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Project Victory helps war's 'walking wounded' suffering from traumatic brain injuries
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, July 4, 2009
HOUSTON – Mark DeJaico hit rock bottom late last year at a Houston nightclub.
He had just worked up the nerve to chat with a cute girl when her friend interrupted them.
"She said: 'What are you doing, talking to him? He's kinda slow,' " DeJaico remembered. "Like I couldn't even hear her."
The 30-year-old Army veteran had developed a severe stutter after being knocked unconscious during a mortar attack in Afghanistan in 2006. Doctors diagnosed him with traumatic brain injury and generalized anxiety disorder.
Just getting his own name out of his mouth could take DeJaico half a minute. Every time he tried to talk, his heart thudded in his chest and his hands shook as his throat closed tight around the words. Sometimes he just gave up and wrote things down.
But earlier this year, DeJaico graduated from Project Victory, a collaborative program by Houston's TIRR Foundation and TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation hospital that helps service members recover from traumatic brain injury.
A Rand Corp. study published last year estimated that out of 1.6 million troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 320,000 may have suffered a brain injury during deployment.Like thousands of other "walking wounded," DeJaico shows no outward scars, but his disability is no less real than an amputee's, said Dr. Gerard Francisco, Project Victory's medical director.
Doctors don't fully understand the unique consequences of brain injuries caused by blasts, the relationship to post-traumatic stress, and the brain's mysterious healing process, Francisco said.
"It's not realistic to expect that once they've completed their treatment that they'll be cured," he said. "What we're trying to do is minimize the impact on how this affects their daily lives and how they interact with their families and friends and the community and at work."
Months of intensive speech therapy at Project Victory reduced DeJaico's stutter so much that it's hardly noticeable anymore. New prescriptions halted the seizures and headaches. Counseling banished the nightmares.
But DeJaico's progress couldn't keep him from being medically discharged from the Army in February, even though he fought hard to stay.
Project Victory has offered continuing therapy and training at its clinic near the Texas Medical Center, but DeJaico says he's done with being a patient. He doesn't want to think about his injury anymore, if he can help it. His focus is on the future.
Every day, he practices vocal exercises and breathing techniques in the shower. He rehearses for job interviews in front of his bathroom mirror. He writes himself notes to remember to pay bills and take all 11 medications on time.
"I'm not back to where I was when I got in the military, but I feel like myself," DeJaico said.
Houston Chronicle
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