When the Smoke Clears

What a weekend. It started off small and light and ended with a big bang on Sunday with much beer, football on a 100″ screen TV, and good times. I was able to spend time hanging with the big 2LT M. and the boys, and even got to spend time with Mr. Rich, a remarkable man indeed. He’s back from Iraq. After an IED (improvised explosive device) took off the lower part of his left arm, he didn’t exactly have to finish his current tour of duty. He’s been at Walter Reed for a time recently, but likes to get out so he came on down this way to enjoy the company of his friends and get ready to go back to school this Spring.

But as my favorite journalism professor once taught us: you’re just a reporter. Get over yourself and get out of the way of the story. It’s not about you.

When talking with someone like Rich, the first impression is that here is a country boy, through and through. Even his big teeth lead to big, sometimes goofy smiles. There is also that discomfort many feel of trying to figure out when and what to say about the contraption he has for an arm. Some people would mistake him for being simple, but he is far from it. He knows exactly all that is going on around him and likes to catch people off guard. He sometimes sticks out his left hand for people to shake, I think just to get them over it.

Yesterday was sunny and the fall festival took up most of the town. Rich was wearing one of his temporary utility arms, the body of most of which was clear, revealing the inside works. In just a t-shirt and shorts, people could see where flesh met mechanics. At the end was a flesh-colored hand that mostly stayed in the open position, except when he was carrying a cup of sweet iced tea. It was noticeable.

(more after the jump)

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Update
The world works in cycles. Turns out Mr. Eric has been up and reading about others who’ve had remarkable weekends as well. And Blackfive visited Walter Reed while I stole the time of one of his troops down here.

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Some friends had no problem asking him about it and Rich had no problem talking about how it worked, what he could do, but always he warned he had only just recently received the prosthetic so he was still in the learning stages, as if he could be faulted for not yet touch-typing at 50 wpm. Still, being a college kid, naturally there were the typical testing of limits. There is a lot of strength if he is not careful, so many of his buddies stood back or took cover while watching to see if he could shatter a bottle in his grip.

“I know I’ve been getting some publicity and that’s not what I wanted, but everything happens for a reason. I do believe that and maybe I can serve as an inspiration or a reminder for someone. Maybe I’ll be the one who makes the next great inventor or doctor not give up on himself just because of some problem.”

Always physically fit, Rich is getting ready for yet another marathon but now he wants to stretch himself. He wants to do an ultra-marathon of 100 miles. And he’d like to do some triathalons as well, but there are restrictions. “I’m still working on the swimming part. I’m not sure how I’m going to work that out.” He has some ideas of how to design an arm that will work in tandem with his other shoulder to effect a good Australian Crawl.

But at Walter Reed Army Hospital, Rich is giving his therapists extra challenges. He already found the extension with the two metallic end grips is better for his favorite sport: fly-fishing. They will also be outfitting him with a utility hand for weight-lifting. However, it was when he asked for a system for boxing that the therapists were taken aback. “They said no one ever asked for anything like that before.”

Rich already knows there will be questions about how fair it would be to box with a hard-cased attachment. “I figure there can be gyroscopic sensors in there. The wrist has a natural give to it so when a punch doesn’t come in a straight line, parallel to the plane of motion, it will bend and flex. I figure that unless you were throwing a perfect punch along a plane, the punch could give some.” But that’s not enough. This winter, he is headed to Colorado for a little skiing.

Most remarkable are his senses of duty and service. He still intends to work towards his commission and hopes the Army will take him. He realizes there are a lot of obstacles to overcome on the way, and he wants to overcome them, not as someone who is being compensated for, but as any other individual out there. He also wants to get out of D.C. since he finds all the clubs where people hang out are full of people in suits listening to rave music drinking cocktails. He’s looking for a bar with people in jeans, drinking beer and actually talking to each other like they care, or at least playing pool.

“When people have asked me about this whole thing, I don’t want to talk about me as much as those who were around me. My driver, that guy was amazing. He had only been with us for a couple of days and when everything happened, he was right there. He bandaged up my arm, put on the tourniquet. He was the one who made it possible for them to save it below the elbow which makes a really big difference. That’s what was so amazing. Here was this 18, 19-year old kid who was clear-headed and knew what he was doing and got everything taken care of. I don’t know that I could have done it when I was 18.”

One can sense he probably would have been able to. The other thing Rich remarked on was the support he has.

“I’m really lucky. I’ve got a great family who are there for me. I’ve got a bunch of friends who are right there for me. A lot of people who go in the military don’t have anyone. That’s part of what the military gives them, a sense of something they missed out on. Those are the ones I worry about if they get hurt. If they have to leave the military, they don’t really have much of anything to go back to. Those are the ones I want to find a way to help the most.”

I wonder how anyone, including myself, could be satisfied floating through life defending their lack of action after meeting someone like Rich. How can I even think of going elsewhere when I have the privilege of meeting, spending time with, kicking back and watching football and talking fishing with men and women like these? I think deep down we want to find a flaw in these peoples’ characters so we can feel better about ourselves. “Sure, he’s fine now,” some would say, “but just wait for when it REALLY hits him,” as if we would have any idea. My response: Go to hell. How dare you sit there in your smug ignorance based on your ‘education’ without real-world experience. It reminds me of my favorite t-shirt from the ‘96 para-Olympics: “There are no broken bodies, only broken hearts. What’s YOUR excuse?”

Rich wants to learn more about emergency medicine, too, and wants to find a way to help fellow injured veterans. “That’s the best feeling in the world. Helping people. They have to see that you can’t give up. There’s still people out there who care for them. You can come out of this whole thing better than you were before.”

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