The Wounds Of War

New Population Of Wounded Veterans Emerges

(CBS) 
Another Iraq amputee, Edward Wade, had his right arm blown off by a roadside bomb. But his worst injury is one you can’t see: the bomb slammed shrapnel into his head, causing serious brain injuries.

Edward had been an expert skier, a parachute jumper, a born leader on whom others depended. Now he’s dependent on his wife, Sarah.

The Pentagon has identified almost 2,000 serious brain injuries so far — five times the number of amputees.

Because roadside bombs blast flying chunks of metal into heads and helmets with horrific force, recovery for brain victims can be agonizingly slow. After two years, Edward still struggles to talk.

Getting back on his feet has been an ordeal. "From lying down, I sat up. … Sat up where I could be moved into a wheelchair. … And from the wheelchair, I slowly got to where I could stand up straight and start walking for a little while," he recalls.

And as Edward continues to improve, he hopes that he can help other wounded vets.

He says he wants to help the other vets move forward. "No one expects anyone to come back from the accident that I had," he says.

Sarah Wade recalls her husband's father asking a neurosurgeon, "So what you’re saying is, he’s a vegetable? And the man nodded yes."

"And that 'vegetable' was skiing in Colorado recently," she says.

Doctors also worried that another vet from Iraq, Jessica Clements, might be a vegetable after a roadside bomb shot shrapnel into three lobes of her brain.

Jessica had been a model in Akron, Ohio, when she left high school to join the Army. As a staff sergeant in Iraq, she spent her days driving fuel trucks.

"I remember days driving down the road thinking to myself, 'Is today the day I’m gonna get hit?” Or, 'Am I gonna get shot today?' And just praying, 'OK, keep us safe. Let us get where we need to go without any casualties,'" she explains.

Her luck ran out on May 5, 2004, when a bomb exploded under her truck, shooting shards of shrapnel – large and small – into her brain.

"I still have shrapnel that’s remaining in my brain," she says. "This right portion here, you can see a little, the line … from where my skull was removed. The neurosurgeons physically cut the right portion of my skull and removed it."

The doctors removed a part of her skull because the swelling would have caused so much pressure that it could have killed her. They kept the right half of her skull off for four months, and for much of that time Jessica remained in a coma.

"They only gave me a two-percent chance of coming out of the coma and living, surviving," says Jessica. "Somebody has to be in that two percent, though. Why not me?"

She remembers enduring a "ridiculous amount" of pain along the way. "I hate to admit this, but there were days when I wondered to myself if I would have been better off had I not made it because I was in so much pain," she says.

Asked if she is still in pain, Jessica says, "Right now I have a shooting pain that’s going from right above my ear over to this side. It’s kind of going diagonally across. But it’s nothing. I’m used to it."

The constant pain, sporadic seizures, and bouts of anger still can’t compare with what she’s already endured: re-learning how to walk and talk and more.

"Basically I had to relearn how to think again and how to figure things out. I did have to learn how to walk again," she explains. "One day I remember I sat back in bed and I moved my leg about an inch trying to get it up on the bed. I had only moved about an inch. But I had never been so happy before. I was just excited. Okay, great. It moved an inch. So that motivated me. Okay, tomorrow, I’m gonna try for two inches, see if I can get it going again."

Jessica says believes she survived for a reason and that she now knows what that reason is. "I believe that it’s to help other people. So I decided to go into social work," she says.

"I would like to work for the VA or the DAV, the Disabled American Veterans association. So I can help other veterans. I’m still a soldier at heart," she says.

"I’m still a soldier. Even though I’m discharged from the Army—medically discharged, I’m always gonna be a soldier," Jessica says. "And I’m always gonna have that mentality. So if I can continue to help other soldiers, other veterans, that’s what I really want to do."

What message would she like to send to other wounded vets?

"I would love to tell them just to not give up," she says. "And, no matter how bad your pain is, remember that tomorrow is a new day. Just keep that in mind, and just please stay positive. And you will get through this."