New $50M Army Rehab Center Opens In Texas

(CBS/AP)  Of the roughly 20,000 soldiers injured since the start of the Iraq war, more than 500 have lost a limb — many of them in roadside bombings.

On Monday, a $50 million high-tech rehabilitation center opened, designed to serve the growing number of soldiers who return from war as amputees or with severe burns.

The 60,000-square-foot Center for the Intrepid will allow the Army to move its rehabilitation program out of the Brooke Army Medical Center and into a separate facility.

"The Center for the Intrepid is going to let us keep advancing what we've been doing," said Maj. Stewart Campbell, the officer-in-charge of rehabilitation at Brooke.

The facility tells soldiers "we're going to take care of you for as long as you need us, to get you back to where you want to be," he said.

"It's beyond overwhelming. There's never been a standard set like this," Marine Cpl. Aaron Mankin, undergoing treatment for a head injury, told CBS Radio's "Imus In The Morning" show.

At Brooke, amputees were being treated in offices and facilities carved out of the larger hospital. The new facility includes a rock-climbing wall, wave pool and a 360-degree virtual reality sphere to help soldiers recover their balance and other basic skills. It also includes two mansions with 21 rooms each to house patients and their families, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.

The center was officially dedicated at a ceremony Monday, with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., both 2008 presidential hopefuls, in attendance.

Brooke's amputee program started two years ago and has about 50 patients, but the new center will allow it to expand and offer more advanced rehabilitation, Campbell said.

Prior to the Iraq war, amputees were generally given acute care by the military and then turned over the Department of Veterans Affairs, said retired Col. Rebecca Hooper, program manager for the Center for the Intrepid. But since 2003, the military has kept those patients and made rehabilitation part of its mission.

Amputee rehab programs are now being run at Brooke, Walter Reed Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

Because the new Center for the Intrepid offers high-tech equipment and better facilities for severely injured soldiers, Hooper expects it to become a magnet for advanced amputee rehabilitation.

The center was funded by private donations to the Intrepid Foundation, a charity that has built dozens of houses to shelter families of wounded soldiers while they undergo treatment.

"We'll continue to do this as long as it's necessary. Our only wish is that a place like this some day will become a garage," said Arnold Fisher of the Intrepid Foundation.

As part of the construction at Fort Sam Houston, two new houses have been added to two already there so that additional families could be housed near the center.

For Chad Rozanski who lost both legs fighting in Iraq, knowing that 600,000 people made donations to this center is overwhelming.

"It's just not something that you know happens all the time, for people to come up and say, 'this is for you,'" Rozanski told Cobiella.

Staff Sgt. Jon Arnold-Garcia, who lost part of a leg in a grenade attack, got his first look at the rehab center on Sunday.

"This place is amazing, that the American people donated the money for this," said the 28-year-old from Sacramento, Calif.

Arnold-Garcia has been in rehabilitation at Brooke since May, but he was anxious to get to work at the Center for the Intrepid, a four-story glass building decorated with art and modern decor.

Arnold-Garcia and other amputees have been eyeing the rock climbing wall, visible through the glass. They have also heard about the wave pool, in which they can use wake boards to strengthen their back and stomach muscles.

"It doesn't look like a hospital," Arnold-Garcia said, sitting in the center's cafe. "It's a place I can see myself getting up and being motivated instead of walking hospital hallways with doctors."

[randalds]

Posted by gunn_pa1950 at 12:13 AM : Jan 30, 2007

With all due respect you may have missed the point. This was paid for by public donations, when it should have been provided by the government who sent these troops off on this god-awful mistake of a mission.

[gunn_pa1950]

No words will ever be enough but we thank our U.S. military service members giving your lives and limbs upholding our country's freedoms, liberties, and privileges.

You deserve state-of-the-art rehabilitation, resources, and opportunities in accordance with the dignity and honor your showed us through your service and sacrifices.

God bless all of you and your families who support you. May the souls of your departed comrades rest in the peace of Almighty God. May He bless our service members who are in harm's way now, enable them to complete their missions safely, and bring them home soon.

May our government leaders make choices in accordance with God's will for our country and not their own personal ambitions. May God enable the Iraqi people to unite as one, empower them to overcome outside terrorists and inside militant extremists, give each and every ordinary citizen the strength, will power, vision they need to do all in their power to form a strong, viable, self-governing country.

[sandy5274]

The only way that the Liar in Chief George W Bush
& Vice Liar Delusional *** Cheney will ever be
made to pay for thier crimes,is when the American
people stop being a nation of sheep, and force
that two face sell out looney toons phony
San Francisco Mental Midget Democratic Speaker
Loser Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader
Wimp Harebrain Harry Reid to get the Hell out
of the way,so we can force Congress to Impeach
both Georg W Bush & *** Cheney and send them
off to be tried and hanged for their own war crimes, and crimes against humanity!
It looks like Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid are
as big of cowards and crooks as Bush & Cheney
and as Dangerous an Enemy as Osama bin Laden
when they took Impeachment off the table,so
how do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid tried
as fellow Bush & Cheney War Criminals!

[randalds]

American people donated the money for this...yeah where the gov't, these kids should have the best of anything and everything they need. Interesting it's in Texas too
Posted by luvNY at 02:26 PM : Jan 29, 2007

All the "Texas" money is going to the new George W. Bush Library. $500 million, which is more then every other presidential library in history combined. Also Bush has the right to with hold anything from it (via a presidential order he commissioned and signed) that he considers embarrassing and this library even has a section (a first) who's only goal is to hire people to "shine" up his legacy for future generation.

Wonder how many prostheses could be paid for with Bush's fu*cking ego?

[missingamerica]

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that if Bush were permitted to serve four terms he'd eventually argue that such benefits (specifically, the funding required to staff and supply this new center), even to the Veterans of a war he started, were merely "entitlements" that should be reduced or eliminated - just so he could foist another tax cut upon the nation?

[ademeyer]

"The center was funded by private donations to the Intrepid Foundation, a charity that has built dozens of houses to shelter families of wounded soldiers while they undergo treatment. "

Why did we have to read almost to the end of this article to find out this center was privately funded? Here I was assuming it was built in Texas as another pork project. Shame on me!

[missingamerica]

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that if Bush were permitted to serve four terms he'd soon argue that such benefits, even to the Veterans of a war he started, were merely "entitlements" that should be reduced or eliminated - just so he could foist another tax cut upon the nation?

[luvny-2009]

American people donated the money for this...yeah where the gov't, these kids should have the best of anything and everything they need. Interesting it's in Texas too

[peterbaldwin-2009]

For clarification of my post: Physical Rehabilitation programs are part of follow up medical care - not something separate and apart. VA hospitals have always employed physiatrists, pyhsical therapists, occupational therapist, prosthetists, etc in a physical medicine department.

The government suckered in these good samaritans by lying to them - telling them that physical rehabilitation was not the governments job when surely they knew it was. This is an outrage that must be exposed.

[randalds]

If it is the "responsibility of the goverment to take care of the medical needs of veterans" then the government weaseled out of just that. How much lower can this administration go. And CBS news is down there in the sewer with them.
Posted by peterbaldwin at 02:05 PM : Jan 29, 2007

When I joined the USAF during Vietnam one of the things they promised me was that I could always turn to the VA for help no matter what. That worked great for many years, but then George W. Bush introduced "means testing" to determine if I could access VA health care anymore. They didn't "means test" my willingness to serve did they? I held up my end of the contract and they did not. As a war-era vet I should be able to walk into any VA center and be treated, no questions asked. That was the deal we made and they (Bush) reneged. Doesn't surprise me considering it was the as*shole Bush who did it.