Stryker Brigade News

I left the P.M. & R. area for Scott's room. As I walked down the corridor on his ward, I thought I heard someone yell out, "Dad, I'm in here." I kept going until I got to Scott's room, two doors down from the voice, and noticed Scott was not there anymore.

Hmm. What the hell...? I went back two rooms and found Scott with a nurse and the occupational therapist. They confirmed that Scott was keeping an eye out the door for us and that he did yell out "Dad, I'm in here" as I went by. So much for needing an eye exam, I suppose. They were very pleased with this, but not as much as I was. The therapist told me they had Scott on his feet yesterday (would have made yesterday a little more easy on us, but better late than never) and she was trying to line up some things for him like the helmet fitting and an electric razor. She came by later with an electric razor from the Red Cross office, but Scott didn't like it and wanted a "three." His wife said this meant one with three heads on it. The therapist said it was important to brain-injured patients to have devices they are familiar with and later (on the way to speech therapy) ran into us with the good news that she found one like Scott described and would bring it up in the morning.

About an hour later, Scott's wife showed me a note left in the original room but brought with Scott's things to the new room. The note was written by a new friend of a certain 300 pound gorilla here at Walter Reed. The note said the friend and his senior staff had visited at 0600 hours and were working to solve the problems. The move to a new room resolved almost all of them instantly and indicated to me a new command emphasis on doing things properly. The sounds of repair work coming from the old room and the sight of a cleaning crew after them made this gorilla very happy indeed. No need to shake the trees after all. I admit it would have felt great under these very trying circumstances, but sometimes professionals just need to refresh their perspectives to continue with excellent work under difficult circumstances while others occasionally need to be reminded of the purpose of their employment to get two-week-old work orders completed. It also provided us with some dark comedy as we counted the persons who should have noticed the problem and did not and those who were aware of the problem and did nothing about it (until after I worked the refs). You're all familiar with the _expression "like pulling teeth?" This was like pulling an airliner with your teeth. No wonder my neck hurt when I got up this morning.

Knowing that the physical therapy folks got Scott up yesterday, we eagerly awaited their return. They did not get him on his feet (lack of helmet), but they did get him sitting upright and working on his right leg. We had a bad moment when Scott first sat up and got a good look at the left side of his head in the mirror opposite his bed. He pointed with his left arm and yelled, "look at that!" He then looked at all of us. We all told him he looked better than he used to and that it will be fixed soon enough. Of course, he doesn't believe us. It's shocking enough for us to see him like this, but I can't imagine what it must be like to get a look in a mirror and see 2/5 of your hair shaved off and a nasty scar along the line of obviously missing skull beneath. The therapists related stories of how well patients they know have recovered and how good a job the plastic surgeons do here. We've met some men with restorations of skulls that you would never know about if they did not tell you their stories. We're just going to have to show some of these guys to Scott next time we meet one. Scott worked well with the therapists and we got some "homework" assignments to do.

A good friend of mine, Dean Klein, came by for a visit just before lunch to express his appreciation and encouragement to Scott. Dean is a former naval aviator and the photographer of a picture I have on my office wall of the last intercept of a Soviet aircraft (an Il-28 MAY). I cherish this photograph as the true last gasp of the Soviet Union. ("Ha! You lost!" is the clean version of what goes through my mind everyday when I look at it.) Scott recognized him (which was a relief) and shook his hand with his right (another relief).

I think it did Scott good to have such a positive visit, so much so that we're going to invite other friends in the greater DC area who know us to come by for a brief visit if they can.

Dean and his wife, Allison, are two friends in the area who have offered to help us out with a place to stay, a meal, a beer, okay--several beers, anything we need. There are others who have offered, some of whom are complete strangers to us. We thank them all for their generosity.

After a lunch that Scott ignored except for the fruit, the social worker we met in the ICU before going to Bethesda came by. She explained where we would go from here and why. The process is for an evaluation and medical clearance at Walter Reed. Medical board (as in discharge) paperwork has to be completed prior to leaving as a precaution against missing doctors and documents later on. The soldier is then sent to one of the VA traumatic brain injury rehabiliation centers. These are located in Tampa, Florida; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Richmond, Virginia and Palo Alto, California. An immediate concern for us was support services for Scott's wife. It's pretty expensive to live in Palo Alto, California. The Minnesota facility has one of the many "Fisher House" (so called due to the generosity of members of the Fisher family who wanted to have a place for the families of injured and wounded troops to stay near their loved ones during treatment) on the grounds and is also associated with a teaching hospital. Yes, it's cold, but if California's facility doesn't have a place for Scott's wife and baby to stay, what good is it to Scott? The social worker will check out the Palo Alto facility completely, but warned that sometimes the word to move via medical evacuation comes sooner than families may expect. In other words, there are more soldiers coming after Scott.

Psychology services came by in the form of a Naval Reserve officer during the social worker visit. We discussed Scott's recounting of the ambush yesterday and our opinion that he is having nightmares or other sleep disturbances related to it. For example, I've noticed him squeezing triggers in his sleep. There is a support group that meets weekly for soldiers who need to talk about what they've been through.

Sometime later, Scott was to be taken to speech therapy. The therapist (whose name I will learn by tomorrow's update, I promise) told me yesterday to have him brought down in his bed if he didn't have his helmet yet. The soldiers who came to get Scott (one of whom is also a Miami Dolphins fan) arrived with a regular wheelchair. I reminded them that Scott did not yet have his helmet and couldn't be transported in the chair. I suggested another device (which I later learned is called a cardiac chair), but none were available. They pushed him off in his bed and this wife and child went with him. His mother and I went to the Red Cross to get a pair of tennis shoes so he could have a brace fitted to his right foot to prevent dragging it and tripping while walking. They didn't have shoes in his size (why am I not surprised since I wear 14's). Since this didn't take long we went to Speech Therapy only to find the therapist looking around for Scott. Hmm. We went up to the room and learned "someone" (I leave anonymous those who screw up) sent them all back because he couldn't fit into the audiology booth for testing. Well, duh, he was there for speech therapy, so we got him pushed back over to the waiting therapist. The bed wouldn't fit through the door to where she was working, so she gathered up her stuff and went to work in the hallway (Reason number two to report her name) while I went to the waiting room to deprive Scott of any audience participation. After she finished we pushed him back up to his room (reason three) and discussed his progress from the previous day's session on the way to his room. He sometimes gets stuck on a word and can't move to the next one, but is able to reproduce words he is shown. She did not think Scott blew off the questions he couldn't answer with the excuse they were too easy, although she admits the possibility. She gave us some homework for Scott to complete which consisted of filling in missing letters for words and drawing lines from pictures of objects to the matching words for those objects.

Scott watched 50 First Dates on the hospital cable TV network. We were a bit concerned as the female lead in the movie has a brain condition that makes her forget everything she did the previous day, but Scott liked the Adam Sandler performance so we left it alone and watched it with him. As the film concluded, he ate all of his dinner (except the green beans, which he usually likes). This ended for today, at least, our concern about his appetite (which can also be affected by a brain injury).

After dinner, we worked on the homework, which consisted of two types of assignments. The first was to fill in missing letters from words and then to write the complete word twice. He scored 100 percent. The second was to draw a line from the picture of an object to the word for that object. Scott had some trouble with this task and missed some in some interesting ways. (A line drawn from a picture of a knife to the word "washcloth," for example. Some sinister memory, perhaps?)

Since my mother called to see how things were doing just as we were preparing to leave Scott for the evening, I decided to put Scott on the phone. (Hey, what the hell...) She got a good conversation out of him (and is probably still crying as I write this three hours later) including an "I love you" at the end. He does slur his words a bit and often sounds very nasal when he speaks (a bit like talking on helium), but it's him talking and that's good enough for grandma.

So, a day which started with having a tension headache over the concern that I would have to shake the building ended with a pleasant good-bye hug (both arms, too!) and a stroll to the car on a cool, clear evening filled with twinkling stars.

ST