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News from the fronts
Author: TriSec    Date: 05/22/2010 11:58:53

Good Morning!

It's not *that* early, but it's still early enough that it means I'm off for a platelet donation. I couldn't get my usual 8 am appointment, so I have 2 hours yet.

By now you know the drill, but that still won't stop me from 'witnessing for blood' anyway...


After a short physical examination, the donor is taken into the donation room and sits in a chair next to the machine. The technician cleans one or both arms with iodine, or other disinfectant, and inserts the catheter into a vein in the arm. With some procedures both arms are used, one to draw blood and the other to return it. The process takes about one to two hours while blood is pulled into the machine, mixed with an anticoagulant such as sodium citrate spun around, and returned to the donor. "Double needle" procedures using both arms tend to be shorter since the blood is drawn and returned through different catheters, with "single needle" procedures a set volume is drawn and processed in the first part of the cycle and returned in the second part. The donor's blood is pulled into the machine and returned about 6-8 times.

Side effects of the donation of platelets generally fall into three categories: blood pressure changes, problems with vein access, and effects of the returned anticoagulant. Blood pressure changes can sometimes cause nausea, fatigue, and dizziness. Venous access problems can cause bruising, referred to as a hematoma. While donating, the lips may begin to tingle or there may be a metallic taste; a supply of calcium antacid tablets is usually kept close by because the anticoagulant works by binding to the calcium in the blood. Since calcium is used in the operation of the nervous system, nerve-ending-dense areas (such as the lips) are susceptible to the tingling. The donation process can also cause more serious problems such as fainting, seizures, and nerve irritation. These problems are extremely rare, but apheresis donors are typically not allowed to sleep during the long donation process so that they can be monitored.


Especially if you're already a regular blood donor, this is not that big of a stretch. As for me, I've found platelets to be far less of a shock to the system than donating whole blood, but your mileage may vary.



Ah, but now on to the matters at hand. Every Tuesday this blog is reserved for our long-running "Ask a Vet" feature, something I've been doing for 5 long years now. Some weeks, it's thin on the news fronts, but other weeks I can amass quite a large amount of material. This is one of those weeks...and I don't want these stories to get passed over.

We'll start across the pond first. Throughout the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the British have been our most loyal, and in many cases, only ally. Their troops live the same lives and face the same challenges as our own GIs. But there's one critical difference; The British are less likely to get PTSD.


British combat troops are far less likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder than their American counterparts, The New York Times reported Monday, citing a recent psychiatric study of the British military.

Just 4 percent of Brits who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan exhibit symptoms of PTSD compared with 10 to 20 percent of Americans, though both have seen comparable levels of combat in recent years, according to the study.

“This is truly a landmark study, in its size and rigor, and the findings are surprisingly positive,” said Richard J. McNally, a psychologist at Harvard, told the Times. “The big mystery is why we find these cross-national differences.”

Researchers analyszed answers to mental health questionnaires given to Royal Army, Navy and Air Force members from 2007 to 2009. Results showed that 20 percent had some form of mental health problem, including anxiety or depression, and 13 percent drank heavily. However, few could be diagnosed with PTSD.

Among the possible reasons for the discrepancy are use of reserve forces and differences in dwell time.

The study found British reservists were more likely to deal with post-traumatic stress. If the same were true of the Americans, it contribute to the higher rate since reservists make up 30 percent of U.S. forces but only 10 percent of British forces.

Also, British troops serve six-month tours, and no more than 12 months in every 36. Depending on the service, American troops might serve more than 12 months at a time with only a year between deployments.


But I've got to hand it to the Brits; they're tougher than the look. Please, Please, PLEASE don't take this the wrong way. Our wounded GIs are trying hard to get back to normal life, just like their British counterparts. As part of that therapy, our guys play sports. The Brits walk to the North Pole.


This is the 'Walking With the Wounded' team, a group of serving and ex-British Army soldiers who have set their sights on becoming the first amputees to walk, unsupported, to the North Pole next spring.

Backed by their patron, Prince Harry, their aim is to show that life can still be challenging and rewarding even after catastrophic, life-changing injuries.

Of the four hopefuls, three got their injuries recently after being blown up or shot while serving in Afghanistan; the fourth lost his lower leg to a landmine when he was deployed to Rwanda in 1994.

They have come here to Svalbard, the last landfall between Scandinavia and the polar ice cap, for their winter ice training, a foretaste of the massive challenge that awaits them. That is, if they make the grade.

Over 100 applicants have already been rejected, many because their amputations are too recent, too raw to survive the chafing involved in a 300-mile polar trek.

"It's tough", says Rob Copsey, at 39 the oldest member of the team.

"This has been far harder than I expected, I'm going to have to work even harder at my fitness."

Reluctant to blame his 'tools', Rob is having to cope with an ill-fitting prosthetic leg that is causing him considerable pain.

Sitting in his tent at one in the morning, nursing his red and swollen amputation stump as his boil-in-the-bag dinner cooks in a pot of melted snow, he admits he'll be taking painkillers tonight.

Two tents down the hill, his team mate Guy Disney is looking alarmingly fresh despite the day's exertions.

"The weather has been so balmy and mild", he says of the zero-degree temperature, "but still, it's been a really good test.

"I think we all feared our injuries wouldn't do that well. It would be no good coming for a gentle walk.

"You've got to work hard to find the injuries so we can work around them."

His lower leg blown off by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade in Helmand less than a year ago, the 28-year old has had to do a lot of adapting to changed circumstances.

The idea of 'Walking With the Wounded' may have been dreamed up by a wine merchant and planned in a London pub but sending men into the Arctic is a serious business and the organisers have left little to chance.


But now, we do need to look a little harder at the war. Remember the "Afghan Surge"? It was supposed to be just like Iraq; send more troops there and regain some control so we can start handing things back to the Afghans. There's not been much news coming out of there, so it would have been easy to miss the general in charge admit that nobody is winning.


The US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who was boasting of military progress only three months ago, confessed last week that "nobody is winning". His only claim now is that the Taliban have lost momentum compared with last year.

Equally worrying for the American and British governments is the failure so far of General McChrystal's strategy of using his troops to seize Taliban strongholds and, once cleared, hand them over to Afghan forces. He sold this plan, under which he was promised an extra 30,000 US troops, last November but all the signs are that it is not working. Starting in February, 15,000 US, British and Afghan troops started taking over the Taliban-held area of Marjah and Nad Ali in Helmand province. Dozens of embedded journalists trumpeted the significance of Operation Moshtarak, as it was called, as the first fruits of General McChrystal's new strategy which was meant to emulate the supposed success of the "surge" in Iraq in 2007.

Three months after the operation in Marjah, however, local people say that the Taliban still control the area at night. Shops are still closed and no schools have reopened. Education officials who returned at the height of the US-led offensive have fled again. The local governor says he has just one temporary teacher teaching 60 children in the ruins of a school. Aid is not arriving. The Taliban are replacing mines, the notorious IEDs, removed by US troops and often use the same holes to hide them in.

Pentagon officials increasingly agree with the Afghan villagers that the Marjah operation failed to end Taliban control and put the Afghan government in charge. This puts in doubt General McChrystal's whole strategy which also governs the way in which 10,000 British troops are deployed. He is being held to account for earlier optimism such as his claim at the height of Marjah offensive that "we've got a government in a box ready to roll in". Three months later, people in Marjah say they have yet to see much sign of the Afghan government.



Alas, much like Iraq, there's a criminal element in Afghanistan...unfortunately wearing American uniforms.


KABUL - The United States has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of American soldiers were responsible for the "unlawful deaths" of at least three Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

[The United States has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of American soldiers were responsible for the "unlawful deaths" of at least three Afghan civilians, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

"There are also allegations of illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy," the military said in a statement, adding that while no charges had yet been laid, one soldier was in pre-trial confinement.

The United States, which has the bulk of some 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, has been criticized several times by rights groups and Afghans for allegedly maltreating civilians and torturing suspected militant prisoners.

"United States forces Afghanistan has launched a criminal investigation into allegations that a small number of U.S. soldiers were responsible for the unlawful deaths of as many as three Afghan civilians," the statement said.


Finally this morning....seems like everyone has an opinion on offshore drilling these days. Not surprisingly, the military has weighed in on this as well. But guess what? They don't like it.


McLEAN, Va. - Most of Virginia's coastal waters the government wants to use for oil and gas exploration would interfere significantly with military operations, the Defense Department said in yet another major road block for offshore drilling.

The Pentagon report showed that roughly three-fourths of proposed lease site would be completely off limits to oil and gas exploration because it would interfere with training, testing, gunnery exercises and other operations, particularly the Norfolk naval base, the world's largest. Much of the rest of the tract is already heavily used by commercial ships served by busy ports in Hampton Roads and Baltimore.

Rep. Jim Moran, an opponent of offshore drilling, wrote a letter Tuesday to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, urging him to back off on his push for offshore drilling.

"I trust you would agree that the presence of the Department of Defense in the Commonwealth is of greater benefit than anything that could be derived from offshore drilling," Moran wrote.

In March, President Barack Obama lifted a ban on offshore drilling in the Atlantic, and Virginia was poised to become the first Atlantic state to allow such drilling. A lease of the roughly 4,500 square-mile tract about 50 miles off the shoreline had been slated for 2012.

But after the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Minerals Management Service postponed public hearings on the Virginia lease sale.

The report could be even more crippling. The Pentagon cannot unilaterally veto drilling proposals, but Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense for installations and environment, said the Defense and Interior departments have a long history of cooperation, and drilling has never taken place in an area objected to by the military.

"We have every expectation that if we said we need an area ... that they would fully honor that," Robyn said.



So...I know it's long and weighty for a Saturday, but thanks for the indulgence. And speaking of indulgence, I've got one more. Last night was our last Pack meeting of the season, and young Javier completed his Bear rank and graduated to the Webelos den. It occured to me that I've never posted a Cubmaster picture...for all you know, I'm some weird guy that likes to hang out with young boys.

In any case....check out my flickr photostream.


 

4 comments (Latest Comment: 05/22/2010 23:14:58 by trojanrabbit)
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