“Another woman’s husband had a service dog die in the night, and the death smell in the morning triggered an episode she worries will end in him hurting himself or someone else if she doesn’t get him into a VA hospital, and the closest major clinic is four hours away and she is eight and a half months pregnant and got three hours of sleep, and the clinic’s website says its case manager position for veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan is currently unstaffed, anyway.”

– This entire line can be considered a factual claim since it states that the clinic is actually four hours away and how it is majorly understaffed; no one can argue that since the information can be found on its own website. This is horrible for the woman’s husband though, and the author wants people to know that sometimes these clinics are not as good as they should be.

““But because of the feedback she got, I know that other people were going through the same shit I was. And she’s helping people.” His face softens.”

– These sentences from the article are a moral claim because Caleb believes that Brennan is really helping people by answering all of these phone calls and emails.

“If she’s not saving lives on the phone or blogging, she’s offering support via Facebook, where thousands of Family of a Vet users and nearly 500 FOV volunteers congregate and commiserate.”

-Since the author wants the readers to realize how many people Brennan is supporting and helping, this factual claim is thrown in the paragraph to prove how effective her work is.

“Just the general overwhelmingness of her distress, of that awful overstimulating hypervigilance, the sort of thing you develop sometimes when you live with someone who looks out the living room window for danger literally hundreds of times a day, or who goes from room to room, room to room, over and over to make sure everyone in each one is still alive. “

-These sentences contain ethical claims of believing that people that live with someone who suffers from PTSD can sometimes develop it as well. The author believes that its hard not to develop it when you see day-to-day.

“Breathe,” Brannan says to nearly every woman who calls, though when I ask her if she follows her own advice, she says no. “If I stopped, and started breathing,” she says, “I would be too sad.”

-Brennan’s words can be viewed as a recommendation claim, since she tells the women who call her for help to just simply breathe. Breathing and focusing on that breathing can center a lot of people and bring them back to reality, just like Brennan suggests.

“Kateri’s eight-year-old son now also counts the exits in new spaces he enters, points them out to his loved ones, keeps a mental map of them at the ready, until war or fire fails to break out, and everyone is safely back home.”

-This sentence is a causal claim because it suggest that Kateri’s son is starting to develop PTSD symptoms from Kateri, hence, being ready at all times in case something bad were to happen. Since Kateri’s son sees her doing similar tasks, he is subconsciously developing them as well.

“The phone never stops ringing. If it does for 14 seconds, Brannan writes an email to help get whatever someone needs, or publishes a blog post about her own struggles.”

-When reading this statement by Caleb, I see this as an evaluative claim because the way Caleb says this, makes the reader think that he is judging his wife, but in a good way. He says the phones never stop ringing, and Brennan is such a good person and hard worker that when they stop, she still does whatever she can to help. Even though he wasn’t fond of the idea at first, he’s really proud of her.

“Today she’s fielding phone calls from a woman whose veteran son was committed to a non-VA psychiatric facility, but he doesn’t want to be at the facility because he, a severe-PTSD sufferer, was already paranoid before one of the other resident loons threatened to kill him, and anyway he fought for his fucking country and they promised they wouldn’t abandon him and he swears to God he will have to kill himself if the VA doesn’t put him in with the other soldiers. “

The way the author words this excerpt makes it an ethical claim because the author is hinting that some of these veterans who are suffering really badly from PTSD aren’t getting the psychiatric help they deserve; suffering veterans need to be with other suffering veterans so that they can help each other. Putting this kid into a facility where another random resident tried to kill him only makes things worse.