Source wcnc.com | Repost Duerson Fund 6/1/2022 –
Former enlisted Marine hopes his tale will show other military members who may be struggling with mental health that they are not alone.
A former enlisted Marine at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, shared his own experience with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) to encourage other military members to seek treatment if they need it.
Dylan Burel explained, “it wasn’t something that I had even necessarily realized had happened.”
He said his TBI built up over a period of years after being exposed to multiple explosions.
“I started to notice cognitive slowdown. I was less responsive than I had always been,” Burel said. “And, I started passively avoiding things like reading, writing, stuff that I had always done very, very well.”
One of the moments Burel realized something was off was when his wife asked him to read a document but he couldn’t understand it.
“Imagine a page of words written on the bottom of a toilet, and someone flushes it. And so they’re spinning, then circling down to the middle of the bowl, and you’re chasing them. And you can never find it,” Burel told WCNC Charlotte.