"When a son is on the front lines, the most exquisite cuisine loses its flavor, movies are no longer exciting, conversations of pettiness can’t be stomached, and the company of others going through the same experience is the only solace."
Each year has been bigger than the last, and this year was no exception. Patriotic Americans of all ages showed up to make over 300 blankets for wounded service members recovering at Landstuhl hospital in Germany. "The first year they made 43 blankets and were so excited and proud of themselves," says Lisa Dodson. "This year it was 352 made in eight hours! Every year the event grows and grows."
"I start getting questions within a month afterwards about when the next one will be,” says Lisa. "They get so excited! It really brings people together, and everyone leaves feeling so good about what they’ve done."
MaryAnn,
I just want to tell you a quick story: Last Christmas (2 months after my fiance got of the hospital), we got a Christmas tree and decorated it.
We were missing the star to put on the top of the tree, so we used the little angel you sent us in a letter.
I just thought you should know that. And, that we have promised ourselves the angel will be used every Christmas on our tree :-)
RAMSTEIN AIR FORCE BASE, GERMANY—Standing in the bitterly cold wind blowing across the airstrip, Master Cpl. Karen Dickie waits for the giant C-17 aircraft to open its jaws.
After a few abortive tries, the mouth of the massive U.S. air ambulance opens and a whoosh of cool German air hits the faces of soldiers, acclimatized to the desert heat, as they lie on their stretchers.
Dickie, a Canadian Forces medic, walks up the metal ramp and scans the stretchers laid out in front of her in search of Toronto Chief Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Tiffin. The naval diver was flown out of Kandahar eight hours earlier, after a bomb blew up in his hands.
Dickie is stationed at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the casualty hub for NATO troops airlifted from combat. She is one of eight specially trained Canadian soldiers whose sole purpose is to move our wounded from the battleground to this German safe haven before being flown home for further care.
She finds Tiffin, conscious and alert but with blackened, injured hands, and introduces herself. She explains he’s been brought here to Landstuhl, a giant trauma hospital deep in the heart of the Black Forest.
Landstuhl is often referred to as the German front in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Plane after plane of critically injured, baby-faced soldiers breathing on portable ventilators arrive daily suffering from blast injuries, severe burns and missing limbs.
All day, seven days a week, massive C-17 cargo carriers, each able to move nearly 80 injured soldiers in seats and stacked on stretchers three deep, land at Ramstein and are bused 15 minutes down the road to Landstuhl.
Since 2004, the hospital has cared for 65,000 patients — soldiers, diplomats, journalists — from 45 coalition nations.
January 18th, 2006
Dear Mrs. Smith,
It was brought to my attention that your organization, Soldier's Angels, did something very special for the Marines of our Injured Support Battalion. I want to take this time and thank you so much for your contribution to make special memories for those who sacrifice so much.
Your contribution of laptops is quite above and beyond. I am grateful that you have taken time to honor our injured heroes.
I remain...
The surgeons here have a fierce dedication to saving every life. Only in mass casualty events must some patients be put aside and treated "expectantly," the euphemism for the assumption they will die. Even getting someone alive to Landstuhl, where their family can see them before they die, counts as a victory.
"We try not to withdraw care here in theater," Eastridge said.
But every once in a while it happens. It's usually someone with brain injuries so severe they're likely to die during transport. They're allowed to die here, with troops at the bedside. "That just affords them that last little bit of dignity," he said.
He stopped, and his eyes filled with tears.
The conference is run by Col. Brian Eastridge, a 47-year-old trauma surgeon with 23 years in the Army. He grew up in Damascus, Md., graduated from Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He now heads the Joint Theater Trauma System, which organizes trauma care in both wars.
Over five deployments, Eastridge has seen the entire arc of worsening wounds and increasing survival that has marked trauma care during the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Dressed in brown camouflage battle dress, he sits halfway around a large U made of wooden tables. Around him on the walls are idealized scenes of Afghan life painted by a local artist - a girl leading a caravan of camels, children being taught arithmetic at the base of a tree, kids flying kites.
Eastridge runs the conference with somber efficiency, offers comments sparingly and addresses his listeners mostly by location-"Kandahar," "Landstuhl," "Walter Reed."
The rapid-fire reports are dense with medical jargon and anatomical description. It's a narration of one disaster after another, and of how things were kept from getting worse, and made better, by skill, speed and attention. It's the aural equivalent of watching a dozen high-wire acts in which some people are rescued mid-fall.
Here's just one.
"Dismounted IED" injury is jargon for wounds caused by a bomb or mine that are suffered outside a vehicle. The soldier had tourniquets placed for partial amputation of both legs. One liter of a special IV fluid was given in the helicopter, and the patient arrived at the Kandahar hospital in and out of consciousness and in shock.
In the operating room, surgeons temporarily tied off the arteries going to the legs and repaired a tear in a major vein. There was massive damage to the area between the legs. One leg was amputated at the knee. In a second operation the next day his wounds were rewashed and a finger, broken in the explosion, was fixed with external hardware.
That same day the soldier was evacuated to Bagram, where his wounds were washed out and the pelvic region was re-explored. A "foreign body"- the speaker didn't say whether it was dirt, metal or something else - not seen in the first operation was removed. He suffered a collapsed lung after surgery, which was fixed.
He stayed there two days before flying by critical care air transport to Landstuhl.
Seven days after suffering his wounds the soldier arrived at a hospital in the United States. He had another collapsed lung, and pneumonia. His right foot, initially thought to be salvageable, wasn't healing and the surgeons planned to amputate it at the ankle. He had further surgery to his abdomen and numerous operations to start repairing the missing floor of his pelvis.
"This was one of the biggest pelvic injuries I've ever seen," said one of the surgeons in the United States. Eastridge later said he hears that a lot from surgeons in the United States who haven't been deployed yet.
This was not an uncommon case.
