When I became conscious again, my leg was gone. But I was alive.
A week after the injury, my right leg was decomposing so quickly that my body had become septic and I was crashing. The doctor was terrified I was going to die so he made a decision: it was either my leg or my life.
As soon as they took my leg, my vitals began to improve. But I was in a precarious position for many weeks to come.
In the first two months following the injury, I had received more than one hundred and twenty units of blood (the human body has about ten to twelve units of blood), and I had undergone about thirty-five surgeries. Kidney and liver failure plagued me, too. I was so messed up that it took me a while before I was even ready to start physical therapy. My abdomen was still open for a long time the doctors at the initial trauma station had opened it to visually inspect all the organs and make sure no little piece of shrapnel had nicked anything.
So it was at least two months after I got hurt that I could even sit up. It took three people to move me to the chair with all the tubes and wires. I sat for ten minutes and was in total agony.
The recovery process seemed really drawn out, punctuated with ups and downs. At first I was just thrilled to be alive thrilled that my genitals were intact, that I could still be a dad and a husband, be functional. So I went from that elation to trying to cope with the exact level of my disability. How bad is it? How bad is it going to stay? How good is it going to get?
Throughout the recovery process, my dad’s advice came back to me. I had decided not to become bitter before I ever landed on Iraqi soil. I was determined to stay true to that resolve, to remember that my circumstance was just one brushstroke in a masterpiece God was creating.
Lord, grow my desire to glorify you so much that I will be content with both good times and bad as long as you are honored.
“When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)