Today, [Marine Sargeant Dana] King has no visible scars from his time in combat. But his injuries are as real as any veteran hit by shrapnel. Instead of losing a limb, King lost functions in his brain that help him remember things, control his emotions and sometimes talk clearly.
He covers it up well. He said most people around him don’t know he’s suffering from the effects of a traumatic brain injury ”“ don’t know the invisible battle with his disability that he wages every day.
And King is far from alone. Since 2000, more than 270,000 troops have been diagnosed with concussions and other traumatic head injuries. Experts say the numbers are likely much higher. A Rand Corp. study in 2008 put the number of brain-injured troops at more than 320,000, and that was two years before a massive surge in improvised explosive device attacks in Afghanistan.
Read it all from the front page of the local paper.