Army doctor calls duty a sobering experience - Iraq/Germany

[dArKeR]

My name is Maj. K. Albert Yazawa, a doctor and Army Reserve soldier from Hawai'i with Detachment 2, 1984th U.S. Army Hospital. I grew up in Honolulu, graduated from Iolani in 1985, and now live on Maui.

I was called to active duty to work as a physician at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military hospital outside the United States.

We receive an average of three planeloads a week of U.S. patients from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's 60 to 100 patients per load, with problems ranging from simple infections and kidney stones, to multitrauma injuries from bomb and mortar blasts.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dispatches/stories/071904

The intensive-care unit and surgical floors are full of young soldiers. Seeing a newly amputated teenager or blind-for-life youngster is very sobering.

(I only can read 5% of of the feces which the American Media Whores publish but this is the first TV, radio, written source I've read that mentions 'blind' which I've been saying for 1.5 years now. I feel the republicans are trying to hide this fact more than amputees. To show the facts of some many young people blinded would not allow aWol and his repuke leadership to be reelected.)

[jmcgowanjm]

1. 18000 evacs, 20% serious brain juries

 "As of March 13, 2004, data from the Transportation
Command shows 18,004 total evacuations out of
theater," Winkenwerder said
Tuesday.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/040504D.shtml

Add 1000 evcs avg per mth from March -July
so you're talking 23, 000 Evacs.

http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report103.htm

And we've almost lost Ramadi. Large sections
are nogo zones.

[Unperson 309]

2. Blindness Is The Most Feared Disability!

Many of the advances in the blindness fields of rehabilitation, mobility, daily living skills, came from wars which left soldiers blinded for life.

World War I saw many many men blinded by mustard, phosgene and other blistering and damaging gases. From this conflict arose the project of the Seeing Eye. A Swiss woman thought of the idea of training Alsatian dogs to guide the veterans. She ran a small school, training one dog and one person at a time. The idea came to America after an article in a magazine was read to Morris Frank, a blind man. He contacted the author and together they arranged for him to train with Kiss, a German Shepherd dog whom Frank renamed Buddy. Since those early steps, the blind community has been enriched by the use of dog guides. The United States has over a dozen accreddited dog guide schools including The Seeing Eye (Morristown NJ) Guiding Eyes of the Pacific (Hawai'i), Guide Dogs for the Blind (In San Rafael CA and Boring OR) and Dogs of the Desert (Palm Springs CA)

World War II saw the advances in mobility training such as the creation of the long aluminum mobility cane instead of the short wooden stick formerly used. Blinded veterans returning from the war began to innovate with long canes made of aircraft aluminum. These were rigid, light and sensitive to contact with surfaces. The Veteran's Administration began mobility training with these canes and developed the two-point sweep system of cane travel which is still in use today. The National Federation of the Blind was created by returning veterans to address the employment and training difficulties experienced by the vets.

Asked the proverbial question "Would you rather be deaf or blind?" the overwhelming majority of americans respond by preferring deafness over blindness, even though deafness is a major impediment to everyday communication with others, use of the telephone, movies, music and work whereas blindness is not. Statistically FAR more deaf persons are gainfully employed than blind persons as employers are more fearful of hiring blind workers.

The numbers are sobering when it comes to unemployment of the blind. Out of the total blind population, only a fraction are actually employable. If you do not count blind children, senior citizens, the multiply handicapped (blind and deaf, blind and mentally retarded, etc) and count only those who have skills, are of employable age, are trained and ready to work, only about 30% of the entire blind population is employable... and of that 30%, only one in ten trained workers has a job!

Statistically blind and visually impaired Americans, as a group, has the absolute lowest employment ratio of ANY group in the nation.

No wonder the media does not show returning Iraq vets who have been blinded! The overwhelming majority of them will not find ANY work in this economy.


While advances in technology such as text-to-speech screen readers, radar units built into glasses frames, digital vision magnification, GPS locators with speech outbut, print-to-tactile devices such as Optacon, artificial vision (limited, but they are working on it) print to Braille or print to speech machines such as the Kurzweil Reading Machine and many many other things are coming out almost daily, the job market remains flat and inaccessible due to employer reluctance in hiring the blind.

All this at a time when the government wants to cut back and eliminate Federal assistance to elderly, disabled, poor and marginal members of our society.

Shame on them! Shame on them ALL!

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