1. Name_____________________________________________________Date_____________________Period_________
Shaping Sheet
Introduction
Fact Statement:Since the United States started the wars in the Middle East in 2001, over 180,000 American men and
women have come home from their respective military tours with much more than just bad memories and physical
wounds.
Claim Statement: These 180,000 serving men and women all have a disease. This disease is caused by a Traumatic
Brain Injury, or a TBI. TBI can make a perfectly functional member of society turn into anywhere from acting like a 7
year old to making them hostile to anybody who they come into contact with. These series of symptoms can make a
person ostracized from the rest of the world, and they need help trying to find psychological and medical assistance.
Thesis Sentence: TBI, being overlooked by the general public as much as it is, needs more awareness in the public. I
feel that as a whole, Americans should be more aware of TBI and accept it as a legitimate disease or disorder
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1 11; IDefine
Topic Sentence 1: Since not many people know what a TBI is, explaining it would be a smart first thing to do.
Concrete Detail 1: TBIs are caused by explosions or any other injury that could be deemed unsafe for the human
brain.
Commentary 1: For example, Samuel Vaughan Wilson III said that he was grazed by a RPG that ripped through
the transport truck that he was driving. This singed his face and all of the nerves in it.
Commentary 2: His TBI was caused by an IED, or improvised explosive device. He feels that since he got back from
the war he has not been the same person that he was when he left 11 years after joining. He suffers from anger
problems, restlessness, and sleepless nights are symptoms of mild TBI.

2. Name_____________________________________________________Date_____________________Period_________
Shaping Sheet
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Topic Sentence 2: How can sufferers of TBI are treated effectively?
Concrete Detail 1: Some people who suffer from a TBI would love to be able to be back in the life they once lived.
Some people cannot have this luck, but others can, with the right treatment.
Commentary 1: I feel like healthcare should cover all veterans who suffer from a TBI. No man should have to deal
with these burdens by himself. He risked his life for the country, and now our taxes should help pay his bills in the
hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
Commentary 2: With that being said, sometimes it is hard to tell who truly has a TBI and who has PTSD. While both
of these illnesses are very severe, TBI should be treated much differently than PTSD no matter how close the
symptoms of the two things are.
Concrete Detail 2: Some doctors can reliably notice and diagnose TBI. However, treating it can be much more
difficult. In order to treat a brain injury, doctors must take some rather drastic approaches and use new technology to
help them become better.
Commentary 1: The advances in medicine since Vietnam and the World Wars have made treating people with TBI
much easier, but they also have their problems too. Back in World Wars 1 and 2, if someone was close enough to a
grenade to get what we call today a TBI, they would usually die within the hour. Today, people can survive even the
most traumatic injuries, leading to them being handicapped for the rest of their lives.
Commentary 2: Treatment for TBI sufferers includes therapy, with specialist David Williamson leading in his field at
the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Other methods of treatment include medicines. Basically, you can
treat the symptoms of TBI but you can never cure the disease itself.

3. Concrete Detail 3: Medicine helping to cure the symptoms of TBI can be almost anything. People suffering TBI are
never alike to another TBI case, and the treatment is changing every day.
Commentary 1: People suffering from TBI need rehabilitation and head-surgery. The Rehab comes later in the
road to recovery, but when it first happens one would need surgery, either on their head or face. This surgery would
be done in a fast manner, as in to make someone have more of a chance to survive. Some field doctors would have
to do emergency surgery on the spot in order to save the patient’s brain.
Commentary 2: Rehabilitation, however, takes months, if not years to complete. The amount of money and
time put into a rehab session is almost phenomenal, with rates that most people couldn’t afford. That’s why we
should support places like the VA, to help people who have fought for us be better suited to joining the society
again.
Wrap Up (Clincher) Sentence: So while TBI is a very vicious disease, there is a hope that someone who has it can
better themselves. These people who want to better themselves should be helped, and thanks to people like David
Williamson, and places like the VA, people can and are getting some help for TBI. This might not be enough, so we
need to raise more money and awareness to diseases that our veterans have.

4. Name_____________________________________________________Date_____________________Period_________
Shaping Sheet
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Topic Sentence 3: Traumatic brain injuries are hard to spot, hard to treat, and even harder to prevent.
Concrete Detail 1: Preventing a mass of TBIs from accumulating would be a pretty hard task for one or two small
organizations to accomplish. We cannot rely solely on the VA and things like the Mary Lee Foundation to help prevent
it.
Commentary 1: While these two organizations do a very exceptional job at treating and helping spread awareness
for TBI, not many places have focused on preventing the disease.
Commentary 2: We need much more information about how to prevent the disease, because without taking
preventative measures, we would not be an industrialized people. We cannot always rely on firemen to come to put
out our fires, when a simple smoke detector can prevent them.
Concrete Detail 2:Preventing TBI can only be solved by a few means: ending all of the unnecessary wars would be a
novel idea; however in the times we live in I doubt that occurring. The only other option that I can think of is forcing
all of the countries and groups that we are fighting against to use humane tactics.
Commentary 1: A humane approach to killing almost seems like a ridiculous idea, but if they stopped using
improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, much less people would have trouble with TBI. The reason why IEDs cause TBI
is because they are what the name implies; they are improvised.
Commentary 2: Improvised meaning that they are not reliable. They do not always explode at the right time, and
when they do they can cause waves of pressure to go through the air at low enough speeds where one survives, but
not without a cost; TBI.

5. Concrete Detail 3: An IED can be the most deadly weapon that our current enemies are capable of using in large-
scale. When they make one, they use spare wiring, nails as shrapnel, and random, assorted explosives.
Commentary 1: The explosives are never always the cause of death or injury; sometimes, the shrapnel that the
enemies put in the weapons are the most deadly part of the explosion.
Commentary 2: This is how a few of the people I have researched have gotten a TBI. Sometimes they still have
shrapnel and such in their brains that cannot be taken out.
Wrap Up (Clincher) Sentence: So in all, preventing TBI would be a great interest of the associations helping people
with brain injury; however, I do not see this happening in the near future until we get the current TBI epidemic under
control.
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Conclusion: (All commentary/ NO repeated words)
All in all, it seems that TBI is one of the most deadly problems that the world’s military faces. As much as I feel that
it needs to be higher up on the scale of severe diseases, TBI will not get the recognition it needs until people are
informed of its existence. I feel that we should create a campaign to spread TBI awareness in the USA to inform the
citizens of America that there is an epidemic going on, and that it will not be stopped until it gets much, much
worse. As soon as the world is cured from Traumatic Brain Injury, it will be a much better place. But until then, we
need to follow our veterans from the moment that they leave the battlefield until they are deemed healthy and
able to be self-reliant, even with Traumatic Brain Injuries.