by Paige Wetzel
In this time of being single and not really having a path, my usual response would have been to just numb the feelings with drinking, playing video games, or anything else that would spare me five more minutes where I didn’t have to think about consequences of my actions. This time, I remembered what I wanted to do with my life when I was in high school: join the Army. My dad was in the Army, and most of my uncles on both sides of the family had served as well. They had all taken different paths after their time of service, but they spoke of their military careers with such pride. I didn’t have anything like that. I had messed up an opportunity to play baseball in college, an opportunity to get a degree, and a relationship with the only person I have ever really loved. As undisciplined and unmotivated as I was, I couldn’t accept a life of moving back into my mom’s house and hoping I could keep a job. After some coercing, I convinced my then ex-girlfriend to meet up with me, because I had something to tell her. With utmost certainty, I looked Paige in the face and said, “I’ve decided I’m going to join the Army.”
From day one of basic training I felt like I was made for the military—not because I was good at everything, but it was the first thing that ever felt worth all of my effort. The stuff that bothered people about it (no sleep, getting yelled out, meaningless exercise) didn’t bother me. It was so mentally and physically taxing that I couldn’t allow frustration or a bad attitude to overtake me, and I know that’s how I found my calling to leadership.
Now, I was a wounded veteran in an amputee hospital. Honestly, I didn’t care that I was wounded. I could take pain. But I couldn’t stand not being able to serve. I couldn’t stand the fact that I was not over there, protecting my guys. Sometimes I felt absolutely worthless. Would I get the twenty-year career that I had dreamed of? Would I have gotten wounded if my Special Forces career had worked out?
Even with all the mixed emotions, I refuted that last thought quickly. Of course, I wanted the green beret, but had I achieved that, I never would have been part of the best platoon in the United States Army. Even though I was so scared before we deployed, my only comfort was found in the people who sat on that aircraft with me willing to get in harm’s way in Afghanistan. I hate that I can’t be there doing my job, but if it cost me the Earthpig brotherhood, it was not worth it. I am thankful for the paths not taken, because my wife, my purpose, and brothers were not down those roads.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PRAYER AND THE NIGHTMARES
And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?
—Esther 4:14
PAIGE
“Mr. President, would you mind if we prayed for you?”
June 28, 2012, I met the president of the United States. The. President. Of. The. United. States. My America, Josh’s America, the America of every amputee on the floor was represented by a single man walking the same halls as us—Barack Obama.
June 28 began as another hot day in Bethesda, except for the first time since we had arrived at Walter Reed, my whole family had to be dressed and ready for an important event. This was a week when Josh’s dad, stepmother, and siblings were able to visit. Cathi and I were both designated as full-time primary caregivers, which meant Cathi was able to stay at Walter Reed with us full-time. Josh’s dad, stepmother, and siblings came every other week. However, this week was different. It was common for us to fill out security clearance paperwork before government officials or high-ranking military came to visit. The forms required us to list potential visitors and their Social Security numbers for background checks. This week’s paperwork required much more detail: Do you stay with the veteran full-time? If not, what state did you travel from? Are you responsible for any children under the age of fifteen? All questions that alluded to someone who outranked any other visitor we had hosted yet.
June 28 was the day President Barack Obama came to walk the hospital. As Cathi, Patrick, Kristie, and I were foraging in our belongings for outfits that didn’t look like pajamas, Josh’s only request was that he wear an Auburn shirt to meet the president. Josh was still very heavily medicated and didn’t make a lot of sense most of the time, but he was adamant about the Auburn shirt because “Barack,” as he confidently called him, needed to know he was an Auburn fan. We already had about ten Auburn posters hanging in the room, but Josh said those weren’t enough. As usual, he was not in a state of mind to be reasoned with, so we got him a medium-sized shirt that fit like a tent on his emaciated frame. No pants necessary. We were ready to meet the commander-in-chief.
As I walked to Josh’s hospital room from the Fisher House, I could see security details placed at every entrance of every building, stairwell, elevator, bathroom, and back door on post. I had to be in Josh’s room by 10:00 a.m. to prepare for the president to arrive at 2:00 p.m. The security detail began clearing the amputee ward of anyone who had not completed the clearance paperwork two days before. Once all the visitors, patients, and personnel were accounted for, bomb dogs did a sweep of the floor. Being the Southern woman that I am, I had the urge to tidy up or cook or something to make our guest feel like we prepared for him. But none of that would be happening in this tiny room. There was nothing I could do to make the room look more appealing. Despite our efforts to make the place feel like home, it was still a hospital room. IV poles, particleboard rolling tables, and pleather chairs surrounded Josh’s bed. When Josh’s dad, stepmother, and siblings came, our seating arrangement was the twins, Kelsi and Keeli, in the chair together; Patrick in Josh’s wheelchair; Kristie in the extra chair; me on the end of the bed; and Josh’s little brother, Mason, sitting in the floor of the corner closet with the door open. I hoped the president wouldn’t want to sit down. We would have to move people and furniture around like a game of Tetris just to get him to a surface he could sit on. I hated how claustrophobic the room always felt even without a ton of visitors. Josh was always wanting to add things to the walls, but that just made them feel like they were closing in. The small flat-screen TV and the random cork board that never had anything on it was enough for the white cinder blocks. I also wondered if the president would be bothered by the smell. No matter what I did, I couldn’t freshen the air in our room. The aseptic smell of foam hand sanitizer and hospital linens made our room smell like pill bottle cotton balls. I wondered if it clung to my own clothing like cigarette smoke.
Hours passed while we sat in Josh’s room and watched TV, occasionally poking our heads out the door hoping to conjure up a sign that our guest was near. Finally, we saw a fleet of black SUVs driving up to the hospital. I don’t know if it was part of the protocol to shut everyone’s door once the president was in the building, but Patrick’s fifth warning to get back in our room was probably a sign the president was on the way. Finally, there was a knock on the door. The liaison entered and informed us the president was in the next room. Then she asked us a rather interesting question—she said the president would like to know if there was anything we needed to discuss with him like issues or concerns. That had not crossed our minds; we were just excited to meet the president of the United States! “All right,” she said, “if there’s nothing you would like me to relay, then I will be back with the president.”
We heard another knock, and President Barack Obama entered. I realized I had not thought about how I would greet him, but I immediately decided on a hug when I saw him. He smiled and gave everyone else a hug, too. Looking around, he made note of Josh’s Auburn gear. Just the response Josh had hoped for. The president asked Josh where and when he was injured and asked about our level of care at Walter Reed. He asked if there was anything he could do for us, and we just shrugged our shoulders and thanked him for his time. He thanked Josh for his service and sacrifice.
As he began to exit, I anxiously and somewhat impulsively stopped him and said, “Mr. President, would you mind if we prayed for you?”
Pausing, he turned back toward me with a smile I will never forget and said, “I would love that.” We gathered around J
osh’s bed and joined hands. With Josh on my left and President Obama on my right, I prayed, “Dear God, we thank you for letting us live in a country where the commander-in-chief and the infantry soldier can join hands in prayer in the same room. We see amputees rolling into this hospital by the truckload every week, so we pray that You would have Your guiding hand over President Obama. He is human just like the rest of us, and he needs wisdom and knowledge over our situation in Afghanistan because we know the position he sits in is not an easy one. Please guide his decisions and surround him with people with wisdom. Thank you for this once-in-a-lifetime moment. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I received a pretty long and sincere hug followed by a smile and a thank-you from the president. He gripped my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and told me I was a special woman. He hugged and thanked the rest of people in the room for the time we spent with him. He gave a final goodbye and went on to see the next patient. The man leading our country was going to continue walking down the hall, patient after patient, meeting them where they were, where no one wants to be—in a hospital built for soldiers to recover from fighting a war.
For the rest of the day, I kept thinking about the moment I had just experienced. My faith had grown during this time, and the Lord had shown me some crazy things through Josh’s recovery. I had interceded countless times on Josh’s behalf since we had been there. That meeting with the president felt like I was finally coming off the bench in my own life. Just meeting the president would have been awesome enough by itself, but exchanging pleasantries and engaging in small talk provided no opportunity for real connection. I took a shot at humanizing an extremely powerful person by passing on a blessing. Views, politics, and opinions fall to the floor when the highest and the lowest humble themselves to a great God. Of all the impressions we could have made, I wanted President Obama to feel loved and seen as a human being. I kept thinking about the second half of John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” That verse had a whole new meaning after meeting President Obama. I felt like I had permission to pursue life to the full. Up until that point, nothing at Walter Reed had been about me. My needs, talents, and ideas really had no place there. But that day, I chose to pursue an opportunity because of something that was on my heart. The thought of smiling on the sidelines of my life while Josh was front and center filled me with a fear of regret, a fear that overtook my intimidation and natural tendency to sit back and observe. I liked the idea of being a leader in this space, something I thought was only available for Josh. He, the doctors, the therapists, and the Army decided everything that I did. I complied willingly because it was necessary for Josh’s healing, but I had almost forgotten that I even had ambitions of my own. I was not a victim of a situation, but rather someone who jumps on opportunities that make a difference. Maybe this place hadn’t completely suppressed me after all.
We had a following of fifteen thousand people on social media. Our visit with President Obama caused a huge stir of attention, but I think we continued to grow because people enjoyed watching Josh get better. People were inspired by Josh, which helped Josh keep going. Confident in his progress, Josh encouraged me to rejoin my club team at Nationals in Columbus, Ohio. I couldn’t believe we were even discussing me leaving him overnight, but I was completely confident in my mother-in-law, and Josh was inching out of the “sickness” stage of recovery. It’s difficult to take care of a patient who is both hurt and sick. I didn’t realize sickness would be part of this process. Managing pain and doing physical therapy could always be interrupted by fever, nausea, or extreme fatigue, all signaling something wrong internally while we tried to regulate the external. The pain still ranged from everyday aches to phantom limb pain, but we had medications and therapy techniques we could use to get Josh some relief. There were no techniques for fevers or surprise vomiting other than to cool him off and clean him up. For about two weeks I had observed the sickness dwindle. If Josh felt better, he would be easier to take care of while I was gone.
The tournament was only five hours away, and it would definitely be my last opportunity to coach this team. My time with President Obama had reminded me of my individuality. While I was so thankful to be Josh’s caregiver, there was more to me than what I had to do every day, and pursuing the opportunity to coach would be another great reminder of life beyond those white cinder block walls. So, my parents drove to DC and then drove me to Columbus to surprise my players. We arrived at the convention center after the five-hour drive with only Shane and Mandy aware of my presence. I checked in to the convention center and walked down the long hallways to find the hall my team was playing in. I saw a couple of parents from my team and literally dove behind a huge potted plant. Sneaking and scurrying through the convention center, I finally saw a hiding spot near the court my girls were playing on. I made eye contact with Mandy, and she about-faced and yelled at the team to walk like ducks in a row. When they approached me, I jumped out and surprised them, which induced a lot of crying from players and parents. Maybe not the best thing to do right before warm-ups for Nationals, but I was just glad to be back in the gym again.
JOSH
Meeting President Obama was one of my life’s biggest honors. Regardless of party or policy, the presidential seat is the highest-ranking position among both civilians and military. Thus, it is not only my duty but my genuine honor to be in the presence of the sitting commander-in-chief, a situation that I never thought I would experience. As an enlisted guy in the infantry, I rarely had experience with officers higher than an O3 captain. For the top of the chain of command to be in my room, asking how I’m doing and hugging my family, meant so much to me. I couldn’t believe Paige spoke up and offered to pray for him before he left. I also saw a lot of consolation from President Obama when he accepted the offer. I love and respect the formality of our military, but it doesn’t offer many opportunities to see the human side of people who outrank you. I loved seeing the human side of our nation’s leader, and I was very thankful he was willing to share that side of him with a bunch of strangers who could have met him with animosity because I was wounded. In a way, it gave me greater affection for my small role in our nation’s military, because I never thought the highest and the lowest would be in the same room praying for the same thing.
By July 2012, I had tallied over thirty surgeries on my arms and legs. My left arm and hand were shaping up better than we thought. At first, the doctors wanted to amputate some fingers because my middle finger was almost completely amputated, and my ring finger wasn’t looking good, either. I did not want to talk at all about cutting off more body parts, even if they didn’t work like they used to. If you asked me, the two fingers looked switched because they were the same length.
The scar tissue healed nicely, thanks to my mom cleaning all the lacerations with a toothbrush for weeks. I didn’t have any mobility in my middle finger, and Paige always yelled at me for flipping people the bird when I was just trying to give a thumbs-up. My arms were never broken like we originally thought, but I had a pretty nasty gash on my right forearm that required a skin graft. The surgeries on my legs were mostly wound wash-outs and the slow closure of my amputation sites, which also included lots of skin grafts. Skin was shaved off my upper thighs during surgery and applied where needed. The donor sites bothered me more than the spots where they were applied. They felt like really bad sunburns that burned from even a slight breeze. Finally my legs were beginning to take shape, and I would hopefully stand on these stumps with prosthetic legs one day. As I looked down at the beginning of July, my left leg surgery site was successfully closed, but the right leg was going to require a skin flap, according to my new surgery team: the plastics. The entire time I had been at Walter Reed, the trauma surgery team had handled my procedures. This next operation could only be done by a team of plastic surgeons willing to do weird things to help me walk again. Apparently, the muscle, tissue, and skin on my left shoulder would provide the flap surface to be place
d at the end of my right leg. Part of my shoulder would now finish off my leg? Seriously? That would be a good party trick later on, I’m sure. Two truths and a lie. One: I’ve met the president. Two: I’m scared of snakes. Three: I do my best walking on my shoulder. Despite our ever-growing list of jokes, this surgery was actually quite serious. It meant spending the Fourth of July in the ICU to monitor blood flow and connectivity of the flap. There was no plan B if my body rejected the flap, but if it worked, it would become a big milestone in my recovery journey. A final procedure to close my leg’s wound site meant the surgeries and procedures should dwindle and weight bearing was just around the corner. Following the flap surgery, I was advancing quickly in physical therapy. It seemed like I was mastering things in a matter of days. I needed to make more time in my day to do longer PT sessions, so I tried to assess my schedule and see what appointments I might be able to cut. I got a few things off my schedule, but I could not figure out how I was going to get out of going to TBI clinic. By default, every amputee gets diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury; pretty much all of us land on our heads when we get injured. I couldn’t really prove I didn’t have one at first, because the drugs messed me up. Now that I was tapering off my IV pain meds, I was passing all the cognition tests. After every session I would ask if I could be cleared to stop going, but they refused because they thought it was too soon. I was convinced I didn’t have a TBI until we went to an authentic Mexican restaurant near the hospital. It was so authentic that our waiter couldn’t speak English. We weren’t worried about it, because I could order for us. I knew conversational Spanish from language school training in the Q Course. I even communicated to the Spanish speakers in my platoon during firefights. But when it was time to order, I could not remember a single word. Paige thought I was joking around, but I couldn’t even remember how to say Hola. I went back to TBI clinic and said I had found my first and only symptom: I had lost a whole language.