GREENVILLE -- East Carolina University is getting into the fight to help troops who have come home injured by war.
The university's pilot program, called Operation Re-Entry NC, will use Department of Defense grants to study and find new treatments for a range of problems that plague combat veterans. If successful, the work could expand to include up to 30 projects a year at universities throughout the UNC system.
"We have a responsibility for the health care of the state, and in particular, our region, and that includes the health care of returning veterans and their families," said Dr. David Cistola, a professor and associate dean for research in health sciences at ECU's Brody School of Medicine.
About three years ago, Cistola noticed that individual researchers in various departments at ECU were working separately on wounded warrior issues, including the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. Organizing the disparate projects under one umbrella has made it easier for experts to collaborate, and gave ECU a research theme to present to the Defense Department for funding.
The Defense Department allocated $2.4 million for Operation Re-Entry in the 2010 budget, though the money has not yet been released to the university. Another $2.2 million is expected to be included in the 2011 budget, though that's not guaranteed.
Already, ECU researchers are working on a handful of promising projects, such as the one that takes Marine Cpl. Will Thorpe back to Iraq once a week.
Thorpe, based at Camp Lejeune, spent 14 months in Iraq over two deployments between July 2006 and May 2008. The first time he was there, he and four others were on patrol near Fallujah when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive.
None of the Marines was killed, but all were peppered with shrapnel. Thorpe, a gunner, was rendered unconscious for 20 seconds. He suffered a cracked vertebra and took metal fragments in his leg.
"I got two weeks off and was right back in the mix," Thorpe says.
Over time, he says, his wounds have taken a toll. He has constant pain from the back injury, and realized after he was home from his deployments that part of him seemed to still be in a combat zone.
"I didn't like walking near parked cars. I didn't like people I didn't know being around me. I couldn't be around crowds," Thorpe says, describing a symptom of combat stress that military doctors call hyper-vigilance.
"Driving down the road, I was always scanning. I would avoid pot holes, packages, dead animals. Any of that stuff would get my blood pressure up, really get my heart racing."
Once a week, Thorpe now drives from the barracks of the Wounded Warrior Battalion East, at Camp Lejeune, to Greenville to get biofeedback training. Using a computer program called "Virtual Iraq" in Carmen Russoniello's lab in ECU's Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, Thorpe can recreate his experiences on the highways of Iraq, including the one where his truck was hit.
His ride in the virtual Humvee, viewed through a headset in an otherwise dark room, has all the elements of his fateful trip: the right weather, the exact light, the same concussive sound of the IED going off.
But now, Thorpe, 24, has learned to control his reactions to those elements and the ones like them in his everyday life that would otherwise trigger anxiety.
"We try to recreate the experience, and give it a different ending," says Tami Maes, a graduate student who works with the Marines in the lab.
Elsewhere on campus, Sherri Jones, an associate professor in communication sciences and disorders, and one of her graduate students are trying to help frustrated combat veterans from Camp Lejeune figure out why they can't keep their balance in activities they've done all their lives.
Already, the team has found - unexpectedly - that most of those who were exposed to blasts have no damage to the part of their inner ear used to maintain balance. The next step is to figure out what else could be causing them to be off-kilter.
ECU researchers also are trying to develop a blood test that would reveal "mild" traumatic brain injury so patients could get treatment before severe symptoms emerge. An occupational therapist is training students to use an "interactive metronome" with veterans, who can synchronize their movements to its beat to regain the natural rhythm of their own steps.
'Highly motivated'
This spring, the university will install a blast simulator, which can be used to study what happens to tissue, blood and other body parts when something explodes nearby. Researchers also want to expand their work with military hospitals, as well as doctors who have military patients but lack training in the specific problems of combat vets.
Some of the service members who participate in Operation Re-Entry projects won't find relief from their symptoms But they come anyway.
"They are very highly motivated," says Sherri Jones. "They want to get better, but also, if there is anything they can do that will help their fellow Marines, they want to do it."
