My son, Mark, was a passenger in a car hit by a drunk driver in July, 1973. Mark and the engine went flying on impact and Mark sustained serious traumatic brain injuries (TBI). It’s been a doozy of a problem to handle. Mark was an early survivor. Before 1972/73, people who sustained serious TBIs simply died, so they weren’t around needing care. Now there are thousands of Marks out there with about another 1.5 million new injuries every year, not to mention the soldiers coming home from Iraq with life altering TBIs. It’s a chronic condition for which the annual cost runs about $60 billion dollars or more per year for just the civilian population. For the first five years after Mark’s injuries, I focused primarily on trying to help him and figure out how best to handle this devastating situaation that had befallen us. Finally, like most TBI family members, I had to quit my job and come home to take care of Mark. There simple were no adequate services available for us. Services in 2008 are still scant despite the efforts many, many family members, including myself, have put into trying to develop services at the community level and make changes in state and national legislation that would include our family members. It’s been almost 35 years now for Mark and I. But yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that authorizes the National Institutes of Health and directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct studies into national traumatic brain injury trends and identify treatments. The Bill also supports grants, through the Health Resources Service Administration, to fund state projects to improve access to rehabilitation. Rehabilitation that could be a real blessing for Mark. Research on the brain today is turning up so much new, astonishing information that could be helpful to us. It has been frustrating for me not to be able to tap into these new possibilities for Mark. Hopefully now that will change. In addition to the House Bill, Senate Bill 793, already passed, closely mirrors the House Bill and it is expected to be forwarded to the president for signature soon. Representative Bill Pascrell, D-NJ, a chief sponsor of the House Bill, said that the House is giving a voice to the millions of brain-injured Americans suffering from this ‘silent epidemic’ with this legislation. We in the TBI community thank Representative Pascrell and all the others who have worked to bring this help to our families. Most of you are not aware of traumatic brain injury, the TBI population and the difficulty getting services for our injured family members as well as some kind of respite for family caregivers. But some of you will know the story all to well from personal experience or through the experience of others you know. I’m posting here on WOWOWOW to tell the women here about TBI and the difficulties we have encountered trying to care for our injured family members. I also want to tell those survivors and family members that help seems on the way. Please pass this word along for all of us. Many thanx.

I am deeply concerned about Iraq and the effect George’s war will have on our people, our nation and the world. I will never forgive him for the things he has done to this country. After he leaves the White House (and that can’t come soon enough) I want him to leave the country and never come back. He should take Cheney and a few others with him. Maybe go live in Iraq, see if they can do something useful there. The constant cry to “WIN” in Iraq is asinine! WIN WHAT??? And, even if there was something to win, this little tribe of war mongers wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it. We should never have gotten into this mess. Nothing about it made any sense. Basically, I think the American people are paying the price for an immature human being to try to resolve his own dysfunctional personal and family dynamics. Pardon me, folks, but the White House is not the place for this activity — better the couches of a medley of good psychiatrists. I’m afraid we will not be able to recover. The price has been much too high for everyone touched by this misadventure, this travesty of super-sized egos. Can we really get out of this mess with our “hide” intact? I am not at all sure that the Iraqis will be able to pick up their own banner and carry it to whatever destination they hope for. Sometimes I wonder if they are even able to want to. One of the major mistakes made by this “soldier boy” president, who missed his chance in Vietnam, and his “playmates” was a total lack of understanding that there are different cultures who want different ways of life. Nor did this ‘group’ understand what the Iraqis behaviour or reactions might be. That they did not realize (I suspect it never entered their little heads) that a people repressed in the very brutal way Iraqis were repressed for so very long may not be (probably will not be) able to rise up sufficiently in spirit, energy or know-how to defend themselves, or even have much of an idea what it is about themselves they might want to defend. Bush and his buddies were blinded by ego, incomplete thinking capacity and arrogance to the realities of life and human behaviour — especially in the Middle East. That Bush would charge ahead, demanding ‘his idea’ of our brand of democracy as the ‘right way’, maybe the only way, is inexcuseable. Our next president is inheriting an unfathomable mess on numerous fronts. Sometimes I think we should, perhaps, wonder about their sanity for wanting this job. George Bush, Sr. was the only person in the world in March, 2003 who had any experience with his son’s Middle East problems. George, Sr. had not gone into Iraq during the Gulf War for precisely the reasons his son should not have done so. Yet, when asked if he had talked to his father about the Iraq situation, George, Jr. said that he talked to a higher father. Seems to me it’s well-known that “the Lord moves in mysterious ways”, and provided Bush, Jr. with his very own personal, experienced, sounding board — his human father! Oh well, what’s a little war, a country destroyed, a people in peril, trillions of dollars and dead and wounded people — Iraqis and our own soldiers — everywhere you looked.

P.S. Wanted to mention that I saw some of the ladies on The Charlie Rose Show tonight, and hurried right over. Ain’t Charlie grand!

OOOOOOOO LA LA! What a conversation!

LIZ! You are 85????? Can’t be! Happy birthday all year long.

Actually, I’m not really sure we have to worry about ‘who’ or ‘who’ does not win the Democratic primary vote. I fear, greatly, that after these two years of electionering, we’ll all be too tired to vote. Hate to say it, but I’m wondering if there outta be yet another law — limiting national elections to somewhere between six months to a year.

I don’t see Obama as ‘black’, only as one heck of a human being.

LM, I, too, saw a similarity between this situation and the immigration situation here in the US.

Lordy, yes! The sexual manipulation and abuse here is plumb unhealthy. Getting nosey about ‘religion’ is tricky, I know — and most assuredly someone will coming along hollering ‘human’, ‘church’, ‘religious’ RIGHTS — but these young women and children are being brain washed in ways that are not in their best interest as growing girls and maturing women in the year 2008. As well US and state laws are being broken and these people need and deserve the protection of their own society (that’s us, I think). It’s astonishing how much information the human brain can soak up then translate into ‘proper’ behaviour or the ‘correct’ way to live. “Survival” is supposed to direct the way any society or groups of people shape themselves, but this one is slanted too far in one direction and, thus, flunking the course.