Full Metal Racket

Will Brink

Newbie
Thought this may be of interest.

Full Metal Racket
The number-one disability among vets isn’t PTSD. And it’s getting worse every year.

William Milzarski was 40 years old when he finished his infantry training. His two sons had enlisted, and he felt a midlife crisis coming on. “It was either enlist, or buy a red convertible,” he says. Shipped off to Afghanistan, Lt. Milzarski led his platoon into 244 combat missions, until a bullet ricocheted off a rock during a firefight and hit him in the face. He stayed with his troops, wounded and bloody, until the battle was over. Then, seven months later, he rotated home.

The wound healed, the scar covered by the stubble of his beard. It was another three years, however, before he realized that the distance he felt from everyone and everything was not simply a symptom of PTSD. He was also going deaf—his hearing yet another casualty of war.

It was difficult to admit that something that seemed so trivial at first could be so serious. “I got shot in the face, and I stayed with my men,” he says. “And now, this? It never seemed bad enough—and that’s the problem.”

Cont:

https://newrepublic.com/articl...54/full-metal-racket

Note: I published a review paper with Dr. Hoedebecke of the Womack Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg, NC called Military-specific application of nutritional supplements: a brief overview that discusses nutrients that appear to help with hearing damage, especially if used prophylactically, that's worth a read.
 
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