Sporting the Scarlet W

Hello, all you faithful friends who kept me in your reader or stop in occasionally to see if I have posted anything. There are many things I need to write and I hope to be able to put them down here. This space has been wonderful therapy over the years. Unfortunately, I find myself needing that therapy again now.

First, a quick informative post to catch you up to speed:

On April 13 this year, Soldier Boy was seriously injured in Afghanistan. His vehicle was struck by an IED and his legs were pinned in the vehicle. The blast maimed his left leg below the knee, which was traumatically amputated at the scene through his own efforts to free himself. His right leg was mangled. He retained consciousness throughout the incident, tying one of his own tourniquets, instructing his soldiers on how to remove him from the vehicle, carefully putting all of his sensitive items together for accountability, and encouraging his driver who also sustained injuries in the explosion. He was conscious until he got to the FOB hospital and they sedated him. During the incident he lost 2 liters of blood and has received more than 20 units to replace his supply. Fortunately, all of his injuries were below the knees.

I met him at Walter Reed, where he was an inpatient for a month. After that, they transferred us to a different major hospital, where he was an inpatient for another month. Our children were scattered across three different states and had 4-5 different caregivers during those two months. They joined us a few weeks ago and we are now living in a small apartment near his rehabilitation facility. He has a left below the knee amputation and the ortho teams are doing what is called a "limb salvage" on the right. He has multiple breaks in his tibia and fibula, his heel, all of his meta-tarsals and four of his toes. They have installed a "taylor spatial frame", which is a lot of external hardware that is screwed through the skin into his bones to hold them in place for healing. The cool thing about this frame is that he can bear weight on it. He will soon be fitted for a prosthetic and will be able to walk. For now he is in a wheelchair, going to PT several times a day. His attitude is fantastic and he shows no signs of TBI or other traumatic injury.

We are very fortunate.

I obviously have a lot to work through. I wanted to get the facts out here so that I can write freely in the next few posts without worrying about confusing whatever readers I have left. Thank you all for sticking around all these years. Now we are off for a new and different adventure.

As for the title--my friends whose husbands have been injured during this deployment have come up with the phrase "It's like I've got a big scarlet W on my chest!" When they are around the wives whose husbands have not been injured, the atmosphere is strained and uncomfortable. We are probably going to make t-shirts. It's not contagious, you know.