Back from vacation

I am back from my fishing trip to the boundary waters in Minnesota. I went with my Father and Grandfather and we had a great time. We caught about 6 keepers each day but a lot more little ones. It was a once in a lifetime experience but when I go again it will be in a motor boat NOT in a canoe. It was very difficult not only rowing for 5 days but then carrying the canoe and all the gear over hills for a half a mile. The coolest thing about it all was being totally alone. There was no one around and it was so quiet. The only bad thing about that is you don't have cell phone coverage or any way to get a hold of anyone. So if you happen to get hurt you just have to wait until they come back to pick you up. I had a great time and can't wait till the next fishing trip. I get to pick where to go but that one is TBD...

Silence

I won't be typing for a couple of days but when I do start again I will be going VERY deep...

There's no place like home

After I found out I was going to be sent to Fort Bragg I was extremely upset. I could not believe it. After I had gone through all the crap, they had the nerve to take me away from my family again. It was so wrong to send me away. I needed to be home with my family to heal. It's very hard to get better when you are drugged and no one cares if you live or die. I am not exaggerating when I say that not ONE military personnel cared enough to even question where I was. Something that's even worse is when I contacted Missouri’s "Great" senator; his office took the fax and said they would get back to me that week. Guess what? No calls, not even a sorry letter. From that point on for 6 months I was led to believe that I would go home daily and then forgotten all together. I was lost in the paperwork and shuffled under the desk, not only did they forget they lost ALL my medical documents from when I got hurt. All I needed was some Ruby Red Slippers so I could go home.

ET Phone Home

When I arrived at Fort Sam Houston I had my 3^rd surgery. After the surgery I woke in a “bubble”. They had special rooms for those wounded by explosives sealed off from the regular hospital. Everything was thrown away after it was used; everyone wore a suit protecting them. After seeing all this I wondered “where is my protection?” They were afraid of what I was exposed to so before they would take it off they had sent samples of blood to get checked out. I felt like I was ET, I was wounded, in a bubble and everyone around me looked like a scientist that wanted to poke and prod me.
I really try to make life the best that it can be. It is really hard to when you don’t have clothes on. Remember the whole no clothes thing? Just to let you know I didn’t get any clothes for fourteen days. By the way that was not a miss-type 14 days. However on the 15^th day I was given a pair of red shorts… That is all. When my parents arrived they were allowed to take me out of the bubble and take me to the PX. There they have clothes and stuff. Brook Army Medical Center provided me a $500 Gift Card to the PX as part of a program that allows wounded troops to get clothing because they most likely lost everything like me. If you don’t know clothes are expensive at the PX so I didn’t get much, but I was so happy because I was civilized again.

WMD?

I traveled another 16 hours or so by the most comfortable C-5 plane ever and I arrived at Ft. Andrews AFB. I was tired as you could probably imagine so when I got there I was ready to sleep. When we landed we were greeted by lots of civilians who wanted to thank us but in the process slowed down the speed on which I got to go to sleep. I wasn’t to upset because these were nice and just wanted to show their support and say thank you. This is something that doesn’t happen that often. I have talked to soldiers who have been back for months and I was the first one to say “thanks for your service to our country”. For everything we have all been through it is important to say thanks to those who serve. If they weren’t out there doing the tough stuff we would be short a lot more than the WTC. If the U.S. had never stood up against terrorism they would still be bombing us. If you think it was bad in ’01 what if they hit us with a nuke or a dirty bomb? The media has blasted Bush for going into Iraq for no reason but I have seen WMD all over that country. They hid everything under the sand. We found rockets and facilities that were used to make the chemicals in such weapons all buried. One of the buildings we raided had literally tons of Atropine. If you don’t know it is used as a nerve agent antidote by U.S. soldiers. We also found chemical protective masks. Don’t be alarmed though the media says that there isn’t anything there. I would start planning your next vacation there right away before all the flights on Iraqistani-air are filled up. Good luck and try to avoid the mortars water balloons.

Truth

On the second to last day I was in Germany the nurse told me I had to try walking with crutches. “NO” was the only thing I said. She insisted however and I had to. The reason this was a bad idea I thought was any time I even lowered my foot off the 3 pillows that were stacked on my bed, it hurt like crazy. She said it would help me not loose (as much) muscle in my leg. I didn’t care why they wanted me to do it, I just knew it hurt. Any way after the “great” journey down the hall they told me I would be leaving for the United States in the morning, also on the TV I saw that US soldiers had just killed Saddam’s sons. This was the best news so far. This was awesome because the only things I had heard on the news or from family while I was there was bad. Usually it was about how many soldiers were killed or how many insurgents we killed. Never was about anything good like how we helped the people by providing them with salt to clean there water with their filtration system. What about the time we rebuilt two schools that were destroyed by the enemy? Oh and by the way this was just in the small town my team was in, I haven’t even mentioned what went on in the rest of the country. I guess it just doesn’t make as good of a pay check for those reporters to report the “good truth”. I guess one way to look at it though is they did report the truth. Didn’t they?

A very nice glass farm

I had my 2^nd surgery when I arrived in Germany and waking up after surgery sure was something. It was a good thing that I woke up but the down side was I felt horrible pain! When I was hit with the shrapnel earlier it had really hurt but at that time I had adrenaline pumping so the pain wasn’t so bad. However when I woke up after surgery I was in so much pain I screamed for an hour because the medicine they gave me wasn’t working. Apparently when they gave me the drugs to wake up from the anesthetic they gave me way to much so it not only woke me up, it took all the working pain meds out. I was mad and they could tell. I was yelling and screaming bloody murder. They gave me morphine but instead of injecting it in the IV they put it in my arm muscle and it only works right in that area. It felt like it was forever before the pain got a little better.

It’s a long, difficult and stressful time going through the process of changing hospitals, rooms, dressings, and other things. They had to change my IV everyday because there was such a risk of I don’t know what so I was constantly getting stuck with needles in my arms and hands. Also they stabbed me in the stomach every morning with a syringe they said was a stool softener, yeah right they just love to torture innocent wounded soldiers by stabbing them with whatever they can get their hands on. Oh they also love to wake you up just when you get to sleep so they can take you vitals. Aren’t you supposed to rest and heal in a hospital? I mean I got less sleep after I got hurt than I did in Iraq and they mortared us EVERY night. They’re at least somewhat decent in all the abuse they dished out. I mean they took a break now and then during the day so we could sleep. Not the nurses though; they are slow to get your pain medicine, won’t leave you alone to rest and yell at you when you say “You are nothing but blood sucking leaches that drain every ounce of life from me so I can’t do anything to you, just because you were dropped when you were a baby don’t mean you can take it out on me”. That really pissed them off but I was in a lot of pain and after everything I had been through they could have at least shown some courtesy.

While I was there a wounded soldier was brought into my room. His team was ambushed and they were hit by a RPG. There Hummer was armored but the rocket went through the door and exploded killing 4 and taking a huge chunk of his leg along with it. When he got there the doctors just had had it wrapped with a little gauze it wasn’t bleeding much because there wasn’t much there. The part of leg that was still attached was only hanging on by a tendon or two. He was in a lot of pain and there was nothing I could do. I tried to talk to him but the only thing that came out of my mouth was “I’m so sorry” why did this have to happen? Don’t get me wrong I agree that we should have taken Saddam out of power. But did we really need to send this many troops? All this could’ve easily been solved with a couple of high powered nuclear bombs. Iraq would’ve made a very nice glass farm or maybe a parking lot for a huge Wal-Mart. I don’t disagree with the war it just could have been handled a lot less painfully (for us).

Travelling...

I finally got to call home late that evening after I had some food and kind of woke up. So I called my Dad. Since I had been over there he always had his phone on so if I got a chance to call he would be available. When he answered I told him what happened and then he 3-wayed my mom. He thought it would be better for her to hear it from me instead of a doctor calling that wouldn’t give her any information. When I talked to her she was very upset. I tried to assure her that I was fine and going to be coming home soon because of the injuries. I really didn’t explain them at the time because I didn’t want her to worry anymore than she already was. As you can probably imagine everyone was both happy that I was alive and sad that I had been hurt. No one wants anything to happen to you but in war there are always casualties. This was something I knew long before going over there.
Early the next morning I was put on a C-130 and flown to Kuwait City, Kuwait. When I arrived the Air Force Pilot said they were switching me to a C-5 and then flying me to Germany. The whole switching process took about 10 hours all together. Now this normally wouldn’t be that big of deal because the military is all about waiting so I was definitely used to that. But if you remember, they stripped me of all my clothes, gave me a wool blanket as cover, it was hot and it wasn’t comfortable. I am a dreamer, and out of all the places I dreamed of going none of them included me being butt naked under an itchy blanket and being carried around like some king on a throne. Just in case you were wandering you don’t get this added bonus from Expedia.
The flights were horrible and if you have never ridden in these planes you will now know why people want to jump out of them. First of all when you are Medi-Vac’d (Medically Evacuated) you are put on a special stretcher that (is very uncomfortable) can be hung in the center of the plane. They are stacked side by side, four rows up and depending on the plane about eight rows long. In order to do this you are literally inches from the person above you so it is almost impossible to get out. So you can imagine how hard it is if you need to go to the bathroom. What’s that you said you can’t imagine? Ok I’ll explain it to you. The Nurses have these special boxes (that oddly resemble Chinese take-out boxes) they unfold and become a (very hard to use lying down) bed pan box. Now since the time I got hurt to the time on the plane I had been given an IV and a lot of fluids. If you don’t know in Iraq it is about 130°F and it is a very dry heat so you sweat 95% of all the water you take in and rarely have to visit the bathroom. In the plane however you retain all water because of the cold and as a natural occurrence you have to GO. The second thing is the planes don’t have insulation so you hear everything and it is freezing. If that doesn’t sound bad you just wait.

Clean up on aisle four

When I arrived at the Field hospital I finally was given a pain killer that took away some of the pain. I was the first casualty they had for the day so they got to me right away. First thing they did was take me to get x-rays to see where the shrapnel was in my foot. Also they wanted to see what the damaged looked like on the inside. It wasn’t good even I could tell that! I could tell it was bad when I saw that all the bones had a dark jagged line through them.
Now all this time they had a bandage on my foot but they didn’t have one on my thigh because it wasn’t bleeding much while I was lying down. However to get from the stretcher they brought me in on to the x-ray table I had to stand like a flamingo. When I did that it started flowing again and it was getting everywhere all over the floor and the x-ray table. Now I wasn’t worried about my belongings (or lack there of) but their multi-million dollar machine didn’t seem like it was bought to be a gauze pad. After I received a look like I just busted their laptop I apologized (a lot). Come on guys it wasn’t my fault, blame the dang French terrorist.
Surgery took them a while and the one thing I remembered before the surgery was when they gave me the anesthetic; you know when they ask you to count backwards from 100 to 0. I don’t know about you but I try to compete and have fun with everything I do, and that my friend was a challenge. So before they gave me the anesthetic I asked them “how far do people usually get before they black out” and the Doc said “about 96-94 somewhere around there” so I replied “when I wake up tell me how far I got.” I finally awoke from the procedure at about 10pm and I was hungry because I couldn’t eat anything before the surgery and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. When I asked for the food they sent the Doc in to make sure I was doing ok. The first thing he said was “you are definitely a fighter, you made it all the way to 87 I was shocked. I almost gave you another dose ‘cause I thought it didn’t work.”

Good Charlotte

Now I have to tell you even though I was hurt and hurt bad I still had my awesome sense of humor. My team Sgt. who I called “Big Guns” was there with me from the moment I got hit to the aid station before they sent me south to the combat hospital. He was trying to keep me from going into shock by telling me jokes and keeping me laughing. After he bandaged me up he said “Pete” (that is what my team called me) “guess what… now you get a Purple Heart!” By the way that was the only medal I didn’t want because it requires something like this to happen.
All this time he had to keep pressure on my foot to slow the bleeding down which is very painful. I kept telling him “Stop pushin’ on it that really isn’t helping the pain” he would just grin and say “it’s to stop the bleeding Pete I can’t” I said “fine let me bleed then it hurts.” By the time we got to the aid station the bed of the Hummer was filled with blood. When they pulled me out they had to open the tailgate and when they did it just poured out. I thought for sure I was done for I had never seen so much blood in my life.
This is the part that I don’t understand the nurses cut all of my clothes off and put a blanket over me. They said it was to make sure that I wasn’t hurt anywhere else and so they could easily get to the wounds. Yeah right I thought as I lay there in front everybody butt naked with a scratchy wool military blanket over me. Anyway after they stopped the bleeding they sent a Chaplin in to see me. He said “is there anything you would like?” after a second I said “yeah. Where is my CD player?” he looked at me kind of weird and I’m sure he thought I was nuts! But I was concerned because I had my Captain’s brand new Good Charlotte CD in it that I was listening to and it was in my cargo pocket of my uniform. Now you are probably wandering what that has to do with anything. My leg was hit right above the cargo pocket and I thought that it went through the CD player. I wasn’t really worried about the massive holes in me at this time because I was at the aid station but if that CD was broken I was toast. Everything was ok with it and with me for the time being.
Now they had to send me to the field hospital so they could get the shrapnel out of me. They couldn’t wait that long because their biggest concern was that Depleted Uranium was used in almost every bomb over there and if that was in me I had a bigger problem than bleeding to death. The hospital was about 35km away and it took about 45-50 minutes to drive there. So I got to fly in a Black Hawk! The coolest part about this was my whole 6 5 man team got to load me into the helicopter. It may sound dumb but this was a very sad time for me because this was like I was being forced away from my family. This was the first time we were separated in six months. It was already tough for me leaving home to go to basic training, AIT, and then war. Now I was doing that all over again. None of this hit me at the time…

Just a truck on the side of the road

For starters I will tell you a little about what happened to me and then we will go from there. I was wounded during combat in Iraq on July 14 2003. We were ambushed from the side of the road by Insurgents. They had set up an I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Device) near a truck that looked like it had broken down. Like most vehicles there this was not uncommon however when our vehicle approached they attacked, detonating the I.E.D., shrapnel tore through the HUMVEE like rocks falling through a wet paper towel. I was hit by the burning hot metal in two locations the first my right thigh and second my left foot. It didn’t do much but a small flesh wound through the muscle tissue in my thigh. This was obsolete when looking at blood pouring from my boot. It was a massive hole the size of a quarter and it went through my foot like a drill. Starting at the middle of the arch going all the way across. The nerve was destroyed, the artery was severed and I was loosing a lot of blood. I started my timer on my watch after I realized what happened. I wanted to make sure that if I passed out the doctors would know when it happened and how long I had been bleeding. Forty four minutes to be exact. Now I have to say that I am not a doctor in any way, but when any one bleeds from an artery for that long you shouldn’t still be breathing. In my case however I was! Now I am not saying it wasn’t tough being hurt, but the things that followed were VERY trying on anyone…

WARNING: This is not a test

I just wanted to let every one know that I am going to be using my blog as a “Therapy dumping ground” for all my war memories so I can hopefully unburden myself and have a lighter load (heart, mind, and soul). I will be writing ALL my memories and thoughts of Operation Iraqi Freedom. So be WARNED there will be some VERY GRAPHIC posts, if this bothers you, you may need to choose now to discontinue reading my blog its up to you. There will be good memories and bad but they need to be out here instead of cooped up in me. So get ready because here they come…

My little girl

This is her and now you can see that she is adorable! If I may say so myself. This was taken on the way back from Grandma's house, she always wants to go there I think it is possibly the fact that Grandma gives her treats and dessert before she finishes dinner. Grandma says in her defense "that is what Grandmas are for". I absolutely love her she is always surprising us with how smart she is and keeping us on our toes with constantly coloring on things. I guess its what I get in return for being a "Terror" when I was little. One time I didn't stop touching the fire poker my dad smacked my hand and told me "no" then I went back and did it again this time while looking right at him, he obviously didn't find it amusing as he smacked me again this time saying "No" a little louder. Well to make a long story short I still did it and received numerous swats. I finally quit when I joined the army but in my mind and heart I still long to touch the fire poker. So that is how devious I was. Hannah isn't even close to how bad I was; she is a perfect little girl even when she is bad. She is now 4 and is continuing to grow she loves to help with EVERYTHING even when you don't want her to. She always tells me when the stop lights are green and she says "its green... GO DAD GO... GO GO GO GO" the first time she did it I laughed and I know that is why she continues to. She follows after everything I do because she wants to be like me. I have to watch a lot of what I do because she watches so close. I basically can't do anything bad in front of her because she will do the same and I don't want her calling all dogs that bark "stupid dog". We heard her one time after she dropped something say "Crap... not again" so now I watch where I say that. I hope you enjoyed me talking about her 'cause I sure did.

noX

Missouri: Show me state?

Well all I have to say is "SHOW ME" Better roads. We were traveling back from MN yesterday on I-35 and Dang those roads are bad. Every 10 feet bump and pot holes are everywhere. I would think that one of the only Major Highways to go north through our state could be maybe just a little better. Of course I have to say my daughter thinks it is fun bouncing every second but my car nor I feel the same way. So MODot what are you going to do about it. I think for one thing we don't need a brand "spanking" new welcome center at the entrance of the state 'cause no one is coming here Duh... our roads SUCK. I also want to add that the sign that you see when you come across the border is LAME. Seriously I've seen more enthusiasm drawn in the stall on a bathroom wall. Come on at least put a picture on it or something. I challenge MO leaders to step up to the plate and do something "Show Me" how good it can be. Good luck causing traffic to back up for weeks fixing the roads.

noX

I want to go on a vacation.

I travel a lot but really don't go on vacation. I would sometime like to just go somewhere for fun, not to visit family (although thats ok) but to get away from life just for a little while. I think everyone needs a break now and then. I will be travelling again in a couple days maybe I can act like I am on vacation even though I am just going home. Oh well.

noX

ainmosnI <------

When I stay up late at night, although I am in bed.
All I do is write write write, When I don't take my meds.
I have the toughest time, focusing on sleeping.
Calming down my mind, it's so hard to close my eye's and time is really creeping.

Don't know what else to do, is thinking causing me these issues.
I'm so tired I feel like poo, if I can't get off to snooze-----land.
I really need to go to sleep, I really need some shut-eye.
I have been up counting sheep, this is true I won't lie.

noX

Mowing

I just mowed the front lawn and boy it was tall. It has growing since "Spring" started and this is the 1st time this year. I have to say though it wasn't as tough this time for some reason beyond my knowledge the mower started instantly. I know it was a miracle because it doesn't start instantly after just a week let alone half a year. I am glad it did to 'cause it had to work flawless for me to ever use it again. I mean if it didn't work this time, we were going to have some words. Well that is all for now I will keep you posted. Until next time...

noX

Soccer

My little one wants to play soccer so bad. She doesn't know this yet but we got her one for her B-day. She will be so excited. I can't wait to play with her too.

April Fools

Google has had some pretty funny things these last April 1st's check it out by clicking Here or Here or Here or even Here.

Enjoy

Things that make me happy...

My God, my wife, my daughter, my friends, my families, my freedom, my church, my life in general. I can't complain because I really do have it all. Now don't get me wrong I have had my share of bad stuff too just like everyone but, I have a lot more positive things happen than bad. I just thought I would just put that out there.

noX

Trash Day

Today was trash day for us and I just wanted to mention that I love to get rid of the trash. It hasn't always been like this. When I was younger I would absolutely DREAD trash day mostly because I had to drag 3-4 Huge trash cans up our long driveway and usually they would get knocked over by the neighbors dogs after I left for school and the trash men wouldn't touch trash if it was out of the cans. Now is a very different story even though there are a lot more dogs in this neighborhood not one of them comes near MY trash. Now I can take my trash out the night before and don't have to worry about anything happing to my wonderful garbage. We are going to the YMCA today to work out. Till another thing happens.

noX