know what type of news they are referring to we just know its the news, maybe its world wide news which is always showing war scenes and makes sense for it to bother his as he is a war veteran. Also why does he feel he is going to catch on fire? Is it that its so bright he feels its like the sun is about to touch him? Or is it that while he was active duty serving that he almost caught on fire and watching news about war brings him back to that moment? How many times has watching the news resulted in him feeling like he is going to catch on fire? Maybe that incident has only happened once, and if so that particular scene on the news probably triggered him back to something that happened involving catching on fire. This sentence is all over the place, spewing out random facts that don’t help each other make a valid point and distract the reader from being able to analyze there is nothing backing the beginning of the sentence about how other men in the unit aren’t effected.

“Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins [11], or a misbehaving amygdala [12]. “

What hypotheses are these and where did she get them from. While she does create links to what those two medical issues are she does not refer to where she got these facts from, making it not an actual fact just simply a claim. She also says these hypotheses blame these medical issues for PTSD torture. To start blame is a very strong phrase and most of the time is used when you disagree with something. When I think of blame I think of a child doing something wrong and blaming it on their sibling. By saying these medical scientific hypotheses place these other medical issues at fault for PTSD it makes it seem like if you have PTSD they will just blame it on something else and not on the fact that the person with PTSD went through something traumatic. Also the fact that they say torture is a strong statement too. By saying PTSD only tortures some trauma victims its saying that some trauma victims have PTSD but it doesn’t effect them so they must not have these other medical issues. From personal experience with PTSD over time the triggers and effects of it dwindle away so this claim is also saying it tortures some but not others but never discloses how recent those trauma victims have had their incident or how far along in treatment they are in regards to their incident, not to mention trauma victims could lose their memory making it so that they just don’t remember what happened and can’t be effect by it. Once again comparing some people to another, even just one person to another person isn’t a fair evaluation as not everyone is effect the same way with life events.

“Family history, or maybe previous trauma.”

This sentence doesn’t really make much sense alone however if I refer it back to the previous sentence it seems that it is referring to more reasons why PTSD can effect some people and not others. If some victims have family history of mental health issues that will absolutely play a roll into the effects some have of their PTSD. They may also have other medical issues making small upsets into larger things because they are simply just dealing with too much at one time. The fact that some of these people may have experienced previous trauma would absolutely effect how they handle things. If someone has multiple challenging life events happen they will struggle more at coping as there is more to cope with. Again these are both reason why someone cannot compare people. Yes all of the fruit in the basket may be apples but they all come from different places and all taste and look different. If you are going to compare people it should be scientifically done with everyone in the group having similar outside factors such as everyone involved in the study has no mental illness in their family history and have never been exposed to previous trauma and all needed to have witnessed the same life altering event. By eliminating outside factors it would be easier for doctors to understand why some people are effected and others are not.