by R. J. Belle
David was my first interview and it was eye opening. The fact that he has gone through the horrors of war, fallen down and gotten back up stronger than before is not only a testament to his mental strength but also to the organization that helped him overcome the darkest days following his return home. Although he maintained a tough exterior while sharing his story with me, I could feel the pain behind much of what he recounted. I believe David will continue to do well and will most likely go on to accomplish his dream of helping to further our understanding of the impact of Traumatic Brian Injuries and how to properly treat them.
CHAPTER 10
The Mechanic
Wrenching on cars, surfing and golfing all with one arm; Michael “Mike” Spivey will not only tell you it’s possible, but he will also show you it’s possible to excel in all of those areas – with one arm. With his kind eyes and engaging personality, my interview with Mike felt more like catching up with an old friend and for hours I got lost in his story. After the first few minutes together, it was apparent to me that his attitude towards life and living plays a major role in his ability to move forward, despite his injuries.
Mike was born at Camp Lejeune and grew up in Texas. Joining the Marine Corps wasn’t part of his initial plan. He moved out of his parents’ house when he was seventeen. He worked in various industries and settled in at a retail establishment where he remained for three years. He started college and picked up another job to help pay for tuition. Money got tight, and there were rumors of his company closing, so he took a semester off. His journey to the Marine Corps started at that point.
In Mike’s Words
“I started talking to family members about joining the military. Most of my family had served at least four years in the service. The added benefit of having college paid for if I served for four years was tempting, but it took me about six months and many recruiter office drive-bys before I made a final decision. I had done a lot of research and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a combat engineer because 1- you get to play with explosives and 2- if you aren’t playing with explosives, you’re building stuff. Because I had a GED and only a little bit of college, the recruiter said I would have to pass the ASVAB before I could request that job. I think he was skeptical of my abilities. I went down and took the test and got one of the highest scores, so the recruiter said I could be whatever I wanted to be. I wanted to be a combat engineer. The recruiter tried to sway me in different directions but they all sounded like office jobs, and I don’t like paper. I like to be outside; I like manual labor.
I went in as a combat engineer. The first two years I was on an MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) going a couple of places helping to build schools, bridges and clinics in Southeast Asia. I deployed to Iraq in 2007; it wasn’t that bad. We took a couple of pop shots here and there. My truck hit an IED, but by that time we had up-armored vehicles. It didn’t do much damage, so we just kept pushing. I came back from Iraq and transferred to Camp Pendleton and stayed around there for about nine months then I deployed to Afghanistan with the 3/5. I made it about three months. Like I said – I got to play with explosives; the bad side to that coin is that I walked around with a metal detector searching for them.
At first we were shadowing the guys from the previous unit that we were replacing, trying to learn from them. Originally the unit I was with wanted to run patrols like they had in Iraq, but it didn’t take them long to realize that wasn’t going to work. We took contact the first day out. After the first week, I made the comment that I just wanted to make it out of there alive and with these guys I probably wouldn’t make it to my thirtieth birthday. Eventually, we started figuring things out. Things were going well, and my NAVman and I were able to pick out the IEDs and ambushes before they could get us.
On December 10, three days before my birthday and after about three months – I missed one. It hit my NAV man too; he was directly on top of it. He lost both knees and his elbow. He was always right over my shoulder; we were right next to each other. We joked if one of us got hit the other would too because we were right on top of each other. And that’s how it happened.
I didn’t lose my hand at first; the blast had just severed the radial nerve from the elbow to the wrist and about six inches of the medial nerve. The blast broke the radial bone in multiple places and blew off a finger and several knuckles and I had burns on what was left. I also took a bunch of shrapnel to my lower back and both legs. It took two baseball-sized chunks out of my back on either side of my spine, and they had to fuse a couple vertebrae together. My legs were peppered with shrapnel – some so deep they resembled holes in a bowling ball almost costing me my left leg. My ears were shot; my hearing was completely gone in one and about forty percent gone in the other. I ended up in Germany for my birthday. It was a hard time. They picked us up in a chopper and took us to a base in Afghanistan. While I was on the bird, they gave me pain meds and I was kind of in and out. I’d wake up and then they would knock me out again to wash out my wounds. When I arrived in Germany, I was totally disoriented. My memories were of limping to the bird, to going into an operating room in Afghanistan and then waking up in Germany. I was freaking out because they wouldn’t tell me anything about McCloud, my NAV man. When I got hit, they kept him behind me. They wouldn’t even let me turn around to see how he was. They said he was talking and said something to me but with my hearing being gone I guess I didn’t hear him. They wouldn’t tell me if he was okay or alive. Then right before midnight on my birthday, McCloud came out of the OR and the nurses took me around the corner to another wing to see him.
It all happened fast. The next morning they moved me from Germany to Bethesda and then here to San Diego on the fifteenth. So I was hit on the tenth and was in San Diego by the fifteenth. Mainly because they were trying to save my arm, and all the hand specialists are here. McCloud stayed in Bethesda for a few months before he made it over here, because he had leg trauma doctors there. When I got here the doctors were already on Christmas leave, so for the first two weeks I had wash-outs every day in the OR to prevent infection. Soon they stopped taking me to the OR and started doing the wash-outs in my room which allowed me to actually eat. I had lost so much weight from being over there and being prepped to go to the OR. When they weighed me on the sixteenth I was about one hundred and ten pounds.
The doctors returned from Christmas holiday, and I could tell by the look on my doctor’s face that it wasn’t going to be good news. He started talking in doctor jargon, and I interrupted him and asked if I would ever be able to make a fist and he said probably not. I immediately told him to cut it off, give me a prosthetic, something I can work with. I’ve known people with amputations and even have a family member that had lost an arm, so I knew it was possible to go on and have a productive life even without a hand. After saying that I had to see shrinks and talk to other guys that had lost limbs, they made me watch some video. Instead I watched 127 Hours. The guy in it was still rock-climbing even with a prosthetic.
I did talk to guys in my situation; one guy had a limb salvage and the other was an amputee. The limb salvage guy was still dealing with surgeries and stuff four years and fifty surgeries later and could transfer a pen from one hand to another – not much more. I didn’t want to go through that many surgeries. The day after talking to the shrink and the amputee, who had lost an arm and a leg, I told the doctor to cut it off. My mom didn’t want me to cut it off, but what’s the point of saving it if it doesn’t do anything. I wanted to get back to living life. So the first of the year came, and we did it.
I was living in the barracks at the time learning how to use my prosthetic, but the barracks isn’t like real life. I had a small room that was mine but still ate at the chow hall and someone would come clean for me – I realized that I wasn’t going to learn how to be independent that way. I was able to move into Freedom Station and that made a big difference in my recovery. Living at Freedom Station I had my own place with a kitchen. I had to learn how to cl
ean house and make food with my prosthetic. Within three weeks of having my prosthetic and living at Freedom Station, I was showing my therapist how to do things instead of being taught. I also picked up some tricks from other amputees during outings that we attended together. Having the outside experience of learning how to use your prosthetic is invaluable.
I don’t use my prosthetic for a lot of things that I do. I can’t surf with it because the strap makes my arm go numb, and I can’t lift more than thirty or so pounds with it. The past few years they have started working with a robotic arm, and I think that works better for some things. The technology has improved but it’s not quite there yet where one arm can work for everything. It takes a lot of work to learn how to use any of them so that the benefit outweighs the trouble. At the end of the day, using my prosthetic or not using the prosthetic depends on what I am doing. It works well for some things, but for other things it’s easier to just not to use it. Trying to hold a piece of metal and using a drill press is a challenge without the prosthetic. Golfing with the prosthetic didn’t work out that great so I asked one of the golf academy coaches to teach me how to swing one-handed – I got lucky because one of the coaches ended up in a cast and had had to teach himself how to play one-handed.
My buddy Derek and I would play golf a lot, we would get asked what handicap we were and would immediately answer that we were missing an arm. You could always see the face of whoever asked the question go white at first – it was actually a good icebreaker. We got a lot of great laughs out of it. Being around an amputee makes a lot of people uncomfortable. We have all this political correctness stuff to deal with and people are scared to ask us about it. It wasn’t that long ago that your life was just kind of over if you were an amputee, and I don’t think society has caught up with the times like the amputee or injured community has.
When the Vietnam guys came back, they started implementing programs so injured guys could still live a full life. It’s the Vietnam guys who really began to pave the way for programs to be put in place for injured guys. For our group of veterans the stigmatism of someone with a disability isn’t something that nobody wants to talk about – it’s not so hush-hush. Now we just try to figure out how to do the same things we used to do – the same things people without missing limbs can do. It’s not that we can’t do it – it’s just that we have to figure out a modified way to do it. Everything we do is just a little bit harder. I have to think about things now before I do them, but I can still do things. If I’m carrying groceries in from my truck, I might have to make two trips instead of getting it all in one trip, but I can still carry my groceries into the house.
Being at Freedom Station has given me a lot of opportunities. I’ve learned how to network and am able to be around people from many different industries. I have learned how to live independently again while forming friendships with the other guys there. Being there helped me to feel more comfortable around people. By slowly being introduced to golf events and things like that where I was around different people, it helped me find my comfort zone and adapt to being looked at differently out in the real world. It gave me time to figure out what my next step was. While I was there, I started looking for a house to buy. That took a little longer than expected because I wanted a place with some space. Sandy helped me choose a realtor that understood my unique needs, and she made sure I didn’t get taken advantage of. I had never bought a house before and there was a lot to learn during the process.
People will ask you basic questions all the time when you’re out there. After awhile, you can tell where the conversation’s heading and you kind of just roll with it and wait for the person to go through a ‘chapter’ to get to the question they want to ask you. In a roundabout way, Freedom Station helped me transition to the real word. Talking about my story and some of the guilt I have was really hard for me to do. I could never fully tell the story. But being out around civilians, I have gotten to the point where I can tell it. I can get past it, and I don’t know if I could have or would have gone out and done that on my own. In a way, it was like group therapy without really being in a group therapy session.
There are a lot of opportunities through connections at Freedom Station to do internships or go to school. I got in trouble for golfing too much while I was supposed to be recovering and planning for the future. But I’ve met so many people while golfing and been offered more jobs than I can count. I wasn’t sure at that time what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’. I was doing my own thing surfing, golfing and working on cars – that was my rehabilitation. After that, I think they understood that I wasn’t ready to commit to something until I knew the direction I wanted to go in. I was a combat engineer, that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I knew how to do, but it’s kind of hard to do that with one arm.”
These days Mike is showing his Roadster at car shows and just picked up a new project. He also spends a great deal of time fixing up his new house. With the help of friends and family, he is completely remodeling it to make it a place where he can do everything without having to take two trips.
He fell in love with snowboarding and is currently training for the Paralympics. Mike still spends time at Freedom Station and with the friends he made while living there. Sandy continues to be somewhat of a surrogate mother, and Mike is still trying to decide what he wants to be when he grows up. I suspect he is living his dream already, and I have little doubt that we will see his name pop up in the world of classic car restoration as well as snowboarding in the very near future.
CHAPTER 11
The Student
Povas Miknaitis has the face of an angel, but you can tell there is a virulent story hiding behind his beautiful smile and charismatic personality. Born and raised in Elmhurst, Illinois, where his parents still live in his childhood home, he is the youngest of five siblings. He admits to getting in trouble often as a child and attributes that to his parents’ overly strict house rules. Although his parents were tough on him, he speaks of his mother fondly recalling her cooking every single meal every day of his childhood. Povas learned to cook from his mom, and his knack for fixing things came from his father who was a microchip engineer for Motorola during Povas’ youth.
Povas was drawn to serve on multiple levels. With his two older brothers in the Marine Corps, he felt the pull to follow in their footsteps. The events of 9/11 turned that desire into an obligation to serve his country. Coming from a strong Christian background, he also believed it was his duty to join. He believed that if he didn’t return that was okay because he knew where he was going if he were to die, and it would therefore allow other young men a chance at life and getting their lives together.
Povas joined the Marine Corps on a reconnaissance contract in 2006. Before going in, he asked his brothers for advice on how to get through the rigors of boot camp. They advised him to lay low and keep himself out of the spotlight. Povas did the opposite. His brothers added to that by sending him letters while in boot camp addressed to ‘Sergeant Miknaitis’. With his drill instructor handing out the mail, that didn’t go over well; it kept him in the spotlight.
After boot camp and infantry school, Povas’ excellence and skills allowed him the opportunity to take the indoc for a spot in a Scout Sniper Platoon. He passed the indoc and immediately began training to be a Scout Sniper in Twenty-nine Palms, California. He made his first deployment to Iraq in 2008 operating within the scout sniper community of 3rd BN 4th Marines Scout Sniper Platoon and, after more training and Scout Sniper School in Hawaii, then deployed to Afghanistan in October 2009.
The violence and trauma of his story are still vivid and painful. Often the reader will notice his story slips from past to present tense at various places as he relives it. I’ve left these shifts largely unedited allowing the reader to relive it with him.
In Povas’ Words
“October 2009 we were replacing a unit that had gotten totally jacked up by the Taliban. They had taken so many casualties that they wouldn’
t leave friendly lines. You are supposed to take patrols out daily and patrol the surrounding area. They would not leave the area immediately surrounding the FOB, basically just patrolling the wall. They couldn’t afford to lose anybody else. My unit was taking over in Nowzad in Helmand Province; it was entirely different than I thought a war zone would be. The U.S. had dropped leaflets on Nowzad that said to get out, and that if anyone was still there when we came in they would be assumed to be with the insurgency. The whole town was left abandoned and the only people that remained were insurgents. They ended up booby-trapping the entire city; they had put IED’s everywhere. We knew they had. They put so many IED’s that they didn’t even remember where they all were; the insurgents were getting blown up by their own IED’s almost every day. They would come in at night and place bombs – IEDs – all around. Our FOB only inhabited a small area of the city of Nowzad.
While we were busy patrolling and looking for IED’s, the insurgency – the Taliban – was out placing IED’s and setting ambushes. While performing our change over with the former occupying unit; it was crazy because you would be on one side of a street and wouldn’t take fire, but the second you crossed to the other side of the road you were going to hit an elaborate ambush. The Taliban were very coordinated with their attacks.
Afghanistan was a different animal; it was Taliban we were fighting. It was obvious they had been doing this for years; that was how they grew up. Kids were trained by their dads; it was passed from generation to generation; it was their culture.”