Everyone, hello.
Marines, 'rah, Gentlemen.
So, I've been told by one person that I should have a blog,
Not long after that, it struck me that I haven't kept my boys in Hawaii up to date on everything here with me. Now, there's a good reason for that: there isn't really any news with me. I'm past all of my surgeries, all of my procedures... this time is just about getting my Medical Review Board started, and getting any small complaints (dental- since my teeth were broken a lot in the blast- among others) and I decided to just do it all in one.
Now, I've resisted creating a blog for myself because, really, I've no clue what I would put in it. I can talk, don't get me wrong- I can go on at length on a great number of subjects, I can be verbose and loquacious and impressive when I want to, and if I have an opponent I can argue pretty much any issue at great length.
However, I had no idea how I would come up with things, off of the top of my head, to post for the lovely, friendly Internet community to fawn over and to heap praise upon.
But now, it looks like I have something to say.
So, for those of you who don't know (I really doubt that any of you who don't know this will be reading this right now) I'll go ahead and tell you my little story (not the whole thing- just recently):
On October 8th, 2011, I, a Lance Corporal (LCPL) was driving a M-ATV (armored off-road vehicle the Marines use) in Garmsir, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where I'd been stationed for about 6 months. (by the by, I was so close to finishing the deployment and leaving that I had purchased tickets to go home on leave after we got back to Hawaii)
I was attached to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, stationed in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. I'd gotten there on January 21st, and left a few weeks later for Mojave Viper (pre-deployment training), and then back for a week, gone for leave, back for a week... and then deployed. Point being: I HAVE NOT BEEN TO HAWAII. I was on base restriction- I left base twice: 1) pressed into being DD for my Corporal roommate and his friends, driving a lifted Tahoe into Waikiki at about 2230, and then back sometime after midnight. And 2) I went with a friend to the nearby hospital to get the results of a test he'd had.
So again: I HAVE NOT BEEN TO HAWAII. I'm a Hawaii Marine because my boys are in Hawaii, and I was stationed there and with the Hawaiian Battalion for almost a year.
Anyway:
I was driving, the 3rd vehicle in the convoy of 5. Dead center. And then, I drove directly over an IED.
This IED was controlled by two wires that an Afghani held a ways off in a cornfield, watching me. When I was over the bomb, he touched the bare wire ends together, completing the circuit, and thereby detonating the IED.
When I say "directly under me", I mean DIRECTLY. It got exactly the right spot so that it blew away or bent out of the way all of the armor underneath the vehicle and put a hole in the floor right about where my feet were. We careened off the road, having lost all four tires. My Sergeant (co-driver) was unconscious; the LCPL in the turret was still awake, and he jumped out. Failing, spectacularly, to light the flare to signal injuries, he pulled some frantic hand signals at the rest of the convoy, pulled the Sgt out, and left him out on the ground, still out cold. He needed the Corpsman to get me out of the truck, they got a chopper in, and we were loaded on. The Sgt woke up, but I was still out cold, and was tossed in with us (I guess the shock just hit him).
The Sgt and LCPL were in a hospital for a week or so, then busted out, got back to our unit, and finished the last bit of time with them.
I, however, did not regain consciousness. I hit two hospitals in Afghanistan, then went to Landstuhl, Germany (military hospital/base), where my mother defied the military top brass and flew out to see me. (they told her that there was such a good chance I'd be going to the USA while she was flying to me, that they wouldn't fly her. She found a flight and got there anyway)
I went through... much, much surgery there, and went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where I went through a lot more surgery.
I was still, by the way, more or less unconscious. I'm told that during this time, I was awake, and I was talking and interacting. However, it was not *me*. I hugged strangers, I kicked my older sister out of the room several times, I once refused to wear clothes and kept throwing the towel they'd put across my hips onto the floor- "That's how I roll" (something I'm sure I've never said at any other time in my life, and never would have in the future). I regained consciousness- *my* consciousness- around November 20th or 24th. I remember bits and pieces that I'm told were before that, but very few, and the 24th was the first day I remember actually knowing what day it was, who was there, what was going on, etc.
I got my Tracheotomy tube out of my neck, was cleared to eat solid food, and started going around in a wheelchair.
Now, let's take an overview of my injuries, starting at my head:
Severe, severe severe severe, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Severe enough that I had a bleed- in my brain stem- at one point.
Jaw fractures, broken teeth, laceration on tongue.
Broken vertebrae in Cervical and Thoracic portions of my spine (upper and middle), which required 5 vertebrae to be "cemented" (medical cement to hold them together)
My "L3"- 3rd Lumbar vertebra- is.... they called it a "severe burst fracture". That means that it burst into many tiny tiny tiny pieces, pretty much just dust in an empty cavity, and they had to build a metal brace around the area to hold the space, bolted into the L2 and L4 vertebrae.
My pelvis was broken- snapped. They ended up putting some screws in- two of them, which go from the outside of my pelvis to the middle on each side; meaning, they are freaking huge.
My right leg had minor lacerations on the shin.
My left leg's tibia and fibula (lower leg bones, your shin) were broken.
Hardly a bone survived in my left foot. Nearly every one was broken- including the heel (Calcaneus) bone was broken into about 5 pieces.
This is long, so to wrap up:
I had 9 surgical pins in my foot for 5 months, and when they came out and X-rayed my foot, nothing had healed. Being unlikely to ever walk on that foot again, I opted (finally, I'd wanted to for a while) for an amputation, below the knee, of my left leg.
The amputation was completed late February in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and I've been recovering and doing PT and working on adapting to the prosthetic leg, since.
If you want more, ask me- that's going to be the close of the background story, I'm going to move on to other things from here.
