Leonard Goodson, a veteran of Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan, told ABC News that the 40-day government shutdown, in which his wife and furloughed caregiver went without pay, has led him back to his service in Afghanistan, where he learned “hypervigilance.”
Goodson suffers the cognitive effects of a traumatic brain injury sustained as a combat medic.
The Goodsons, who live in Fairburn, Georgia, have lost their source of income from Leonard’s wife, Dr. Precious Goodson, who is a CDC health educator. After she was suspended, she faced a “dilemma,” she said, and decided to withdraw funds from her retirement account. I didn’t want to take out loans for fear that they wouldn’t be able to pay them back in the future.
“So you have to move things, and you have to do without them, make sacrifices, and that causes a lot of anxiety, because you just don’t know… When you don’t know what the end date is, then, yes, that causes a lot of anxiety, and in my case, hypervigilance, and that’s a bad place to be, because it puts me back in fight or flight, you know, the same situation as if I were deployed, you know, to get ahead, to be resilient, you know, you just have to accept it,” he said.
Miniature American flags flutter in gusts of wind on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 10, 2025.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
-Christopher Boccia, ABC News
