All for One and One for All

Did you know that when a soldier gets into some serious hot water, all of the soldiers in his company are in trouble too?  I mean, not legal trouble but here's a example from last weekend.  One guy goes out, drinks a few too many, and starts to drive home.  Stupid, bad decision-making I think we can all agree on.  It happened late on a Friday night, off post.  The guy was arrested by Fayetteville cops.  It doesn't end there though.  The Fayetteville cops call the military police and they go up the chain of command and now the guy is in trouble with the Army too.  Gunnar got a text from his platoon leader (or something like that) on Saturday morning telling him to report to formation at 2pm in uniform.  He said there was a good chance they would be stuck there the rest of the day but he was home a few hours later.  They got yelled at a lot, but that's about it. 

I was really amazed to learn that the military will bring in the entire company of a person when there is an incident.  I understand the need to foster a tight bond between these guys.  But c'mon!  My husband didn't get a DUI!! 

The 1st Sgt warned that the next time there is a serious incident in Delta Company, the consequences will be much more severe.  They'll get a much shorter warning that they need to report to the unit on a day off (this one makes me nervous because we spend a lot of weekends more than an hour away).  He even threatened to make them all live at the unit for 2 weeks if DUI's continue to be a problem. 

I can't believe that they would actually do that.  But at this point really nothing should surprise me about the Army!

Only on an Army Base...

I'm just driving to the store minding my own business and this is what I see....

I'm not really sure what they're talking about.  The only part I can really make out is the "shoot 'em in the head, shoot 'em in the head" at the end.

Gotta love the scenery around here!!!

This is Gunnar's Brain...This is Gunnar's Brain with a TBI

Gunnar definitely was placed in the TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) pipeline, as his doctor called it.  He had an intense array of various diagnostic evaluations with different therapies.  He met with Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Vestibular Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, Optometry and probably some others that I'm missing.  They each did separate evaluations to see where exactly the injury to his brain is.  The injury came from a serious of events in Afghanistan last spring including a fall resulting in loss of consciousness, a grenade going off above his head and a few other things that all happened in a short amount of time.  The Army has been less than supportive of him making and attending these appointments.  I've been really disappointed in the way it's all been handled.  The injury will be almost a year old by the time he actually is treated for it!  And while he was at one appointment, his First Sergeant was texting and calling Gunnar, telling him to get up and leave the appointment.  Unbelievable!!! 

The assessments were done about a month ago, and the next step is all of those therapists getting together, comparing notes and coming up with a treatment plan.  This step has been postponed twice so far because of stupid reasons. 

The thing about a mild TBI is that Gunnar is able to function mostly pretty well on a day to day basis.  He has intense headaches and some short term memory problems (hard to tell if that's because he's a guy, or a guy with a mTBI sometimes) and balance problems.  It's not severe enough to make it impossible to do his job, so it's not taken seriously by the guys in charge. 

I'm not sure when the appointment has been rescheduled for this time, but I'll let you know what they say...

Shame on me!

I seriously doubt anyone still reads this little blog 'o mine.  Sheesh it's been 2 months!!!  Not sure how that happened.  I just plain didn't know what to say.  I've got plenty of stories and pics and even a silly video up my sleeve that I'm going to post.  But life in the last two months has just been complicated, and messy and frustrating, and nothing I can explain here.  But it's looking up and it's a brand new year, right?  Here's to 2011 kicking 2010's ass.


I'll be back soon with something to actually tell you about.