The Wife of a Wounded Warrior
I once was a personal trainer. I owned a personal training studio, and I had dreams of expanding it into a large business. The love of my life changed all of that, though, and I gladly changed with it. In 2006 I was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, attending graduate school for a Master of Science in Kinesiology at the University of Arkansas. I had a good friend from my hometown in northeast Arkansas who was a state trooper. He spent his summers participating in the marijuana eradication program that was done by the Arkansas State Police, Arkansas National Guard, and Drug Enforcement Agency. On August 10, 2006, he called me asking for a favor. While flying a mission the day prior, one of the helicopters crashed, seriously injuring the pilot and trooper on board. The injured were taken to two separate hospitals in Fayetteville. My friend and a state police pilot were going to fly to Fayetteville to see the men. He asked if I could pick them up at the airport and take them to the two hospitals to see the men.
We went to the hospital to see the trooper. He was a very kind man, and he spoke very highly of the pilot. He said that he firmly believed if he was flying with anybody else he would be dead. I had a positive image of the pilot in my head before going to his hospital. As we walked toward his room I was told that the pilot had not yet been told he would never walk again. They said he was in very bad shape. He broke his back, and he nearly did not survive.
We walked into his hospital room, and I remember thinking how cute he was... AND how familiar he looked to me! I couldn't quite place where I knew him from, but I had no doubt that I did. Doped up on pain meds, paralyzed at the time with a broken back, he rolled his head over to look at me, smiled with a drugged-smile, and said, "Hey there!" He was adorable! He wouldn't quit looking at me as I stood there. We stayed in his room for about an hour, during which time he made sure the guys got pictures of me with him. He was quite the flirt! As we left I asked my friend for the story on him. He said, "Sorry! He's got a girlfriend. Her name is (I'll leave out the name for privacy purposes) and she is a news anchor for (certain tv station back home)." I had never heard of her, but I remember thinking of how lucky she was. His family had seemed like good people, everybody spoke SO highly of him, and he was so stinkin' cute!
A few months later I was home to visit my parents. While watching that news channel I saw that girl on there and recognized her name. She was a very pretty girl, but she looked very young. I noticed she had a ring on her finger, so I figured they must have realized life is short and they decided to get married.
I wondered about him alot over the next few years. He left such a lasting impression on me from that hour I spent with him. Then, in April 2009, one of my clients was wanting to set me up with someone. I was fresh out of a relationship, and didn't want to get back into anything just yet. She told me that her best friend's brother would be perfect for me. She said we had so much in common... the only thing was that he could no longer do some of the things he used to do because he was in a helicopter crash nearly 3 years ago and broke his back. She said he had come a long way from what he was expected to do, but there were many things that he would never again experience. I questioned her on the details of this guy. After going back and forth asking questions and getting answers I realized it was the same guy I met in the hospital. Turns out he and the news girl had "broken up" about a week before the crash, and they finally quit things for good while he was in the hospital. It was somebody else that she had married.
We began talking on facebook, then on the phone. On May 31st, 2009, we met at the lake. That night, standing at the top of the stairs in his house, we kissed the most precious kiss I've ever experienced. From that moment we both knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
We were engaged on August 28th, 2009, and we got married on March 13th, 2010. That's when it all changed. I was working long hours, as I owned a business that was all up to me. He was asleep when I went to work in the mornings, he's still be lying down when I came home for lunch, and he was still lying down when I came home for the night. I thought he was depressed and unhappy with the marriage. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally shut down my studio and cut back to part-time work. The more time I spent with him, the more I started figuring out what was going on. He was in so much pain that he could not do much of anything.
In February of 2011 we moved to be closer to his son. I cut back to only training 2 clients. I still had days that I had to cancel because his pain was so bad. Some days he could do everything pretty close to normal. But some days he could not get out of bed without help. I finally realized that he only let people see him and only communicated with people when he was having a good day. On his bad days he was hull up in the house so nobody knew how bad shape he was in. He didn't want any pity.
I finally cut back my work outside the home completely. I began writing for online publications to make some income, and I spent much of my time researching his problems and dealing with the VA. The more I researched what was going on with him, the more I realized there was far more wrong than his physical injuries. He had been previously diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but he had tried to brush it off. I knew that he could no longer brush it off. It was affecting him too badly. We started a PTSD group at the VA, and he started recognizing how it was affecting him. It helped him come to terms with much of it. After much pushing, pressuring, and begging I was finally able to get him evaluated for traumatic brain injury (TBI), and he ended up being diagnosed with it as well.
Both of these were big reliefs to him, as he finally knew what was going on with him. In August of 2011, the VA deemed me as his full-time caregiver. In other words, they pay me to stay home and take care of him to help with the money I don't make from not being able to work outside of the home anymore.
There are many ups and downs that come with being married to a wounded warrior. As an out and a stress-reliever I blog these ups and downs. It helps me deal with them mentally and emotionally, and I hope it can help others who may be going through a similar situation.
The link to my blog is posted below and at the top of this page. Please feel free to read it and comment along.
Thank you for reading!
The Wife of a Wounded Warrior
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