Surviving

John came back home from Iraq in bad shape. He'd experienced quite a few head injuries because of IED blasts. Toward the end of his deployment he fractured his sternum and broke ribs when his rifle was jammed into his torso. Had he not been wearing his Kevlar, he would have died instantly. While he was recovering on bed rest in Iraq, we got a call that his grandmother was passing away. I was on the phone for hours with the Red Cross trying to deliver him to her one last time, but there was no way to move him. If there's one thing he feels bitter about, that would be it.

I was glad to have John home, hoping I could help him heal. He was put into the Wounded Warrior program, which pays severely injured soldiers to go to therapy and continue treatments. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. There are a lot of things I love about Miami, but it's organizational skills are lacking. His nurse case practitioner, who was in charge of his appointments, never returned his calls. He was never reassigned a doctor after he complained that the one he was seeing told him to "suck up" his pain. It took weeks of badgering to get an appointment to see a dermatologist when he broke out into a rash that we later found out was an illness he had contracted in Iraq that had been dormant in his system. Apart from his shoulder surgery and the resulting physical therapy, his needs weren't really tended to. Had it not been for the Traumatic Brain Injuries, it may not have been so bad.

Some of the scariest experiences with John have resulted from his TBI. One night in particular we were returning home from a party. He was driving and we were having a conversation. As we turned at a light he started screaming, and it was evident he couldn't control what was going on. Thankfully, I was able to maneuver us into a parking lot and get him over to the passenger side. I should have driven straight to the hospital but I panicked and called my aunt, a nurse, instead and drove to her house. John had no idea where we were or what was happening. He was completely disoriented. My uncle, a paramedic, later told me what I was describing was probably a mild stroke, a symptom of his brain injuries. He recovered within a few hours, but it happened again, and much worse. The second time it happened we were home. Again he was screaming from the pain and grabbing his head, so I shoved him into the shower and turned on the hot water hoping to ease some of the tension and pain with the heat. Once he calmed down I asked him if he knew where he was. He didn't, and he didn't know his name. I dressed him and sat him in our room while I went outside and called my aunt and uncle, unsure what to do. When I came back inside I could see the panic in his face. He didn't want me to leave because I was the only thing he recognized. I asked him if he knew who I was and he started laughing, and said, "of course I do." He still didn't know his name.

The first year that John was home was the hardest time of my life, no question. There was more hardship than there was true happiness. But I was afforded the small mercy of getting a glimpse into my broken husband's heart. He knew me, even when he didn't know himself. The military wasn't doing much to help us. It was a struggle every day to choose to keep going and not give up. I had to learn to be more patient and forgiving because arguments and stress strained John so much that he'd get nosebleeds and migraines. Sometimes he'd even pass out. He was incapable of giving me what I needed or of expressing himself in the simplest ways. He just couldn't. But in his worst moment, when he was least conscious of it, he gave me the strength I needed to push ahead and showed me, without a doubt, that he loved me and appreciated me. 

It's amazing what the human heart is capable of remembering when the rest of you is broken.