THE WAR
WITHIN
George Martinsan
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
Maryann Freeman
HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
ticated computerized tomography (CT) scans or magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) may
detect damage to the frontal
lobe or to tissue deep inside
the brain, patients don’t recover fully, “typically not back
to where they were before,
ever, with that kind of injury.”
How common are such
deep-brain injuries? “We
don’t know,” Kelly says. Not
every combat soldier receives
a CT or MRI scan. “And the
problem is if you don’t scan
everybody, you don’t have a
good way of knowing that.”
Recent experience has
shown that even CT scans in
military emergency rooms in
Afghanistan may not detect
microscopic damage to brain
tissue, he said.
Detected or not, both forms
of combat trauma can cause
sexual dysfunction, adding to
emotional distress and marital
tensions, veterans say.
“The levels of shame and
embarrassment are pretty
stark for us,” said Ben Tupper,
an Army major who came back
from Afghanistan with “a raging case” of PTSD — and erectile dysfunction. “I eventu-