http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/national/31wounded.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1&th&emc=thInert in his bed, the 29-year-old Marine reservist is a survivor of an Iraq car bombing and a fearsome scramble of wounds: profound brain injury, arm and facial fractures, third-degree burns, tenacious infections of the central nervous system. Each doctor, six in all on a recent day, is here to monitor some aspect of his care.
As they cluster at the threshold, one gently closes the door — not to shield their patient from bad news, but to avoid overstimulating the nervous system of a man whose frontal lobe has been ripped by shrapnel. Not that the news right now is good: Corporal Cooley is spiking a fever, presumably because of his newest problem, blood clots in his left leg.
The doctors sort through a calculus of competing interests. Should they prescribe a blood thinner to dissolve the dangerous clots, even though that could cause more bleeding in the brain? Or should they just wait? At this point, the doctors decide, the clots pose the greater risk.
Thousands of miles from the battlefield, intricate medical choices have become routine here, at one of four special rehabilitation centers the government created last year to treat the war's most catastrophically wounded troops.
Continued