A little more than a year ago I introduced many of you to Leslie Kammerdiener in a diary entitled broken wings - can you help?. Leslie is the mother of Kevin, an Afghanistan War veteran who suffered a near-fatal traumatic brain injury, the result of a suicide bomber who struck the Humvee he and three other soldiers were in.
At the time of my posting that diary, Leslie was having terrible difficulties getting her son the quality of care he needed. In her 225th entry to the daily journal she began when she found out Kevin had been nearly killed (dated January 11, 2009) she writes this about the Veteran's care facility her son was in:
I feel so trapped. Trapped because I don't feel safe here and yet we really don't have anywhere else that we can go. There are only 4 polytrauma centers in the US (and most of the people here have come from one of those four because they were so bad).
(more over the fold ...)
Where my concerns in my previous diary were related to Kevin getting the care he needed, in this diary I'd like to bring something else to your attention. It's not as dramatic or as seemingly urgent (and I can only hope that it will not, therefore, sink off the front page of Daily Kos too quickly) but it is nevertheless of real importance.
Leslie has continued her daily postings to her blog, Mended Wings. She is due to post her entry for day 610 sometime tonight. In many ways, at least in comparison to day 225, things are "better" now but in keeping up with her daily entries what I often find myself thinking is that, when you get right down to it, things are not really better at all—they're just different.
A year ago I described Leslie's weblog as
a daily journal of a mother's nightmarish journey into hell.
I would say at this point that that journey is complete now and what has taken its place is hell: her day-to-day struggle to deal with all the damage that's been done. Kevin lost a good portion of his left brain (see the 2nd and 3rd photos, here). You don't fully recover from that. In a way, the past 610 days of Leslie's life have been spent caring for her son that is not her son. She sees things he does that remind her of the young man who went to fight in Afghanistan, but they are forever intermixed with the terribly wounded soldier who came back (see the 2nd and 3rd videos here).
Mended Wings?
I used to wonder how she could, from day one, name her blog "Mended Wings." As time has gone on, though, I see that choice of words as really no choice at all — Leslie, being who Leslie is, could not have named it anything other than that. It is a name that speaks both of her determination to see this through to the end and her optimism that all will end well. It's not Mending Wings or, heaven forbid, Wings I Hope Might Someday Mend. She won't allow herself to believe in anything less than mended wings. And I know I'm not alone in admiring her greatly for it.
I really can't imagine what it must be like to be living her life. She sometimes fools me into thinking that things have finally settled into something "not too bad." There might be a week or two of posts that talk about how well Kevin is doing, what a good mood he's been in and what fantastic progress he's making and then she'll say something like, "Wow! Kevin actually let me get 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night!" or that "he can now say 25 words!" and you realize that she's not telling you much about how difficult things really are.
It's when she tells you something like her finding him sobbing over some old postcard that has stirred up a memory of his past that your heart breaks because you realize her son knows what he's lost and she knows that he knows and can't do anything about it. Yes, I understand why she named it Mended Wings but I also know that she will never stop having to care for him.
This is what wars do.
This is what her life has become all about now.
She's Not The Only One
USA Today ran an article this past Wednesday titled Caregiving strains families of veterans with severe injuries that talks about Leslie and Kevin as well as other families suffering through the same ordeal. In it, they report that:
The Defense Department's most recent tally of Afghan and Iraq war-related traumatic brain injuries is 161,025. A 2008 report from the non-profit research company RAND, however, put the figure at 320,000 out of the 1.64 million deployed by that time.
and that Leslie ...
... is among thousands of unpaid caregivers — parents, spouses, siblings and war buddies — helping veterans injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars get through each day, says Barbara Cohoon, deputy director of government relations for the non-profit National Military Family Association. She says the caregivers are a vulnerable group, often under-recognized, and in need of help to navigate the military's medical system. Cohoon says not all caregivers receive military benefits, even though many have quit jobs, moved out of their homes and drained their savings to care for their loved ones.
I have no problem calling Leslie, and those like her, heroes.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a hero as:
A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.
I know that we don't traditionally view family caregivers as being heroic and I'm quite certain Leslie would laugh at the idea, but I think that sacrificing her life (the life she had every right to expect 611 days ago) is exactly what she's done and she's done so with considerable courage. Yes, I know she didn't go to war, her son did. But the consequences of that war came home to her and she has been bravely fighting the good fight ever since.
What Can You Do?
I don't know. I'm rarely sure of what I can do. But I figure that at the very least I can raise your awareness some. I hope in fact that that is what I've been able to do here. And once raised, I hope your heart will tell you what to do next, or at least what direction to head in.
Maybe you can write someone about the simply pathetic way this country treats its heroes and their families? Maybe you can work for or with an agency that is helping these people? Maybe you can remember Leslie and Kevin the next time a politician wants to play the war card? Maybe you can remember that for every Kevin and Leslie in the US there are scores more mothers and sons in Iraq and Afghanistan whose lives will forever be tortured by the consequences of war?
But if nothing else, I would ask this of you: that you occasionally stop by Leslie's Mended Wings and catch up with what she and Kevin have been doing and that, when you're so inclined, you leave a comment there to let her know you care.