I have shamelessly republished the lead article from the September 24th Duluth News Tribune in it's entirety. It is a report of a recovering Iraqi casualty, the study of an American soldier, and the telling of couragous hero. This is the account of my cousin, who faced the danger and gave of himself when he didn't have to!
He lost both feet when an improvised explosive device hit the Humvee
he and four others were riding in while patrolling the streets of Kirkuk, Iraq, on July 2.
'I gave what I can give'
A Cloquet soldier and his family live in a hotel room as he recovers from losing his feet in IraqBY JANNA GOERDT
NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Room 3J28E at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is small.
It might once have been an office, but patients today call it the leg room.
Inside, more than a dozen prosthetic legs lean against the walls and each other. Brian Saaristo's legs are stored under the sink.
They are shorter than the others because Saaristo, of rural Cloquet, still has his own knees. His feet are somewhere in Iraq.
On July 2, Sgt. Saaristo of the 101st Airborne Division joined the 468 U.S. soldiers who have become amputees while on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I consider myself lucky," Saaristo said.
He still has his sight, most of his hearing and, above all, his life.
He and his family have coped with the injury with equal parts grit and humor. When asked if he misses his feet, Saaristo paused.
"I don't know. We didn't talk much," he eventually said with a hint of a smile. "But it would be wrong to say I don't miss them. It was easier to get around with feet."
His loss has extracted a price from everyone.
Saaristo's wife, Cheryl, and two children, Leah, 9, and Brian Jr., 5, have for now given up their home in Wright, about 25 miles west of Cloquet, where there was room to run and play. The family has lived together in tiny hotel rooms in Washington during Saaristo's recovery.
"This has brought us closer," Cheryl Saaristo said. "We're very fortunate to have each other, to have this time together, and to have Brian."
She was shocked at the number of amputee soldiers at the hospital -- men and women whose arms and legs were taken by bombs, bullets and improvised explosive devices like the one that took her husband's feet.
"What you see happening on TV is real," Cheryl said. "Those IEDs, this is what they do."
'I KNEW I LOST THEM'
The day had grown long, and everyone in the Humvee was tired. Saaristo and four other soldiers were headed back to their base, the first in a convoy on a busy road in Kirkuk.
They rode in an unarmored vehicle. Saaristo's unit had recently ordered four kits to "up-armor" their Humvees, but only one had arrived. Theirs had not been fortified.
Driver Nick Paupore's left leg was propped up off the floor, his right leg pressed low on the gas pedal. Saaristo was sitting behind him.
He remembers vividly what happened next.
There was a dreadful bang and the cab filled with smoke. Everything turned brown as the windshield glaze melted. Saaristo tried to open his door, which was was jammed shut, then felt rough hands as someone dragged him out of the vehicle. And then the pain, distant at first but growing stronger. His right leg was gone below the knee and his left had been splintered. It would later be amputated.
"I knew I had lost them," Saaristo said. "As long as I was still alive, that was all I was concerned about."
Saaristo, 43, had fought to be in that Humvee. The military was reluctant to accept him for active duty because of his age, so Saaristo worked with Rep. Jim Oberstar to re-enlist.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Saaristo felt called to serve the country. He had been having dreams about serving again -- and nightmares in which the rest of his unit was leaving for the war and he couldn't find his uniform.
He missed the camaraderie of the military. He knew he would go to Iraq.
And part of it was what was best for the family. The Saaristos both held steady, good-paying jobs in Cloquet, but the 12-hour shifts meant that Leah and Brian Jr. were constantly in child care. The family was never together. If Brian went active-duty again, Cheryl could stay home with the children.
On that Sunday, 10 months after he arrived in Iraq, Saaristo was fighting to keep from bleeding to death. Paupore was the only other soldier seriously injured -- he lost his right leg above the knee.
Despite his own injuries, Saaristo kept barking orders: Stay calm. Remember your training. Check on Nick. Get me to a hospital. He was conscious as another soldier applied tourniquets to his lower legs, but he had no pain medication because no one could find a vein in his shocked body.
Saaristo soon slipped into gray and didn't wake again until he was in Washington.
'I LOVE YOU'
"When I first saw him, he was all wrapped up, with sponges and drains taped at the bottom of his legs," Cheryl Saaristo remembers. Brian Saaristo's first memories are of watching his wife walk into the hospital room. He couldn't speak, so he turned to sign language.
"Brian lifted his hands, and it took him half an hour to bend the fingers of one hand like this," Cheryl Saaristo said, demonstrating the sign for "I love you." It was the same motion they used to flash each other at work.
It was important to Cheryl that Leah and Brian Jr. know their father was still alive, though Brian Saaristo hadn't wanted them to see.
"I snuck them in," she said. "They had to see him."
The Saaristos want Leah and Brian Jr. to feel comfortable with Brian's injury -- and they seem to have succeeded. Both children have helped with Brian's treatment and recovery.
"You can touch his legs," Brian Jr. offers a visitor, patting the stretchy bandages covering his father's shins.
One night after school, Leah put down her homework and sat at the foot of her father's bed. She slid her hands forward, palms up, until they rested beneath Saaristo's abbreviated legs, then lifted each leg in turn, measuring their weight and width with her hands.
"Is this one bigger?" she asked, holding Saaristo's right leg. He nodded.
Sarristo's injuries aren't constantly on his mind. If he wakes in the night and wants to get out of bed, he sometimes tries to stand straight up.
"You think you've still got legs, but you don't," he said.
The pain can remind him. After the stitches that circled his healing legs were removed, Saaristo said it sometimes felt like ants were crawling across his skin, nipping and biting at his flesh. Sometimes he feels pain in a foot that isn't there.
FIVE STEPS FORWARD
The body armor and other protective gear soldiers use today protect their heads and chests from most devastating injuries, but their arms and legs often are left vulnerable. As a result, soldiers today are surviving attacks that would have killed them in past conflicts, said Don Vandrey, public affairs officer at Walter Reed. They live, but they lose limbs.
To handle this influx of amputees, the hospital's entire physical therapy department is now used only by amputee patients. Crews also recently broke ground on a new $10 million amputee training center -- even as officials prepare to close and move the Walter Reed campus in the next five years, Vandrey said.
Full recovery and therapy for amputees can take more than a year. Saaristo's doctors told him he would probably be at Walter Reed for eight months, but he has other ideas.
Less than two months after the bomb ripped through his Humvee, Saaristo slipped his shins into the custom-molded acrylic sleeves of his new legs, heaved himself upward and tottered five steps forward. Cheryl watched with glee.
It felt good to be upright again despite the pain, Brian Saaristo said. He did a little celebratory shimmy the first time he stood.
Next, Saaristo walked without balancing bars. Now he walks as much as he can, though his doctors won't let him keep his feet for fear he will push himself too far too fast. The feet wait for him in the leg room, balanced on their size 10 running shoes.
Saaristo's doctor said he's made remarkable progress.
"He's been one of the fastest-recovering patients I've seen," said Dr. Jared Anderson, a resident physician at Walter Reed. "We've had to slow him down a little. He was trying to bust through his sutures."
Saaristo walks slowly, with a slightly exaggerated gait, like someone who has just finished a long, hard run. He uses a cane for balance and probably always will. He'll also keep several pair of specialized feet for different activities.
There will be a pair for jogging, a pair for swimming and a pair for daily walking. The government will keep Brian Saaristo in feet for the rest of his life.
'GAVE WHAT I CAN GIVE'
The hard part about being a military amputee isn't learning to walk again, the Saaristos said -- it's all the paperwork.
Their days are full of phone calls, medical appointments and bundles of forms to be completed. The Saaristos are trying to find a contractor who can make their home handicapped-accessible by the time Brian comes home. On a recent day, Brian Saaristo was puzzled by a Social Security Administration form asking for proof he had been injured.
"Do they want me to wobble down there, or what?" he asked. The form was a new one for the doctor, too, but they spent time filling it in.
Brian Saaristo began petitioning a month ago for release from the military. He wants to be transferred to a hospital closer to home, possibly in Minneapolis, to finish his therapy. The medical evaluation board, or "med board," process usually takes months to clear, and Saaristo is already impatient.
Meanwhile, he wants Cheryl and the kids to return to Minnesota and their normal lives. Cheryl refuses.
"Right now, we should be with him," Cheryl said. "The kids are OK going to school here."
It took Brian Jr. and Leah awhile to adjust to Glen Haven Elementary, about a 20-minute trip from Walter Reed. Cheryl drives them there and picks them up each day in a car rented by the Yellow Ribbon Fund, a private nonprofit group that helps wounded soldiers and their families.
Help in ways both large and small has been indispensable, Cheryl said. The family lives together in a single room at the Mologne House, a hotel on the Walter Reed campus for outpatient soldiers and their families.
Clothes, toys and paperwork are piled everywhere, and the bathroom sink is cluttered with dishes and bath toys. After months of relying on a microwave oven, "I'd love to just cook something," Cheryl said. "Pork chops, potatoes..."
The kids, still full of energy after their second day in school, wrestled with each other at the foot of Saaristo's bed. Brian Jr. extracted himself and darted around the room, doing backflips from floor to bed.
"Tie him up, would you?" Brian asks Cheryl, and he's only half-joking.
It's been an exhausting day -- getting the kids ready for school, appointments, therapy, taking and making myriad phone calls, navigating D.C. traffic to retrieve the kids, grabbing a quick snack and dinner at McDonald's, managing the kids' restless energy, trying to cook a frozen lasagna in a tiny microwave oven. At 6 p.m., Brian Saaristo is still on his cell phone with a med board official, motioning for the kids to be quiet.
The Saaristos' time and attention are now focused on their daily life, recovery and anticipated homecoming. They avoid discussing the politics behind Brian's injuries.
"I don't think anyone in the country wants a war," Cheryl said.
During one rare family trip outside the Walter Reed campus in August, the Saaristos avoided a group protesting the Iraq war outside the White House.
And when President Bush made a visit to Walter Reed during Saaristo's recovery, the family also passed on the opportunity to meet their commander in chief and shake his hand.
"You just want to put it behind you and get on with your life," Brian Saaristo said. "I gave what I can give; there's nothing more. It's time for me to get home and take care of my family."
The Breakfast benefit
A pancake breakfast and bingo day will be held to benefit Brian Saaristo and his family on Oct. 7 at the Cromwell Park Pavilion, located at the intersection of Highways 210 and 73.
Breakfast begins at 7 a.m., with bingo at 1 p.m. For more information or to make a donation, contact Barb Dahl at 644-3691.
The Saaristo family would welcome comments and news from home as a diversion from their hectic lives in Washington, D.C. They can be reached at brian.saaristo@us.army.mil.
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