WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | Injured Iraq vet finally getting brain treatment at NC facility

Injured Iraq vet finally getting brain treatment at NC facility

(West Columbia) March 13, 2007 - Problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have flooded the airwave. The hospital has been sharply criticized for problems there, including an overwhelming bureaucracy.   
     
We started following the story of an Iraq war veteran four months ago. Tuesday we received word that Sgt. Dean Locke will be treated in a program that specializes in brain injuries in North Carolina.

"If he didn't have me, my daughter or his relatives where would that leave him? On the streets or in jail where he does not belong," says Dean's wife Brigette.

For over half a year Brigette Locke says her family has been in a battle with the Dorn VA to get her husband long-term treatment for his war injuries.
 
Sgt. Locke's story is hard to forget.

"It would take about three pounds of pressure for me to break your neck and kill you and is there something that  would stop me," Locke once said in an interview with News 10.

Numerous reports say Locke was severely brain damaged in a Humvee accident back in 2003.

An evaluation of his condition back then shows professionals thought Locke's death could be imminent with in 72 hours.
 
Locke survived, but Brigette says the man she knew, her husband of over 20 years, is dead. She says a different Sgt. Locke returned from the war.

"I called and called trying to get him help because he was getting more aggressive, and they wouldn't even put him in the psych ward after the incident," Brigette said.

Mrs. Locke said her husband hit his own son in late November, and according to records obtained by News 10, Sgt. Locke had been violent before. 

"I need them to help me to stop this before it carries on into something I don't want - the death of my family," Locke said about the Dorn VA.

After our stories about Sgt. Locke's situation aired, the Department of Social Services told the Lockes he could no longer live with his adopted children.

Dorn VA reevaluated Locke, and this time suggested his behavior was not a result of a war injury, but that he had a history of violence since he was a child.

Since then Locke has been in limbo, still not getting long-term treatment and forced to live away from his children.

From the beginning, all Brigette Locke wanted was for her husband to be placed in an assisted living facility, based on the advice from a brain injury specialist from Florida.
 
That doctor suggested Locke live in a residential program specializing in brain injury, but Brigette said Dorn VA told her that her husband didn't qualify.

"It's hard to find places for behaviorally disturbed people with dementia. If someone has dementia but not aggressive they conform to nursing home rules. These people are not easy to place, much more easy to place than if they have sexually inappropriate behavior or are aggressive," says Dr. Rachel Rossman.

She's the mental health director at Dorn. She can't talk about Locke's case, but news 10 has learned that the VA signed off this afternoon on sending Locke to a brain rehab program in North Carolina for six months.
  
Dr. Rossman admitted that even intensive treatment might not be enough for patients with severe brain injury.

"Of course it is our hope any time we send somebody that they would get something out of it. But in a case where a long period of time has happened in someone where a head injury has occurred, I think the chances of seeing a substantial changes of something happening are lower," said Rossman.

"I'm hoping he'll be able to control his behavior again to such an extent he will be able to live at the house again," said Brigette.

Brigette says her husband has become lethargic and incontinent. We didn't get to see him Tuesday because he was sleeping.

But we did see another man, Sgt. Locke as he was back in 2000, in home videos from before the accident, smiling and holding his baby.  
  
These memories and the awards her husband won for his valor in battle, signed by a former president, are how Brigette says she likes to remember Sgt. Locke.

Dorn VA recently received a grant of over $2 million that will allow the facility to hire 22 new mental health professionals to treat Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
 
Officials with Dorn tell News 10 that the facility currently does not have a unit dedicated to treating traumatic brain injuries, and there are no immediate plans to create one.   
 
Locke is expected to leave for the North Carolina facility by next Tuesday, and you can count on 10 to let you know if he makes progress there.

Reported by Kara Gormley

Posted 5:55pm by Logan Smith