The N&O profiled 20-year-old Iraqi war veteran Michael Beck on Sunday, a young man literally shredded by war. He went to Iraq as a guardsman – a guardsman! - and came back in pieces:
War wounded
The N&O profiled 20-year-old Iraqi war veteran Michael Beck on Sunday, a young man literally shredded by war. He went to Iraq as a guardsman – a guardsman! - and came back in pieces:
To put it simply, Beck is torn up. It’s almost more a question of what parts of him weren’t injured. At hospital stops in Iraq, Germany and finally Walter Reed in Washington, doctors began work on a long list of damaged limbs and organs: colon, kidney, spleen, liver, left eye, right leg and left foot.
They removed the front half of his left foot. They clamped what was left of each lower leg in an external fixiator — a framework of metal rods around the leg to support it and keep it stable. They did three days of surgery to gradually close the severe stomach wound that reached from his pubic bone to the bottom of his chest. They used Gore-Tex mesh that acted like a shoelace drawn gradually tighter.
All told, Beck’s family estimates, he has more than 100 wounds large and small where shrapnel tore and burned his body.
It’s hard to imagine a time when Michael will be whole, because he won’t be. He is forever changed, his body a permanent marker in time of hell on earth. The hell George Bush put in place on September 12, 2001, and after, the hell we let him wage on this earth, the hell we still finance today. Imagine how long Michael might live, if he is saved. What he will resemble over time. Something like a wounded tree whose scars live on in wounded, twisted bark.
At the turn of the last century, aging Civil War veterans roamed our streets, many of them homeless, a continual reminder of the cost of five years of hell we inflicted on our soil. Michael Beck could be reminding his generation for the rest of the century about what we did to them. I’m betting they will never forget.
Ever.
Unusual tree knot by Onatas (Josh Klute) via Stock.xchng.
tags: ptsd, war veterans, disability, war wounds
CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was on CNN today talking about her new book, Breathing the Fire. In two interviews I watched with her today on that channel, she spoke about how…
Kimberly Dozier’s take on surviving trauma
CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was on CNN today talking about her new book, Breathing the Fire. In two interviews I watched with her today on that channel, she spoke about how constantly speaking about her experience, and writing her feelings, memories and experiences helped her deal with the trauma.
She was asked by both CNN interviewers if she experiences flashbacks and continued trauma over her experience. She said she occasionally does, but not to the extent of some others she has met; she attributes her success to her ability to continually communicating her experiences.
Guilt, pain, trauma – they succeed in crippling us because we don’t talk about them. Sexual abuse and incest – these things have continued power in our lives because of our silence. This is why I am writing this blog and trying to talk more and more about my experiences of abuse, my memories, and my experiences with recovery and my daily life as a survivor.
Because those evil things can’t lose their power unless they are exposed to the light and burned away.
From the excerpts available on her website, the book in unflinching in its exposure of her thoughts and feelings:
. . . whenever I wasn’t doing physiotherapy, I was ambushed by all the other things I’d been able to silence until then or at least muffle in my psyche.
Now I had nothing but time to think about the bombing, Paul and James, and their families. Images of them repeatedly hit me, and each time my mind said no. I didn’t see their bodies at the bomb scene. I hadn’t seen their funerals. For me they remained frozen in time, doing a Memorial Day shoot.
And I saw every memory through the fisheye of narcotics, intensely magnified and leavened by the multiple nerve depressants that were meant to control my physical pain. From hour to hour my emotions roller-coastered, mostly crashing down.
Bravo, Kimberly!
ColorFall by Asif Akbar of India courtesy of Stock.xchng.
tags: kimberly dozier, breathing the fire, war wounds, ptsd, asif akbar, commonsenseindia
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Warren Ellis is even smarter than I thought
Is there anything cooler than finding new music? Yeah … finding out someone you admire also digs some of the coolest music in the world.
Warren Ellis writes comic books, graphic novels, books. Yeah, get over yourself. A new media master, among his latest works are:
- a brilliant comic series called Fell that sells for the low, low price of a buck ninety-nine. That’s about half the price of many comics. It’s also about twice as brilliant. Maybe thrice. You can read the entire first issue for free online.
- an alternate-futre graphic novel coming in July about a PI investigating an alien invasion, called Aetheric Mechanics.
Ellis frequently posts music on his blog, usually without any explanation as to why. Recently he put up a video by electronic artist Philip Jeck, someone I was woefully ignorant about. Shame on me!
Jeck’s latest release on Touch is called Sand, and he recently released a 7” with Christian Fennesz, an artist I have recently become obsessed about, and Charles Matthews. I realize electronic squarks, washes and glicks is not for everyone. For those who are intrigued, here’s some Jeck: