Cpl. Andrew received multiple injuries in Iraq in early October 2006. He has made progess but a brain injury will be his main issue. Update December 2007 - Andrew walks with a limp and talks but is not easily understood. He works hard every day with his therapy and "just wants to be normal". His memory is in 'bits and pieces' but it's coming back. He is learning to become independent but has a long road still ahead.

Original Story and Article can be found on Detroit Free Press:
Freep.com
VETERANS DAY SPECIAL REPORT

A Marine's long road home
After an Iraq bomb left him in a coma with Traumatic Brain Injury, a Saginaw man struggles to be normal
November 11, 2007

BY JEFF SEIDEL

BAY CITY -- A Purple Heart hangs on the wall over his pillow. Photos from Iraq are taped above the desk. A Marine Corps flag is pinned above the bed.

One year after surviving a roadside bomb in Iraq, inside a warm, comfortable, private group home that specializes in treating patients with brain injuries, Cpl. Andrew Love sits on his bed, trying to remember what happened.

Sometimes he's frustrated, but he can't remember why.

"I want to be normal like everybody else," Love says, speaking slowly because he has a hard time talking. "I want to be normal again."

Living life in slow motion, struggling to speak, struggling to remember, wanting to be whole again -- this is how soldiers end up after explosions in Iraq leave them with broken bodies and scrambled brains.

On this Veterans Day, there is a mounting problem facing men and women coming back from war. Thousands of troops have suffered Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts say that there are thousands more who have sustained TBI but don't know it. The injury is so prevalent that it is being called the signature wound of the war.

This is what it looks like, after a soldier comes home.

13 months ago: An explosion in Iraq
Cpl. Love, 23, was still a combat virgin on Oct. 10, 2006. He had been in Iraq for just two weeks and four days. He sat in the right rear seat of an armored Humvee as it maneuvered through downtown Fallujah, one of the most dangerous areas at the time. The buildings were two and three stories tall -- similar to the old town area of Saginaw, where he was raised.

Love was in the fifth vehicle of a seven-vehicle convoy. He sat with a loaded M16 rifle wedged between his right leg and the door, as he had been trained. Love was an excellent shot and was invited to go to sniper school, but he declined. He didn't want to leave his friends from the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment, the unit profiled by the Free Press as the Band of Brothers.

Love was always a team player. He had suffered three concussions playing football at Valley Lutheran High School. One time, he was taken from the field by ambulance. Typically, anyone who has suffered a concussion has a significantly higher chance of having another TBI.

A bomb exploded under the Humvee. Most of the damage was on the right rear side, exactly where Love was sitting. The right side of his body was crushed -- bones were broken, internal organs damaged. The bulletproof glass window blew off the door and slammed into the right side of his head, injuring the frontal lobe of his brain.

Blood came out his nose. Love's heart stopped beating and he wasn't breathing. A medic found him, still in the vehicle, and pounded on his chest, bringing him back to life.

Of the five soldiers in the vehicle, Love was the only one seriously injured.

Love was rushed to a surgical unit in Fallujah. He was losing blood and had a ruptured liver. Doctors removed his spleen and patched his liver. Within 24 hours of the explosion, he was transferred to a military hospital in Germany.

Back home, inside a remodeled farmhouse on the outskirts of Saginaw, the phone rang. Diane Love, Andrew's mother, looked at the caller ID. It was a government number and she assumed that another recruiter was after her other son, Jared, 20, a student at Ferris State University.

She answered the phone. Andrew was injured, she was told.

"Are we talking seriously?" she asked.

Yes.

She screamed and threw the phone. "It was a scream that sounded like I was being murdered," she said later.

12 1/2 months ago: Unresponsive
For three weeks, Love was in a coma at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

Diane Love assumed that her son would recover and be the same old kid -- funny, happy and loud. "I was in a lot of denial," she said. "I didn't realize how his brain was so rattled."

Love was on a ventilator. "He had surgeries every other day," said Al Love, Andrew's father. "I'd say, close to 20." His body was swollen. When he went to Iraq, Love weighed 160 pounds. "I'll bet you he was 220 at one time in Bethesda, from swelling," his father said. "He was taut. His skin was so tight."

Love had multiple problems affecting several areas of his body, which is common among soldiers injured in Iraq. Love's pelvis was crushed and the large bone in his right leg was broken. "A nurse told us that if this would have happened three years ago, he probably would have lost his leg," Diane Love said.

In the hospital, Love got pneumonia. "All the damage to his right leg was sending blood clots up and they were getting attached to his lungs," said Al Love. Diane Love stood by helplessly as her son nearly died. "We almost lost him four or five times when he was in front of us," she said.

For three weeks, Love was unresponsive. His eyes were closed. Al Love was frustrated and pried open his eyes. "I was so impatient," he said. His son's eyes were glassy. "It was a dead stare."

Slowly, Love started to wake up.

"When he first opened his eyes, he couldn't talk because he had the respirator," Diane Love said. "I don't know if he could speak at that time."

They created a new way to communicate: blink once for yes, twice for no.

"Right away, we wanted to know if he knew who we were and he did," his mother said.

"He did the thumbs-up deal," Al Love said.

Doctors never offered a worst-case scenario. "I don't think we asked for it," Al Love said.

12 months ago: Shipped across country
On Nov. 16, 2006, Love was sent to the Minneapolis Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center, one of four facilities in the country designed to provide extensive care to veterans. The Iraq war is unique because soldiers come back with so many complicated injuries, affecting different organs. Polytrauma hospitals have been set up to handle everything from burns to amputations to brain injuries.

"He was like an infant all over again," Diane Love said. "He couldn't hold his head up."

Love couldn't eat because he couldn't swallow. He was fed through a tube in his nose. Eventually, that was removed and a tube was put directly into his stomach.

"When he got to Minneapolis, he weighed 124 pounds," Al Love said. "His jawline was caved in; you could see his ribs."

While his body started to heal, his memory remained a problem. "You could walk in the room and visit him for 2 minutes, and he wouldn't remember," Diane Love said. "It was very, very hard."

Love had to relearn how to eat and drink, starting with a sippy cup, just like a toddler. "He had to learn to swallow all over again," Diane Love said.

And he had to learn to speak again.

Love stayed in Minneapolis for seven months. "He had great caregivers, great physicians, great nurses, great therapists," Diane Love said.

"They wanted to be there," Al Love said.

One day, a therapist asked Love to connect dashes with a marker. Instead, he wrote: "I love my mom."

Diane Love stayed with her son, except for one quick trip back to Michigan for three days in December. Al Love had to stay in Saginaw to run his business, Consumers Auto Parts. But he made several visits.

The Veterans Airlift Command provided Al Love with free transportation to Minneapolis. The organization is a national network of volunteer aircraft owners and pilots. It started last year with nine pilots and has flown 150 missions. Now, more than 500 pilots have volunteered. "They must have taken Jared and I back and forth to Minneapolis six or eight times," Al Love said.

As the number of injured soldiers continues to increase, many organizations have begun to provide services and support to soldiers and their families.

Diane Love stayed at a Fisher House -- a donated home -- at Bethesda and in Minneapolis. There is at least one Fisher House at every major military medical center in the United States. Started in 1990, more than 10,000 families stay free every year. "If it wasn't for the Fisher Foundation, I would not have been able to stay with Andrew," Diane Love said. "We will be indebted to them for life."

To this day, they are amazed at the generosity of others.

The list of organizations that helped is long. Semper Fi Fund gives grants to families for travel, child care, lodging or problems resulting from lost wages. The fund gave the Loves money for expenses.

They were also helped by the Marine for Life program, which gave Love a computer and Palm Pilot.

The Love family belongs to Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Saginaw, a congregation that continues to pray for Love. "Andrew is fortunate because he has a birth family, a Marine family and a church family," Diane Love said. "Not many people have that many families."

"We are so thankful," Al Love said. "The doctors and nurses and therapists love their jobs. A lot of people cared and went the extra mile."

Love progressed to the point where doctors said it was time for him to leave the Minneapolis hospital and enter transitional living.

His mother worked for months trying to get him into a group home in Michigan.

"It wasn't easy," Al Love said. "It was Diane's determination to get this working, so he could come to a local place. They wanted us to go to Indianapolis. His insurance was giving us a hard time." She wrote letters to everyone from the Marines to Sen. Carl Levin. "With them all helping and working, we finally got them to say he doesn't need to be in a hospital anymore," Diane Love said.

On the day Love left Minnesota, another soldier from Michigan moved into his room.

5 months ago: Moving back home
Love returned to Michigan on June 5. He was met at the airport by the Marines from his unit, who had come back from Iraq a month earlier. The Patriot Guard Riders, a group of motorcycle volunteers, escorted him from the airport to a group home in Bay City as a show of honor and respect.

Soon, Love started working with Bryan Roberts, an occupational therapy assistant.

"He could barely lift anything more than a soda can," Roberts said.

Now, he can lift 30-pound dumbbells.

Love started walking with a four-prong walker but he was weak and had little balance. Still, he quickly progressed to a cane and then started walking with a thick belt around his waist, with somebody behind him holding it in case he fell.

"His will is amazing," Roberts said. "From Day One, since he got here, he knew it wasn't going to be easy. But he kept the positive attitude. It's always go, go, go. Push, push, push.

"I don't know if I've ever seen him rest for more than 5 minutes. He always wants to do something. He's always joking with people. He's great to work with. Some people have given up. This guy, we have to slow down some days."

1 month ago: Daily progress
The mini fridge is filled with Pepsi. Next to the desk, there are cases of microwave popcorn and Ramen noodles. The walls are covered with posters of cheerleaders and blondes in bikinis. A television, computer and stereo face the bed.

It looks like a college dorm room. Until you look closer.

On the wall, there is a handwritten set of rules titled: Andrew Love's Get Me Better List.

• No O'Doul's. No asking for beer, alcohol, etc.
• No whacking walker
• No swearing around therapists.

"If he has one beer, because of the injury, it would be like maybe six to us," Diane Love said.

Every day, Love goes through speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy. He does exercises to improve his memory.

Love's brain injury was easy to diagnose. But Diane Love worries about other veterans, who may be injured but don't know it. "Everybody wants them home, but what are we gonna do with them?" she said. "There are some that come home and don't realize they have TBI."

3 weeks ago: Trying to remember
It is early afternoon, but Love is tired after several hours of lifting weights and trying to learn to speak again.

The alarm in his Palm Pilot goes off, reminding him to take his medications. Love has programmed his entire life -- every appointment, every meeting, every pill -- into his Palm because his short-term memory has become a long-term problem.

He struggles to speak. His voice sounds childlike, or like he just learned English, but he communicates through his facial expressions -- big, broad smiles that show off an amazing spirit, always upbeat, a fun guy to be around.

"My tongue is a muscle that was affected," Love said with difficulty. "My tongue is sore. My voice is normal, but my tongue is not."

No one knows, for certain how much he will recover. Every brain injury is different. If he has reached a plateau, if he doesn't improve, he has lost his military career. He has lost his parts of his memory. He has lost his independence for now.

Once an athlete, he walks with a stiff waddle. He struggles to move down stairs and can't run. Once he had dreams of being a police officer, but he doesn't even remember that aspiration anymore. Once he was a talker, funny and loud, always the center of attention, but now the words come out slowly and painfully, chopped up and simplified.

His therapists are thrilled with his progress in such a short time. They believe he will get better.

If he continues to improve, the next step will be assisted living. Then, maybe, one day, he will live on his own. "It's one step at a time," Diane Love said.

Love takes the war with him everywhere. His body is covered with scars that look like white snakes, stretching down his right leg, across his chest and over his right arm. There are scars on his stomach that look like puncture wounds, where the feeding tube once entered his body.

But he still has his sense of humor and a wonderful personality. "He's still a smartass," said his brother.

Asked if he remembers anything before the explosion, either from Iraq or from childhood, Love has to repeat his answer several times before he's understood. "Bits and pieces," he says. "Bits and pieces."

Diane Love believes this is a blessing. "He doesn't remember Iraq," she said. "I don't want him to remember."

Monday: It all starts with a bomb.

Contact JEFF SEIDEL at 313-223-4558 or jseidel@freepress.com.