Being alive living it doing your thing is a great sensation , but just being alive not so good unable to participate in anything many times hooked up to something simply to maintain a pulse for as long as a pulse can maintained could be years , in Vietnam we had triage , you can read what into this post .

Are feeling ok with yourself Tet?
In coming PM

Got the PM I feel fine , post was really related to some of injured coming home from Afghan , not only missing body parts but parts of their Brain with zero chance of having any kind of functional life , in Vietnam we had triage and head wounds had at most a 50-50 chance of coming home other than in a flag draped box , not trying to be cold about it but reality is life .

Originally Posted by tetvet

Got the PM I feel fine , post was really related to some of injured coming home from Afghan , not only missing body parts but parts of their Brain with zero chance of having any kind of functional life , in Vietnam we had triage and head wounds had at most a 50-50 chance of coming home other than in a flag draped box , not trying to be cold about it but reality is life .

Sorry to hear about the situation Tet. Mental impairment can be so very difficult and painful to deal with. Wishing your friends - relatives, whoever the very best.

DUH !!! .

Originally Posted by tetvet

Got the PM I feel fine , post was really related to some of injured coming home from Afghan , not only missing body parts but parts of their Brain with zero chance of having any kind of functional life , in Vietnam we had triage and head wounds had at most a 50-50 chance of coming home other than in a flag draped box , not trying to be cold about it but reality is life .

I empathize with you on that. I have three head injuries, and the more I have the worse they are. Really sucks.

Friend of mine's camp got overrun and they put him on a medivac with numerous GSWs and a portion of his skull gone with a lot of brain tissue hanging out.
Figured that was the end of him.
Several yeas ago I joined a SF only board that required vetting. I screwed up the application and asked for clarification.
I get an email from the same guy.
He lost 20% of his brain, has some issues from GSW, but is highly functional.
He has run a farm, raised a bunch of kids, including foster kids, travelled the world, and works as a VSO.
He got a DSC as well.
I have seen and been through triage as well. Both at Quan Loi Medivac and 3rd Field in Saigon. They did anything and everything they could at that time to save everybody. Nobody got put aside to die.
The stats are that in VN, 2/3 of the wounded would have died in any previous war.
One aspect, even then, were the severely maimed who survived.
Many more today.
No opinion on right or wrong, that's up to those survivors.

tet i don't know if this means anything to you but a few days ago i was in hue and i want to say it was so beautiful, prosperous and peaceful.the people seemed intelligent and rather proud of their city

I'm glad something good came out of a bad war .

yes, seems TBS traumatic brain syndrome is the "big" notable injury now. Blast overpressures etc. Really overlooked until recently, must have been ignored in NAM.