[nfb-talk] Blind Soldiers Never Die, But Sometimes, You'd Never Know It

[RyanO]

These guys desperately need our help, folks. Some of the stuff in this 
article is pretty pukeworthy. I hope our new veteran's division can swing 
into action on this one. These troops who defended our country deserve a 
better life and better training than what they're getting now.


Blinded by war: Injuries send troops into darkness -
By
Gregg Zoroya
, USA TODAY

ARLINGTON, Va. - Two days before a 10-mile race here, Army 1st Lt. Ivan 
Castro is explaining how he will run tethered to another soldier - one who 
can see.

As he speaks, his wife lovingly extends her right hand to Castro's face, 
fingers outstretched. But Evelyn Galvis pauses inches away.

"I used to be able to reach out and touch him, caress him, without telling 
him first, 'I'm going to touch your face,' " she says. Now, "if I just reach
out and touch him, he'll startle."

Castro, 40, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, is one of more 
than 1,100 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan - 13% of all seriously wounded 
casualties
- to undergo surgery for damaged eyes. That is the highest percentage for 
eye wounds in any major conflict dating to World War I, according to 
research
published in the Survey of Ophthalmology.

It's a reflection of how eye injuries have become one of the most 
devastating consequences of a war in which roadside bombs, mortars and 
grenades are the
most commonly used weapons against U.S. troops. Brain injuries and 
amputations have long been the focus of the damage such weapons are 
inflicting, but
the Army has acknowledged in recent weeks that serious eye wounds have 
accumulated at almost twice the rate as wounds requiring amputations.

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Ophthalmology

Body armor that protects vital organs and the skull is saving lives. But 
troops' eyes and limbs remain particularly vulnerable to the blizzard of 
shrapnel
from such explosions.

Each explosion unleashes large metal shards and thousands of fragments, says 
Army Col. Robert Mazzoli, an ophthalmological consultant to the Army surgeon
general. "Those small missiles are generally innocuous if they hit the 
(protected) forehead, face (or) chest but are devastating when they hit the 
eye,"
he says.

Surgical facilities are kept close to the fighting, so troops can be treated 
in minutes. Partial or total vision has been restored in most cases 
involving
eye injuries, military statistics show. But hundreds of troops have been 
left with impaired vision, and dozens have been blinded.

Troops in Iraq routinely wear protective eyewear, but it doesn't always 
work. When a roadside bomb in Baghdad blew a hole through the heavily 
armored vehicle
carrying Army Sgt. Luis Martinez last April, the force from the blast 
stripped off his helmet, headset and goggles. After the dust settled, 
Martinez, 38,
could see nothing out of his left eye and only streaks of blood in his 
right. He waited for help, terrified about the damage to his eyes.

"That was the first thing I asked" hospital personnel, the National Guard 
soldier recalls. " 'Am I going to be blind?' "

Surgeons later restored vision to his right eye, although bits of glass are 
embedded there. He remains blind in his left.

"At least God was kind enough to protect me, to keep my right eye and see my 
family," says Martinez, of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, who is married and the 
father
of three.

Formidable challenges await troops who return home blind or with serious eye 
injuries. In the most severe cases, they will struggle to cope emotionally
and financially.

About 70% of all sensory perception is through vision, says R. Cameron 
VanRoekel, an Army major and staff optometrist at Walter Reed Army Medical 
Center
in Washington. As a result, the families of visually impaired soldiers 
wrestle with a contradiction: The wounded often have hard-driving 
personalities
that have helped them succeed in the military. Now dependent on others, they 
find it difficult to accept help.

Because the Pentagon has no rehabilitation services for the blind, the path 
to recovery often leads directly to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The
VA operates 10 centers across the country for blind rehabilitation that 
teach visually impaired veterans how to function in society. The centers 
have 241
beds, and it takes an average of nearly three months to get in. Iraq and 
Afghanistan casualties go to the front of the line, says Stan Poel, VA 
director
of rehabilitation services for the blind. So far, 53 have enrolled in the 
blind rehabilitation programs, the VA says.

The department plans to open three more centers beginning in 2010, Poel 
says.

'He has no light in his life'

Even now, more than a year after her husband's return from Iraq, Connie 
Acosta is taken aback to find her home dark after sunset, the lights off as 
if no
one is there.

Then she finds him - sitting in a recliner in their Santa Fe Springs, 
Calif., house, listening to classic rock. Sgt. Maj. Jesse Acosta was blinded 
in a
mortar attack 22 months ago. He doesn't need the lights.

That realization often makes Connie cry. "You kind of never get used to the 
fact that he really can't see," she says. "He has no light in his life at 
all."

The tiny piece of shrapnel that blinded Acosta, 50, an Army reservist, 
father of four and grandfather of three, was precise in its destruction.

On the morning of Jan. 16 last year, Acosta led soldiers on a 3-mile fitness 
run across Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq. Suddenly, insurgents attacked the
camp with mortars.

Acosta remembers that he stopped, turned to yell at his soldiers and then 
dived for cover.

"Bam! That was it," he recalls. "Lights out."

An explosion about 60 feet away sent a piece of shrapnel - perhaps 
three-quarters of an inch long - through his left eye. It struck his brain 
and came out
his right eye.

"It was a perfect hit," Acosta says.

Rushed to the Air Force Hospital at Anaconda, he spent seven hours in 
surgery. Army Maj. Raymond Cho, an ophthalmologist, removed Acosta's right 
eye and
carefully reassembled his left one.

"I didn't want him waking up missing both eyes and wondering for the rest of 
his life, 'Gosh, could they have saved at least one?' " Cho says. "So he 
knows
that we did everything we could."

Acosta regained consciousness as he was being returned to the USA. In 
Germany, a doctor told him that his right eye was gone and his left eye, 
although
stitched together, likely would never see light.

"He said, 'You're going to have to start a whole new life from here on,' " 
Acosta recalls.

"I go, 'So I won't be able to see my kids? My grandkids? Nobody? I won't be 
able to see blue skies?'

"He said, 'Nope.'

"I just sat there. What could I do?

"A lot of things went through my mind," Acosta says. "Am I going to be 
accepted this way? Am I going to be rejected? I was pretty independent all 
my life,
and I did everything. So it was pretty tough."

VA plans more clinics

Pentagon doctors can rebuild eyes, reconstruct eye sockets and nurse 
casualties back to health, but soldiers with serious vision problems who 
want to learn
how to adapt into civilian life must rely on VA centers that also serve the 
elderly and other veterans.

The VA plans to invest $40 million this fiscal year to create 55 outpatient 
clinics across the nation, providing rehabilitation for veterans learning to
cope with partial vision, says James Orcutt, the VA's director for 
ophthalmology.

The department also is taking part in two clinical trials focusing on 
artificial vision, says Ronald Schuchard, director of the Atlanta VA 
rehabilitation
research and development center. The trials involve implanting silicon chips 
in eyes. The chips act as receptors that can transform light into electrical
signals that can be transmitted to the brain. It is cutting-edge research, 
Schuchard says.

However, Orcutt says, "I think we're a long way from a practical use of some 
of these."

At the VA's rehab centers for the blind, specialists teach orientation and 
mobility skills. Visually impaired veterans learn to use a white cane, 
public
transportation and perform daily routines. They also are offered computer 
instruction and the use of special scanners for reading text. They are 
assessed
and treated, if necessary, for psychological readjustment to their sight 
loss.

The VA does not provide guide dogs, but it helps link veterans with 
guide-dog schools that commonly provide a dog and training virtually free to 
veterans,
Poel says.

Iraq veterans sometimes find the VA blind rehab programs, which cater 
largely to elderly veterans, to be a poor fit for a younger generation. Army 
1st Lt.
Castro says he felt somewhat out of place during rehab at a VA facility in 
Augusta, Ga.

After the Army sent Jesse Acosta to a VA center for the blind in Palo Alto, 
Calif., for rehabilitation in January 2006, he and his wife became unhappy 
with
the facility, describing it as having a "nursing home" atmosphere. It is a 
five-hour drive from his home.

"It did not fit my needs," Acosta says.

He left the VA after a few months and was accepted, free of charge, into the 
Junior Blind of America rehab program near his home in Santa Fe Springs. 
Last
month, he completed training with his new guide dog at The Seeing Eye school 
in Morristown, N.J., and now has Charlie, a German shepherd.

All that is left, Acosta says, is figuring out the rest of his life.

He has fought a medical discharge from the Army until his medical care is 
complete. Ultimately, he will earn disability income for his wounds. Acosta 
was
an energy technician with Southern California Gas before he was called to 
active duty.

He is still with the company, though unpaid, and a different job awaits 
him - one tailored to his disability, Connie Acosta says. It's unclear 
whether Jesse
will want it, she says.

"We're hoping for the best," she says. "He's the type that constantly has to 
be kept busy. We always have an agenda. I have a calendar going constantly
with things happening."

It begins when they wake, and he wants to know the weather and the color of 
the sky, she says. Nothing in the house can be moved; he's memorized the 
location
of every chair and table.

He has his routines and chores, including weightlifting in the backyard or 
fiddling with the fuel pump on the 1969 Dodge Dart. (He fixed it.) Daughter 
Brittany,
14, is mustered into duty to operate the computer for her father until she 
pleads for a break.

"Taking care of Jesse has been an experience," Connie Acosta says. "He's a 
sergeant major in the Army, and they're tough people. He's a tough person to
live with and then, worse, being blind.

"Sometimes, he can be demanding. And I deal with it. I'm used to making sure 
that everything's in line. That he's got everything. And that's basically 
all
I've got to do."

'I want to feel productive'

Castro thought he knew how his life would play out.

A former Army Ranger who had worked his way out of the enlisted ranks to 
earn an officer's commission, Castro commanded a scout reconnaissance 
platoon and
dreamed of becoming a Special Forces team leader.

Instead, the last thing he would ever see was the colorless expanse of an 
Iraqi roof in Youssifiyah, Iraq.

A mortar round landed a few feet away from him there on Sept. 2, 2006. The 
blast killed two other soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and sent 
shrapnel
tearing into Castro's left side. The explosion damaged a shoulder, broke an 
arm, fractured facial bones and collapsed his lungs. Doctors amputated part
of a finger.

The blast also drove the frame of his protective eyewear into his face. When 
Castro regained consciousness days later at the National Naval Medical 
Center
in Bethesda, Md., his wife, Evelyn, sat at his bedside. She told him his 
right eye was gone, but doctors hoped to salvage vision in his left.

The surgeons later removed one last piece of shrapnel from that eye. When 
they took off his bandages and flashed a light for Castro to see, he thought 
the
eye was still covered. "That's when he told me, 'Ivan, you're not going to 
be able to see again,' " Castro recalls. "I swore (it was like) I was 
standing
between the World Trade Center and the two towers had just come down on my 
shoulders."

>From that moment on, through convalescence and rehabilitation, Castro would 
struggle to regain a measure of independence.

Castro has become an advocate of rehabilitation funding for the blind, 
visiting members of Congress. After the 10-mile race in October, he ran the 
Marine
Corps Marathon three weeks later, finishing in 4 hours and 14 minutes.

He concedes that he needs his wife's help. Evelyn Galvis gave up her career 
as a bilingual speech pathologist in Fayetteville, N.C., to help her 
husband.
She supervises his medical care and drives him around.

She guides him through crowds, keeping him aware of raised edges in the 
walkway and steps. She reads his menu in restaurants and tells him where the 
food
sits on the table. She watches him memorize his hotel room, starting from 
the doorway and circling within the four walls to keep account of beds, the 
tables,
the wastebasket, the bathroom.

"My husband used to be a very independent individual," she says.

Castro hopes to stay in the military.

The Army has let several amputees stay in the ranks as well as one blind 
captain, who will be an instructor at West Point Military Academy after 
completing
post-graduate education. Castro awaits word on his future; the Pentagon 
won't comment on his situation.

"There's a world in front of me I can't predict or envision because I 
haven't been there yet. I haven't lived this yet. I haven't lived blind," he 
says.
"All I ask is to stay in the Army and finish out my years . I want to feel 
productive."

The only good news for now is when he sleeps, Castro says.

"I've had dreams where I know I'm blind and, guess what? I've regained my 
vision," he says. Reality floods back each morning.

"There's not a night that I don't pray and ask God, when I wake up, that I 
wake up seeing."



RyanO