That’s U.S. Army Spc. R.B, right, a Nuristan Provincial Reconstruction Team civil affairs soldier, that is, before being crushed in an I.E.D. attack on his Humvee, in which he was a passenger.
The explosion was quite a while back. At the present moment, he has such ferocious vertigo that he is strapped in a hospital bed, also strapped down because of such pain in his head that there is no medicine known to science that can reduce the pain or… or… even knock him out cold so that he can get some sleep. Consider that he has an extremely high threshold for pain, but that this is way, way, way over the top. One can die from sleep deprivation.
R.B. is the son of a reader of HSH who prays much for yours truly. I am indebted. Let’s say a prayer for her dear son and for all our injured and fallen soldiers. Remember, he was on a reconstruction team. Back home, he owned a fire-truck and got volunteers to help form an impromptu fire company. How great is that?! Hail Mary…
UPDATE: R.B. sustained a transorbital penetrating injury (T.P.I.) to the brain in @June 2011. No bleeding right now in December of 2012. And the M.R.I.s have always been O.K. But, “white matter” has been discovered in the brain cells.
My conjecture: The white matter is likely a toxic chemical/dust mix from the explosion entering the brain by way of the injury. His doctors may not at all have I.E.D. experience. We need to know what the chemical/matter composition would have been with the types of devices used in the first half of 2011 in North-Eastern Afghanistan. If there are any I.E.D.-E.O.D. readers, or friends of readers, please, send me an email at holysoulshermitage using gmail dot com. Is there any chemical to counteract, cancel the effect in the brain, or a way to stop this matter from interfering with the brain. The matter, I’m guessing, has migrated down into the inner ear, which may be what is causing the vertigo so servere that he has to be hospitalized for it.
UPDATE: O.K. Some possible progress. I’m finding out that nobody but nobody knows this info other than one or two Israeli doctors. We’re trying to set up a meeting between a military specialist doctor in the USA or, because the info is so very, very classified, sending him to Israel. Prayers, please.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
I will pray for him when I go to the little chapel within the cathedral near my work during my lunch break.
Not being able to sleep is one of the worst things in the world. It is so painful both physically and psychologically. I always used to tell myself during the occasional sleepless night that no one ever died from a lack of sleep, but I guess that’s not true. It seems very possible, as you point out, that people could die from sleep deprivation.
Jennifer: It’s the most common torture. Long enough, it will kill you, like clockwork.
Praying for R.B.