Mothers, wives sacrifice to help wounded GIs
Rose Lage helps her son, Staff Sgt. Michael Lage, at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, on Dec. 7. Lage was injured in Iraq, the only survivor of a blast that killed four others. Rose Lage is among the many women struggling to care for loved ones wounded in Iraq.
The incredible article below is a representation of a few stories that many families are currently living every day. It’s also a great illustration as to why military parents are such in invaluable resource. When young, unmarried GIs get hurt in combat it is their mothers, fathers and loved ones who care for them — and yet as a parent you often are left feeling “out of the loop” in FRGs and in access to a lot of information. Please read the story below, click on the link and read the entire thing, and then say a prayer for these families and do what you can to reach out to wounded soldiers and their families. –Claire
Mothers, wives sacrifice to help wounded GIs
‘These kids could not survive without their women’
updated 5:58 p.m. PT,
Fri., Dec. 28, 2007
LINK to article
(h/t Right Nation)
(EXCERPTED)
SAN ANTONIO - Rose Lage swears it is true: Suddenly, in the midst of a fitful night of sleep last June, she knew that her son had been injured in Iraq.
“I heard my son’s voice,” she recalls. “It might sound weird, but I heard him holler ‘Mama!’ “
In fact, Staff Sgt. Michael Lage was the only survivor of a blast that killed four others. Lage suffered third-degree burns to nearly half his body; part of his nose and ears were missing, and his face, scalp, arms and torso were seared. His left hand had to be amputated.
Rose Lage, 54, understood her son’s life would change. But she didn’t understand how much her own quiet life — a life spent playing with grandkids, fishing and preparing for her husband’s retirement — would change, as well.
She would exchange her two-story house in Atlanta for a hotel room on an Army post, watch her nest egg shrink and spend her days helping a 30-year-old son change bandages and wriggle into garments meant to reduce scarring.
The sacrifices of injured soldiers, airmen and Marines are recognized with medals and commendations. But the mothers and wives who arrive here wide-eyed and afraid make their own sacrifices — abandoning jobs and homes and delaying retirement to help their wounded children reclaim their lives.
“The women here are the heroes, every bit the heroes as their soldiers,” said Judith Markelz, who runs a 4-year-old program to aid the families of injured soldiers sent here for treatment. “These kids could not survive without their women.”
The worst of the wounded
The patients who arrive at Fort Sam Houston are among the worst wounded in war, suffering the kind of injuries that killed their predecessors in earlier conflicts.
So far, about 600 burn victims and 250 amputees have been sent here to recover at the Army’s only burn center and at an amputee rehabilitation program set up since the start of the Iraq war.
Their injuries will require multiple surgeries and months or years of recovery and rehabilitation.
When the injured arrive, fathers and siblings are often here for the immediate aftermath or early surgeries. But the wives and mothers most often stay, Markelz said. They quit jobs, give up health insurance and abandon homes.
“None of us realized people were going to be here two years. That’s not your normal hospital stay,” Markelz said. “They didn’t want to make San Antonio their home. Now, they can vote here.”
Please sign in
Markelz, the wife of a retired Fort Sam Houston deputy commander, was hired four years ago to start the Warrior and Family Support Center, a program that has morphed from a few computers in converted conference rooms to a catchall program for families of the wounded.
The Army provides housing for families in a post hotel or at one of the Fisher Houses, family-style dorms with a living room, large kitchen and dining room.
But most arrive here with few or no friends and with little understanding of what they or their wounded family member will now face.
“They come in with their purses like this,” said Markelz, hugging her chest. “They look like a deer in headlights.”
Markelz and her staff make sure no one gets past the door without getting noticed.
“Did you sign in?” she genially shouts at family members and wounded soldiers between phone calls and assigning tasks to volunteers.
In the past four years, family members and wounded have signed in 200,000 times and counting.
The assistance center, which will move to a new 12,000-square-foot building next year, provides meals, a place for baffled family members to seek advice, rides to Wal-Mart, just about anything Markelz and her staff find they can do to help.
Among the family members who stay for the long haul, about half are wives and half are mothers.
Markelz said it’s especially hard on the wives of guardsmen and reservists and on the middle-aged mothers of soldiers — women who had well-established civilian lives away from the typically nomadic life of active military families.
“They didn’t sign up for that,” she said.
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