via Special Publications: Dash | “Potluck crowd-pleasers” | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon.

“Ninety-four people will become brain injured today…”

Startling fact from this article, from New Zealand actually. This is just a short one from a NZ radio station, but it’s interesting to see what other countries have to say about brain injury. I would guess that there is a “brain injury awareness week” or -month almost anytime if I were to look around the world. That would be a great project for my spare? time. I’d like to compile that list. Ah, well; I need another lifetime for all the things I want to do, but perhaps if I keep up my year of noticing important brain injury news from around the world it will come together by itself.

Part two to the NPR-ProPublica bust of the Military failing to diagnose and treat brain injury in soldiers. Here’s a sample:

A second computerized test used on the battlefield, known as the ANAM, or Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, failed to catch nearly half of all soldiers who had suffered a concussion, according to a recent unpublished study obtained by NPR and ProPublica. Lt. Gen. Eric Scoomaker, the Army’s top medical official, recently testified in Congress that results from the test are no better than a “coin flip.”

I’m so, so glad that people are beginning to be outraged. As General Peter Chiarelli said in his interview on NPR, said in this article:
“It’s time we realize that TBI and PTS are real injuries,” Chiarelli told Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan. “We’ve got to ensure our soldiers get the care that they need.”

GREAT, comprehensive article from NPR about the Military and Brain Injury. This contains startling facts, many updated from the ones I have from the CDC, on how many soldiers are affected by TBI from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Low End= 5750
High End= 60,000

And even those numbers are up for debate. It’s criminal, to me, that this is so prevalent and unnoticed by the military. I know that triage must be performed and that the hardworking members of the military do the best they can, but I feel for these soldiers. I’m not in the armed services, but we’re brothers and sisters of an entirely different kind of fraternal organization: the rolls of those impaired by TBI.

I am not a supporter of these wars, but I am most definitely a supporter of the soldiers.

6/1/2010 (RTTNews) – People that have suffered brain injuries can have trouble sleeping later on in life, recent research shows.

Researchers in Australia studied 23 patients who had suffered brain injuries an average of 14 months earlier. They found that people with traumatic brain injuries could produce reduced amounts of melatonin, causing sleep problems.

Data showed that healthy people produce more melatonin than people with brain injuries during evening hours. It was also found that brain injury patients spend less time in bed actually sleeping.

“We’ve known that people often have problems with sleep after brain injury, but we haven’t known much about the exact causes of these problems,” said researcher Shantha Rajaratnam, of Monash University in Victoria, Australia. “These results suggest that the brain injury may disrupt the brain structures that regulate sleep, including production of melatonin.”

Can’t wait to see more research on this subject. Now, for a nice cup of chamomile tea…. to help me sleep.

Signing table at the Chateau

 Had a fantastic, successful signing at Chateau Lorane’s Fine Art and Wine Festival Memorial Day Weekend, 2010. Many authors, wonderful wine, great books, and good food. We didn’t even let a little rain get us down! Many thanks to the owners of the Chateau for hosting us. Yum, the wine… Not normally a sweet wine person, but boy do I recommend the Chateau’s ice wines.

I was lucky to spend time with some talented writers, too. Some of them are pictured at left. We were filmed and will be seen on Lane County cable channel 29′s television show, “Museums of Lane County” as part of their local color preview.