I am the caregiver for my husband, Specialist David Poole. He is Active duty Army for 7 years, 3 years Reserves and the last 4 years as Georgia Army National Guard. He was injured at his Unit back on October 4, 2009, when he was helping get a 250 tarp into the back of a deuce and a half and the man on top let it slip and it gouged into Spc Poole’s neck and shoulder. He is a Medic & was asked if he needed to go to the hospital, he thought he was ok. It was sore but he thought nothing of it. For the next 3 weeks he had severe headaches (which he had a long history of migraines, so he thought it was normal). So on 10-30-09, he came home from work and started having this major migraine and starburst behind his eye. He just went and laid down and since he is a medic, he just though migraine and told me to leave him alone and leave him in our bedroom in the dark. A week later, we were at my Mom's and we were on the back porch and he had a stroke right in front of us. He could not talk and his face dropped on the left side. We called the ambulance and when the ER doc did a CT of his head they saw he had 2 stroke areas on his brain, so the first stroke was on 10-30, we just did not know it was a stroke b/c it hit the visual cortex of his brain. The 2nd one hit his frontal lobe area and hit his language area of his brain. The injury to his neck, caused a carotid artery dissection and it threw blood clots which caused the 2 strokes. So be careful if you ever hurt your neck. Carotid artery dissection is actually very common in young people. So now he still has some right side weakness and Aphasia. He cannot feel hot or cold on his right side. He has had some major depression issues. He once left the house with the gun case and later returned after frantic phone call from me. Michael has gone through such an array of emotion which I am sure you understand. He is very educated, he was in the process of going to Physician Assistant school at Fort Sam Houston. And now people look at him like he is slow or uneducated which is farther from the truth. He has gone through feeling of worthlessness and now with having to give up his military career he feels like he has nothing. So we are working through the tough times.
We have to continue to wrestle the system. We are now over 1 year and 6 months since the injury to his neck at his military Unit. We have an approved Line of Duty (LOD). Now we are waiting on the Army Physical Disability Evaluation Process (MEB/PEB Process) He had lost his civilian job as a nurse (b/c he now cannot read or write.)
He has struggled with depression and anger problems. Because of frontal lobe damage he has a hard time processing and short term memory. He is on Depakote and Cymbalta for psych issues. Anyone else who has gone through this with any suggestions on what we should do next.