Do you know someone with TBI?
610
In 2008 Toggle, a character in Gary Trudeau’s
Doonesburycomic strip, was driving a Humvee in Iraq
when it was blown up by an improvised explosive
device (IED). Toggle was hospitalized with traumatic
brain injury (TBI), a buffeting of the brain caused by the
shock waves of an explosion. Trudeau, who had visited
VA hospitals to gather material about another charac-
ter who lost a leg in the Iraq war, was astonished by
how many American wounded suffered from TBI. By
2010 over 5,000 service members had been diagnosed
with TBI, about a quarter of all combat casualties. “The
Iraq war,” the Washington Postobserved, “has brought
back one of the worst afflictions of World War I trench
warfare: shell shock.”
During World War I millions of men hunkered
down in trenches surrounded by thickets of barbed
wire. Before a major offensive, attacking armies
hurled millions of artillery shells to pulverize such
defenses. The casualties were staggering; many of
the wounded suffered from shell shock—some 80,000
in the British army alone. Most never returned to
active duty.