ENGLEWOOD — U.S. Air Force Capt. Wade Jensen had the right qualifications to serve as chaplain at what has been the busiest hospital in the world, Joint Base Balad’s military hospital in Iraq.
It has seen more trauma cases than anywhere else.
Jensen, 41, returned home to Centennial in late January from a seven-month deployment with the Wyoming Air Guard. He spent 190 days of it at Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
There, the ordained minister comforted and supported U.S. troops wounded in the Iraq war, which has as its tragic signature very high rates of traumatic brain injury.
Jensen’s experience as Army enlisted in the Persian Gulf War 20 years ago somewhat prepared him for the Iraq war. “What did help me most,” he said, “was what I do right here.”
Here, he serves as chaplain and patient-care coordinator for the Englewood-based Colorado Neurological Institute, the largest neuroscience center in the Rocky Mountain region. Jensen comforts and supports people suffering from brain trauma, brain tumors, strokes, epilepsy, and all other neurological diseases and disorders.
“It’s all dealing with grief and loss,” Jensen said. “Brain injuries can threaten a patient’s very identity.”
The Department of Defense has reported that 20 to 40 percent of wounded soldiers suffer from traumatic brain injury.
Jensen is very proud of one Balad stat: “The whole time I was there, we didn’t lose anybody to suicide.”
CNI held Jensen’s job for him, earning the institute the Patriot Award, given in a ceremony Wednesday by Jensen’s commanding officer, Col. Dennis Grunstad of the Cheyenne-based 153rd Airlift Wing.
Jensen comes from the Pentecostal faith tradition of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. Yet chaplains don’t preach or proselytize. It’s not “turn or burn” in wartime, he said. If asked, Jensen said, he would pray with a soldier, airman or Marine according to their traditions.
Jensen wasn’t there to tell them everything would be all right — or even get better.
“Never give false hope,” he said.
His job description, as he saw it, was to be present for them.
He knew basic things about neurology from his job at CNI.
He knew that brain-injured patients need more ways to connect — if they can’t see him, hear him or understand him, they can feel his touch on their arm.
“I try to engage as much of the brain as possible,” he said.
He knew that frontal-lobe injuries affected emotional states. He knew that even patients who appear to be unconscious sometimes hear things.
Sometimes his job was listening.
“You could see a look of peace come over them just by getting something off their chests,” he said.
Sometimes he was told: “Just stay with me.”
He helped with practical matters, such as helping a soldier call home or finding a requested priest or a rabbi.
“I really remember the guy who found out his baby died two days after birth — he cried on my shoulder for 45 minutes,” Jensen said. “Then I was his advocate: ‘Let’s get this guy home as soon as possible so he can grieve and comfort his wife.’ “
For soldier or civilian, the chaplain has a unique role.
“I am a nonjudgmental presence without an agenda,” Jensen said. “They are not alone.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
