by Paige Wetzel
Josh started fidgeting in discomfort, claiming that he was burning up and his legs were hurting really bad. Josh’s machines began going off like crazy, signaling blood pressure spikes and a rapid heart rate. He suddenly looked green, and sweat was beading on his forehead. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. I asked what he needed, but I quickly learned that was a pointless question. Everything hurt and nothing felt right. No matter what I did, his needs could not be met. As soon as he got comfortable, an IV would need to be replaced. As soon as his legs stopped hurting, a fever would break out. As soon as the fever broke, he would be dying for water. The nurses would come in to check on him constantly, but at this point, their only job was to try to get him somewhat comfortable without overdosing him with pain medication.
I was seeing the same drug-induced stupor that I saw when Cathi tried to Skype me from Germany. No matter what I said, Josh could not be consoled. He was convinced that he hadn’t been given any medicine and that his skin was still burning from the explosion. I looked at the clock; I had only been there for an hour. The minute my butt hit the chair; Josh would need something. I was witnessing total misery—
Josh with wires and tubes connected to fifteen monitors, crying and apologizing for needing things but still so desperately needing them. Josh didn’t want me to get too far away from him. If I wasn’t actively doing something for him, I had to be within his line of vision, not touching him but able to touch him. As he closed his eyes, I went to get something out of my backpack and heard his hoarse voice screaming my name from his bed. Convinced I had left him forever, he berated me with questions like “Where were you? Why did you leave?” I tried so hard to explain that I was literally at the end of the bed, but it was useless. I apologized and promised I wouldn’t leave. Again, his monitors began signaling his rising stress level, and he asked for more ice packs. As I leaned over to get more ice packs, Josh puked bright green stomach bile all over me. Thankfully I was wearing a protective gown and gloves. However, there was no time to clean up. I could only throw away my gown and grab another one. Looking down at myself and stepping over all the bodily fluids on the floor, I thought for the first time, I am not sure if I can do this.
Josh suffered well into the night. As a family, we decided on day one that we would take turns spending the night with Josh. After I spent a few more hours with Josh, I went to my new room at the Fisher House (a residence home on post for family members who would serve as daily caregivers) and let Josh’s dad and stepmother have their turn. All night long Josh cried and begged for help from the pain. Josh became hopeless. Nothing was providing even the smallest amount of relief. He cried and begged and fought until he looked at his father and stepmother and said, “I just want to die.” Finally, Kristie and Patrick called Cathi and me around 6:00 a.m. and asked us to come to the hospital. The room was swelling with an intensity similar to childbirth—the patient in inconceivable pain, the doctors giving urgent and intense orders to the nurses, and the family clutching one another because there was nothing they could do. The begging and pleading turned into crying and screaming until finally the doctors ordered a bolus of painkillers for Josh’s IV. I stood wide-eyed with my hand over my mouth as I watched the nurses empty the syringes one by one into his PICC line for a total of six different narcotics, each chased with saline solution. I was stunned, and I wondered whether his body could handle the now irretrievable amount of drugs. But, for the first time, Josh’s body finally relaxed. His chest loosened up, his eyelids softened, and his limbs seemed to melt into the bed. His monitors reflected calm breathing and a slower heart rate. The mission had changed. From now on, the goal was to keep Josh comfortable.
Josh lay in the bed like a pile of Jell-O, the IV bolus having done its job. I was able to finally sit down and gather my thoughts. Once we felt like Josh had calmed down, we allowed his sisters and brother to come in the room. I prayed silently that God would just let him rest for a few hours so we can figure out what the big issues are.
Suddenly, Josh made very strange eye contact with me from his hospital bed. Oh no, I thought. What now?
“Pssssssttt… Paige come here!” Josh thought he was whispering, but he had actually gotten the attention of the whole room. I dismissed everyone’s gaze with an awkward smile and an “It’s okay” wave. I walked over and bent down to him with a very confused look on my face. “What?”
“They’ve paralyzed me.”
“Um… honey, you are not paralyzed. You were just really struggling with pain so they gave you a lot of medication at once.”
“But I can’t even move my fingers. I’m paralyzed!”
“Josh you are not para—”
“Ssshhhhh!” he said, spitting everywhere. “They’ll hear us!”
“Babe, just close your eyes and relax, okay?” I said, wiping saliva off my face.
“You’ll keep first watch?”
“Yes,” I said, eyes rolling. “I will keep first watch.”
By his third day at Walter Reed, Josh had an IV PICC line that was supplying two antibiotics to fight infections, ketamine (a horse tranquilizer), and a patient-controlled pump of Dilaudid. He also had an epidural in his back to numb his lower half. Due to being in and out of fevers, Josh was regularly administered a fever reducer and had at least five ice packs on him at all times. His overheating issues weren’t helped by the huge foam wedges used to keep his fists pointed to the sky. His dressing was too thick for him to even scratch his face. To control bleeding, Josh was also hooked up to five wound vacs, devices that vacuum out fluids from open wounds. Antimicrobial sponges were cut into the shapes of Josh’s open lacerations. The sponges were laid on top of the bleeding area and then covered with cellophane. When the wound vac was turned on, it provided suction to the sponge, sinking it into all the crevices of the wound and pulling out fluid around the clock. Josh also couldn’t eat or drink anything. The minute he checked into Walter Reed, he was on the surgery rotation. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he would be in the operating room for nine or more hours. We were only allowed to swab his mouth with a sponge attached to a popsicle stick. Josh would hot flash for about twenty minutes, and then a white ring of dehydration would form around his lips. More than once I went to swab his mouth and it was so dry that I had to use my finger to pry his tongue off the roof of his mouth. To top it all off, Josh was naked 24/7. The constant sweating, swelling in his legs, and the possibility of being whisked away to surgery at moment’s notice made clothing unnecessary. So, if the loincloth pillowcase gave him a hot flash, visitors who didn’t already know him got to know him well.
Despite the constant work, we were slowly getting the hang of taking care of Josh physically. Mentally and emotionally, he was still struggling. He complained constantly about legitimate things, but then the complaints got weird. He said he could hear circus music playing, so much so that he couldn’t hear the voices of the people in the room. Almost irritated, I said “Josh, there is no circus music playing. Please don’t get worked up right now. Just close your eyes.”
“I can’t!” he said, while crying.
“Why?”
Wide-eyed and breathing heavily, Josh said, “I… I just can’t close my eyes.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“The Ninja Turtles…”
Oh God, he’s hallucinating.
“The Ninja Turtles are coming after me!” Tears were rolling down his face. “Why would they want to hurt me?”
I sighed and walked to the nurses’ station. “Hi, we would like to turn the ketamine off now.”
Being put on ketamine was a rite of passage at Walter Reed. Everyone had a funny story about the dreams and visions induced by the drug. Some people saw things like armored knights standing in the corner of the room, or they thought some of the hospital staff looked like celebrities. Josh, however, went into hysterics, much like he did when he got his tonsils out as a child. His regular narcotics were already causing extreme paranoia. Adding a h
orse tranquilizer to paranoia was a recipe for putting his stress into overdrive. The ketamine was replaced with oxycodone. The hallucinations stopped, but the laundry list of needs did not. I went to the bathroom and thought, How long is it going to be like this? God gave me a touch of hope as Josh’s mind sobered when he was off the ketamine.
With a slightly clearer mind, he began to open up about what happened on his deployment.
CHAPTER FOUR
DEPLOYMENT POINT OF VIEW
That’s why we are not discouraged. No, even if outwardly we are wearing out, inwardly we are being renewed each and every day. This light, temporary nature of our suffering is producing for us an everlasting weight of glory, far beyond any comparison, because we do not look for things that can be seen but for things that cannot be seen. For things that can be seen are temporary, but things that cannot be seen are eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:16–18 ISV
JOSH
When I left for my first deployment with the 1-23 Infantry Battalion, I remember walking away from Paige knowing I would never be the same. The next time she saw me I could be injured, mentally messed up, or in a box. She would be living in a place she barely knew… without me. She’d already given up everything for me, and now I was leaving her, never to return the same man. We were headed into real danger. A place where the Taliban ruled. When I joined the Army, I knew I would serve in the War on Terror in some capacity. I prayed that this would be one of many deployments in my Army career. But while I was packing up every bit of gear that I owned, I just thought I would feel more like charging into the fight. Instead, I was overwhelmed with facing an unwavering enemy on foreign soil. I shuddered at everything I might lose.
The day I deployed you could almost see the anxiety swirling around our tiny apartment. The raw, overwhelming fear seemed to be seeping through the walls in our living room. I had spent all day stressing, packing, and driving back and forth to the base to make sure I had all the required items. I tried to keep my face calm, but then my mind flashed to the future, and I could feel a sudden shortness of breath. I would pause just long enough to not be noticed to look at Paige. I could sense Paige was trying to hold back her own emotions, and I knew she wanted to help me, but conflicted looks kept crossing her face. My mind would go into this warped space and think, This may be the last time you ever see her. If I could keep packing and moving and running up and down the stairs, then she wouldn’t see the fear. However, the tension was building every time I looked at a clock. Time was the dark shadow in the room, consuming more and more as the daylight disappeared. We both could feel it. When we got down to the last hour, we couldn’t look at each other. I began loading things into the truck as Paige checked the apartment again and again looking for anything I missed. We went up the steps for the thousandth time and did one last sweep of our home. A shrug from Paige translated as “I think we got everything,” and I just started crying. We did have everything. There was nothing else to pack. There were no other forms of distraction. It was time to leave. For real. Paige didn’t ask me what was wrong or even come over to console me. These tears weren’t about missing each other or being apart. It was pure heart-melting fear. I was never going to be ready. I was just going to have to do it scared. Paige saw my fear and just let me experience it. She didn’t pep-talk me into believing I was ready or, worse, downplay the danger I was going into. She just invited me to sit next to her on the couch and share the tears with me. After a couple of minutes, she said, “Let’s just make a promise to each other. Let’s promise to be positive for each other no matter what. We are both really afraid now, but after tonight, we have to focus on the positive.” I agreed, not really sure if I could actually do it.
Time was our enemy but the Army’s best friend. And I was a slave to it down to the second. We had to leave now. “You ready to go?” I asked, and Paige nodded, the eye contact almost killing me. Then, I looked at Cooper, our little four-month-old Cocker Spaniel, and said “Bye, buddy.” Keep your mom safe. She’ll need you.
The usual twenty-minute drive to Fort Lewis seemed to go by in about ten seconds. Paige drove up to the drop-off point and helped me unload. I checked in with my leadership at our battalion’s building much like I would on a normal day at work. Nothing about this night felt normal. The eye contact thing was apparently contagious. There was an unspoken code of conduct: words, energy, and emotion had to be saved for our families. Nothing would be wasted on niceties or small talk with members of our platoon. Good, I thought. I don’t have anything to say to anyone right now. We had to be on the bus at 11:00 p.m., and I didn’t plan on being on it one minute before that. I dropped my stuff onto the truck, signed in, and then hustled back to my wife. I realized there were only goodbyes left to do. I did everything I could to smile and not cry, but I could not hold back my emotions any longer. I was in physical pain from all the things I couldn’t say. We cried and held hands and just looked at the ground. I could barely glance at her face, because seeing her fear was going to break me. What could I say? There were no guarantees now. I’m sure we said “I love you” a half dozen times before I finally took a deep breath and said, “All right, I have to go.”
In her choked voice, Paige assured me, “You have absolutely nothing to worry about over here, okay? You only worry about what you have to do.”
One last hug, one last kiss, one last “I love you,” and in an instant, I was at the complete disposal of the United States Army.
I plopped down on the bus that would take us to the airfield for our flight along with the rest of my platoon. The ride was dead silent. Not because people were sleeping. We were all wide-awake. I tried to take in the last bit of the United States that I would get to see, but my mind was sluggish and foggy. A clear thought finally broke through: I have never been scared like this. All the things that were meant to scare me up to that point only gave me the exact rush of adrenaline I needed to do it. Fear was the launch button for all the awesome things I had done in the Army so far. Jumping out of planes, surviving Special Forces Selection, and every other perceivably scary thing didn’t intimidate me. I was exhilarated by the risk. This fear was different. For the first time, I felt with absolute certainty that something was going to happen. It didn’t feel exhilarating; it felt ominous. Wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, I took a look around the bus at everyone else and found my only morsel of comfort for that day: If I have to do this, I am so thankful to do it with the bravest people I have ever met.
We flew from Seattle to Alaska to Kyrgyzstan to Kandahar, Afghanistan, known as the birthplace of the Taliban. It took us approximately five days. From Kandahar, we helicoptered to Command Outpost (COP) in Mushan, about thirty-five miles away. We circled for about an hour (who knows why) and finally landed. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. Would we hear bombs going off right next to our landing zone, or would this be like predators picking off a herd of sheep—stalking and waiting?
The minute my feet hit the ground, I was overwhelmed by the heat. I had lived in the humidity of Alabama and North Carolina, even in triple-digit weather in Texas when I was a kid. Afghanistan had its own way of microwaving you from the inside out. People have asked if I would prefer 100 degrees in the South or 100 degrees in Afghanistan. I once believed I was a “dry heat” kind of person, but this heat felt like a hair dryer blowing in your face at all times. Reaching 110 degrees or higher was going to be my daily normal for the next nine months.
I didn’t really have time to think about how hot it was because we were immediately instructed to unload the helicopter. This was when I got a good look at the guys we were replacing. They had come to the landing zone to help us unload, which I was thankful for, but something about them really bothered me. Their enthusiasm about helping us was weird. They were literally running toward us and unloading cargo like we had arrived at summer camp or something. Maybe their behavior wouldn’t have been so strange if they didn’t look so horrible. Their uniforms were torn and faded at the elbows
and knees. A uniform in that condition would have been completely unacceptable on base back in the States. Even after a dozen trips to the field for training, I don’t think my uniform had ever looked as bad as theirs did. Their eagerness to get us on post kind of killed the “hooah” moment I thought I was going to have with my fellow soldiers.
We shuffled straight from unloading to a briefing about our new posting. I assumed we were going to be informed about the terrain and the latest missions. While that was part of it, there were some topics during the briefing that confused me. They talked a lot about IEDs. We were briefed on how we would be maneuvering behind a mine detector any time we were off post. In our predeployment training, we walked everywhere in a V formation to cover as much ground as possible at one time. Now we were being told we had to walk like ducks in a row because it was literally too dangerous to walk on your own. Immediately following that briefing, I knew that anytime I talked to Paige from then on, I couldn’t let her know what was really going on. I couldn’t have her worrying any more than she already was. So, I decided I would just tell her we were mostly doing humanitarian missions and that nobody was in any sort of danger, even though that was nowhere near the truth.
PAIGE
The day following his departure I literally woke up with a hangover from crying. My head was pounding and my whole body ached. I felt dehydrated and the minimal sunlight was still too bright and annoying to me. For less than one second, I thought, Thank God last night is over. Then I rolled over and saw my nightmare was true. I really did send him off last night. I drug both hands across my face and thought, I cannot believe it’s already here. His toothbrush was gone. His dresser drawers were empty. His uniforms were missing. How? How was it already time for this? We just got here. We just moved into this apartment. We just got our married life going, and now he is gone for the rest of the year. Where did our life go? What if the life we had is the only life I will ever know? I went and put on one of his sweatshirts. Good God, Paige, he’s deployed, not dead… yet. Stop! Remember what we promised each other? If you start this crap now, you cannot hold up your end of the deal. This deployment isn’t about you; it’s about him. Don’t just pretend to be positive. Be positive. Be thankful. Trust God. Stop being a baby.