Wounded Soldiers Reflect on Life After Injuries

By Matt Sheridan

Editor-in-Chief

In the recovery room at Walter Reed, a physical therapist is working with a female soldier who is missing the lower half of her left leg. It’s 8 a.m. and only a few other patients and medical staff are assembled. Another therapist is helping patients as they use a rolling chair for therapy. Helping wounded soldiers to learn how to use their bodies while missing a limb (or two) is only part of the battle.

“It is the other wound that complicates the recovery that the public doesn’t know about,” says Bob Bahr, a therapist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Bahr stated that many medical complications such as bone growth after the amputation of the limb and the possibility of infection are related to the recovery process - not to the surgery.

Each person’s recovery is different from the person next to them and each is afflicted with different things. According to a press release issued by Walter Reed, the hospital has treated over 5,500 patients since the Iraq war began, with almost 500 additional patients coming from Afghanistan. Walter Reed has approximately 300 outpatients that come to them for continued care. Although some of our nation’s warriors have experienced extensive wounds, including amputations of destroyed limbs, nothing has injured or amputated their human spirit.

On an average morning the recovery ward is filled to capacity with service members with missing limbs doing their physical therapy activities. The exercises consist of stretching, using stationary bikes and the other exercise equipment that fills the room.

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Marcus Wilson, 30, from Delmont, Ark., is in the midst of a long recovery process after an explosion in Iraq robbed him of his mobility. "Do I still have all my teeth?” Wilson said was the first thing he asked himself, moving his fingers toward his teeth to see if they were still there.

Sitting in a wheelchair, a cane with the gold crests of the Marine Corps in each hand, he explains the incident in Iraq that landed him in Walter Reed. He was riding in the back right side of an armored Humvee when the vehicle was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device. When the bomb went off it blew him clear out of the vehicle; saving his life and killing the three other marines inside the Humvee
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The explosion left him with a broken right tibia, left hand, right femur, ribs, and back. Wilson also suffered a punctured lung, and his left leg was severed beyond repair. In three months Wilson has gone from a walker, to two crutches, to one. His goal is to one day run and play basketball as he did in high school.

The prosthetic leg that Wilson is learning how to use is the C-leg, designed in Germany. It is the most advanced prosthetic leg currently on the market and it can be programmed with the body weight of the individual so they can bend at the knee and move it like a real leg. A new leg costs around $40,000 to $75,000.

“Each leg is customized to the soldier who wears it,” says Bahr, who is also Wilson’s therapist. Doctors take a mold of the amputated limb and adapt the prosthetic limb for the soldier.

“When they leave here they will have 2-3 legs,” said Patricia Cassimate, Public Information Officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The patients typically receive one leg for walking, one for running, and one that has been touched up to look like a real leg for when a person feels like walking along the boardwalk or down the street for a cup of coffee in shorts. Lt. John Pucillo, 33, of Boston, has gone through the full recovery process and received all three prosthetics.

Pucillo has served in the Navy since 1991 - right out of high school. His story begins while serving with a Navy Explosive Ordinance Detail on a routine clearance mission in Iraq. During this mission in late May 2006, his truck was struck by an IED.

The explosion took Pucillo’s left leg off above the knee. He was evacuated from the area to Balad Airbase in northern Iraq and then sent to Germany. From Germany he was moved to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland for approximately one week. Soon after, he was moved to Walter wounded. His wife and daughters returned to the states and the children spent the summer with their grandparents visiting him several times. Throughout his recovery, his wife remained by his side.

Pucillo’s recovery is an example of the kind of mobility that can be regained after suffering such wounds. Within eight months of his injury he was running again and is a member of the Para-Olympic sailing team for the disabled. He feels that he should be done at Walter Reed by the end of the year.

The military is driving innovations in the world of prosthetics, spending millions of dollars on new laboratories and recovery centers to help the injured soldiers regain their mobility quickly. Many veterans of past wars did not receive such successful therapeutic care, not because of a lack effort on the part of their recovery teams, but because technology is enhancing the kind of mobility that can be regained by amputees. Such progress has encouraged many to return to military service.

Pucillo himself is currently trying to ease himself back into military life. He works two days a week, which will slowly increase with time. He will soon appear before a Naval Medical Hearing Board that will determine his status an active duty member.
He believes he has a good chance for the board to return him to full active duty.

“If you want to stay in, then they usually find a way to let you stay in,” he said.

He wants to return to duty - even after being wounded - because he has served since 1991 and only has four years left before he can retire. But more importantly, he didn’t want to give those who had attacked him the satisfaction that they had taken anything from him; he plans to come back strong. “I don’t want to give them the satisfaction that they took away more from me then the explosion did.”

Because of the enormity of the recovery processes at Walter Reed, many volunteers offer their services free of charge. Many are famous and some are not, but all do their part to help the veterans along. Specialist Joey Lance Austin, 20, from
Murfreesboro, Tennessee is someone who has benefited from these volunteers.

“I wasn’t ready for college,” Austin said as he reflected upon his decision to join the Army for a five-year commitment
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“We were 2-3 miles from the base returning from a motorized patrol with the IP [Iraqi Police], when we were hit by an EFD [Explosive Formed Device].” At that moment, Austin, located in the gunner’s position of the Humvee, felt an explosion hit his vehicle, spreading shrapnel throughout the Humvee.

The resulting damage included shrapnel hitting an adviser (a retired American police officer) in the chest and killing him. In addition, shrapnel ripped through Austin’s left leg. As a gunner, he wore pants made of Kevlar, which is a material that is bullet resistant. “Those pants saved me from being a double amputee” said Austin.

He was taken to his base and evacuated to Balad, where he was operated on for 10 hours. After that operation, he was flown to Germany where he required additional surgery.

On Oct. 29, 2006, he was taken from Germany to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Following his arrival, he was in bed for seven weeks, during which his family and girlfriend came to support him.

During his stay at Walter Reed, attempts were made to save his wounded left leg by taking muscle from his back and putting it around the bone where there was no muscle. The surgeons bandaged his wound and waited as the blood flowed into the affected area around the bone.

The operation did not succeed and a medical decision was made to remove the limb below the knee. As a result of that surgery, he has begun therapy with his new prosthetic leg.

Austin has met former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates while in the hospital. Each came to show support for the wounded and to give the country’s thanks. One of Austin’s favorite visitors is Nick Foley, a famous wrestler, and one who deeply cares about the wounded.

He has seen numerous volunteers come through to help the wounded veterans. The duties of these volunteers stretch beyond what one might imagine. Volunteers take veterans kayaking on the Potomac to get them out in the sun, exercising, and having fun. The types of volunteers at Walter Reed are also out of the ordinary. For example, a dog named Troy is an official part of the recovery staff. Troy often greets patients by dropping a ball to play catch. He is meant to be a light distraction from the hard recovery process, helping to ease the minds of the soldiers.

“You can’t help where you were born and you may not have much to say about where you die,” Sam Damon says in Anton Myrer’s book Once an Eagle. “But you can and you should try to pass the days in between as a good man,” he continued. Maj. Dick Winters states in his memoirs that to become a good man, “you start with the cornerstone - honesty - and from there you build character.”

Wilson, Pucillo, and Austin are undeniably three good men who possess not only honesty but also true character. These are men who sacrificed for our nation without reservation, were drastically injured because of it, and who are persevering through their difficult recoveries in order to continue their lives as good men.

 

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