#8 His life can not move forward

Soldier called yesterday and he is frustrated with being there... doesn't feel any better (he says) than when he got there... one of his sgt's came by (not THE sgt.... just A sgt) and Soldier felt like he was being accused of being a malingerer and using this as an excuse to get out of the Army, etc. which didn't help his mood any... I don't think many of them understand that the Army was going to be his ife... his career... it's about the only thing he has ever wanted to do... it's what makes this all that much harder on him... and it's not like he just got there -- he's been in 3 years (would have made Sgt. in 3 years) and was doing great until this.

and he has some complaints about the staff (not the docs, but nurses & orderlies) but he refused to say what pissed him off... he's mostly frustrated by the fact that his life can not move forward at all until he can be seen by an Army doc at the hospital on base...and that can't happen until there is a bed available there and that is an open-ended equation... some guys at his facility have been there 6 weeks waiting to be seen by an Army doc... so Soldier got our senators' phone numbers (and our congressman)...

anyway, not much we can do to help him... we will start rattling cages when he has been there a while but we told Soldier that he needs to be honest with his doc and therapist -- if he's not feeling any better he might just need more time to let the meds work or they can change his meds... which just makes him more pissy at me. I certainly don't get any indication that he's ready to live on the "outside" just yet... but I'm no doc... but he does seem worse in some respects.

did research on the seroquel and the depakote they have him on... both are used to treat bipolar and other manic disorders... which at first got me a little nuts because Soldier is certainly not bipolar... but then read some articles that the treatment for severe PTSD and bipolar is the same except that in bipolar they don't prescribe antidepressants (seems they tend to make bipolar worse)... and I couldn't find much on the head injury contraindications, but I'm going to keep looking today...