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Showing posts from June, 2009

Mental

Many of you know that I have recently relocated to a new city. One of the facility contracts we have is a hospital, on the local Army base. Yesterday I was dispatched out to transfer a patient to the other VA Hospital, which from my understanding, is primarily a inpatient psychiatric facility with a few primary care offices. I arrived on the floor to get report from the nurse to find out that our patient was a 24 year old male, who was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. He returned from the Middle East with both his legs amputated, one just above the knee the other nearly to his hip. He "survived" an explosion, I assumed a buried bomb, landmine, or direct heavy fire. I didn't want to ask. The blast not only took his legs, but shattered his pelvis, which took months of surgeries and physical therapy to "recover" from. This last November he was discharged under disability. Since then he has been unable to cope with all the fallout of not only his injuries, his ne