News From the Cause
After severe war injuries, a new battlefield (LA TIMES)
May 09, 2011
Dominguez's mother, Martha, lives in an adjoining room in the battalion housing and accompanies her son to his appointments. Several other mothers live in rooms beside their wounded sons.
Navy and Marine Corps brass have agreed that wounded Navy corpsmen should live on the same floor as the wounded Marines. Both groups recover more quickly when they are near personnel who share their battlefield experiences, officials said.
Fuke and Dominguez, for example, are part of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, which was assigned to the Taliban stronghold in Sangin. "He's one of my boys," said Dominguez, adding that he has finally forgiven Fuke for not giving him morphine as he lay in the dirt writhing in pain.
From the beginning of the assault on Baghdad in 2003, the San Diego hospital has treated patients with traumatic amputations. But last year, particularly as the battalion fought the Taliban in late fall, the numbers surged to unprecedented levels.
In 2010, the San Diego hospital received 31 patients who had undergone amputations, a three-fold increase over 2009. In the first four months of 2011, 18 more patients with amputations were transferred to San Diego.
In 2009, only one of the 10 amputees had lost more than one limb. In 2010, the figure was 10 of 31. So far in 2011, the figure is 11 of 18.
In all, the hospital has had 99 patients with amputations from Iraq and Afghanistan. From those cases, doctors and therapists have devised improved methods for building and fitting prosthetic limbs.
Along with an increase in amputations, there has been an increase in severe wounds to the genitals and urinary tract. In that regard, Dominguez counts himself lucky. Click here to view more
