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1. “Brannan Vines has never been to war. But she’s got a warrior’s skills”
   • the description of having warrior skills. Is showing this in the light that a warrior is something not everyone has. I believe these so-called warrior skills are actually just instinctive actions based on how humans are made up
2. “Skills on the battlefield”
   • The author is comparing everyday life to the elements of war in Iraq but in doing so is making it seem as if no one else without the relationship to war whether through one’s family member or friend has ever felt these emotions before.
3. “crazy-person behavior in a drug store, where she was recently standing behind a sweet old lady counting out change when she suddenly became so furious her ears literally started ringing. Being too cognizant of every sound—every coin dropping an echo—she explodes inwardly, fury flash-incinerating any normal tolerance for a fellow patron with a couple of dollars in quarters and dimes. ”
   • This whole section is purposely emphasized to show the relationship between her “symptoms”
     and her husband’s PTSD. without the comparison and elaborate imagery, I am sure everyone can relate to the aggravation of a slow customer unless I have PTSD as well.
4. “Brannan Vines has never been to war, but her husband, Caleb, was sent to Iraq twice, where he served in the infantry as a designated marksman.”
   • In the next paragraph, the author repeats themselves to then have the reader have the “aha” moment of ” oh that’s why she was acting that way” without repeating themselves this moment would be less subtle and would not help them prove their point of the relationship between PTSD and being “contagious”
5. He’s one of 103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask, and one of 115,000 to 456,000 with traumatic brain injury. It’s hard to say, with the lack of definitive tests for the former, under testing for the latter, underreporting, under or over-misdiagnosing of both.
   • The author is naming off a lot of data here to confuse the reader or to give the illusion that this solider is not a rare case but one of many with these symptoms.
   • he then goes to claim that most of these numbers are not accurate because of the lack of testing that has been performed on returning soldiers.
6. “even less understood is the collateral damage, to families, to schools, to society—emotional and fiscal costs borne long after the war is over.”
   • I love how he uses the word damage suggesting that one man’s PTSD affects the rest of the world.
   • The author then claims that this one man’s PTSD is creating damage to their financial life as well
7. “Like Brannan’s symptoms.”
   • Claiming that these emotions are indeed symptoms that they are, fact, PTSD
8. “Hypervigilance sounds innocuous…a conditioned response to life-threatening situations.”
   • he is claiming that this emotion is the soling resulting in life-threatening situations and implying that is not a harmless emotion
9. “imagine there’s a murderer in your house. And it is dark outside, and the electricity is out. Imagine your nervous system spiking, readying you as you feel your way along the walls, the sensitivity of your hearing, the tautness in your muscles, the alertness shooting around inside your skull”
   • This example that is given is trying to prove that you have to be in a life-threatening situation to feel that emotion.
   • Also notice that the author’s choice of words as he tries to imply the relationship between this and being in the war. Using words such as; shooting, sensitivity, alertness. all of these words are commonly used to describe the feeling of war.
10. “And then imagine feeling like that all the time”
    • Here the author is claiming that people with PTSD, or in this case, soldiers with PTSD feel this way all the time
    • they are also implying that the soldier’s also feels this way all the time