San Diego – Army Staff Sgt. Travis Strong, whose legs were blown off above the knee by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, was trying a few steps on his new, man-made pair, constructed of aluminum and carbon fiber.
Using his muscular arms and steely determination, he steadied himself on the parallel bars as he walked gingerly along the mat at Naval Medical Center San Diego.
“If I stand straight, this leg is good,” said Strong, nodding to his left, “but the other leg buckles.”
Peter Harsch, the center’s newly hired prosthetist, listened and made adjustments. “Prosthetics are like a car,” he said. “If a car’s tires aren’t aligned, the car won’t drive right.”
Harsch, 36, is the center’s first full-time prosthetist. Before the Iraq war, the center had little need for his particular skill – designing artificial arms and legs and helping patients adjust to life as amputees.
Now, with the war in its fifth year, the treatment of service personnel who have lost limbs has become a major concern for the center, already the busiest Navy hospital in the country.
As of March 1, 520 personnel had lost a limb in Iraq, and 101 of them lost more than one limb. Nearly 300 others had lost part of a hand or foot.
Strong, 29, was in the middle of his second tour in Iraq when the Stryker armored combat vehicle in which he was patrolling was hit by an explosively formed penetrator.
A moment after the blast rocked the 20-ton vehicle, Strong looked down and saw that his legs were bloody stumps. He tried to crawl out the back hatch but passed out.
When he was rushed to the Army medical station, doctors could not find a pulse, but they revived him and gave him massive transfusions.
Within days of his Nov. 27 injury, he was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he remained until he was transferred to San Diego in mid-January.
The military relocated his family from Fort Lewis in Washington state and provided off-base military housing in San Diego for the Strongs and their children, Sean, 5, and Brianna, 7.
Misty Strong, 27, provided encouragement as her husband worked on walking. “You’re looking good, babe,” she said, her voice upbeat despite the months of therapy ahead.
It is one of the grisly facts of history that war provides the laboratory for medical advances. With the Iraq war, the advances have come in prosthetics. The patients, young and accustomed to being active, are demanding consumers.
Before being wounded, Strong enjoyed dirt-biking and other sports. He may need Harsch to outfit him with different legs for different activities.
“There are walking legs, jogging legs, legs for sports,” Harsch said. “I’m making a surfing leg right now. I have a bilateral (double-amputee) patient who is a rock climber, so I’m making legs with stubbies on the end so he can grip the rocks.”
As Strong did his walking exercises, his son played a hand-held video game. In the beginning, his father’s injury frightened Sean, Misty Strong said, but now he has accepted that therapy and artificial legs are part of life.
“He’s always known that Daddy is a hero,” she said. “Now he knows he’s a superhero.”
