Soldier beats odds, makes spectacular recovery

[thedrifter]

December 26, 2003

Soldier beats odds, makes spectacular recovery

By Julie Pence
The (Twin Falls, Idaho) Times-News


TWIN FALLS, Idaho ? When Cpl. Benjamin Rodabaugh, 20, lifts up his shirt, an observer sees a leathery, red scar running from above his sternum through his abdomen.
?That?s where they cut me open so they could sew all my organs back together,? Rodabaugh said.

Doctors had to patch his stomach, diaphragm, colon and lower intestines. His lungs collapsed. He also has a steel plate in his left forearm.

In fact, his injuries from mortar fire Sept. 20 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, were so critical that he was written off for dead.

But now, only four months later, Rodabaugh is moving quickly toward full recovery.

He?s walking. He?s talking normally. And his personality remains pretty much the same as it was before that life-altering day in September, his mother said.

?He?s a miracle. I don?t know why. He has dumbfounded his doctors that he has healed so well so fast,? said Tammy Rodabaugh, who returned to Idaho for the holidays from her job as a teacher at the American International School of Kuwait. ?Not a single one of them thought it was a gross exaggeration that he should have died.?

Rodabaugh and his mother traveled to Magic Valley to reunite with relatives before returning to Boise to spend Christmas Day with sister and daughter Katrina Rodabaugh.

Tammy Rodabaugh left her teaching job at Twin Falls High School in 1995 to teach with her husband, Blake, overseas. Blake Rodabaugh remained overseas for the holiday season but was with his son during the first crucial days of his recovery.

Since that earth-shaking autumn day, Benjamin Rodabaugh has spent time in three Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals ? one in Germany, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the Palo Alto VA Hospital. He is now living in an apartment in Boise while he is monitored a couple of times a week at the Boise VA Medical Center.

When the volley of mortar hit the compound of Company A of the Army?s 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, two men died. Rodabaugh, who had signed on as an intelligence communications specialist, was injured so severely he wasn?t even able to breathe on his own. A fellow soldier breathed oxygen into Rodabaugh for the first 20 minutes after the attack.

?My chances to die during the first 24 hours were 100 percent,? Rodabaugh said.

Over the next five days, Army medical personnel gave him a 25 percent chance to live. After that, even though he remained unconscious for two weeks, doctors figured he would make it.

?They told me I lived because I?m too stupid to die,? Rodabaugh joked.

Rodabaugh suffered so many concussions that his brain had a Dalmatian appearance on X-rays, he said. The shrapnel, which shows up white in X-rays, is so pervasive in Rodabaugh?s body that a full-body X-ray looks like a snowstorm is raging inside him.

He has been through physical therapy, occupational therapy, neural psychology testing and treatment, speech therapy and recreational therapy. And he?s to be fitted with a hearing aid on Jan. 15.

But unless he points out his injuries, the casual observer wouldn?t know that Rodabaugh went from life on a ventilator to the ?expectation of a normal adult life,? as his mother describes his current status.

?It?s sort of like he awoke at age 6 and had to relearn everything up to age 20,? she said.

Don?t ask Rodabaugh what he plans to do next, however. Beyond getting engaged to 18-year-old Christina Geralds from Ohio, he?s taking life pretty much day by day. That?s how it has been for the family since the Sept. 20 ordeal.

?You can?t think about what is next,? Tammy Rodabaugh said. ?You have to think of now. Just live through now.?

With his 21st birthday a month away, Rodabaugh is already classified as ?temporarily retired? from the military. The phrase really means retired for life, Rodabaugh said.

?They call it that because when some guys wake up, their entire lives are gone. They have nothing left. If they think they might get to go back to the service, then they have something to look forward to,? Rodabaugh explained.

Rodabaugh was lucky in that respect, though. He awakened in an Army hospital in Germany with virtually nothing material left in the world except his laptop computer. But he always had at least one family member with him. Most of the time, it was two family members hovering, caring, encouraging.

His mother speculated the Rodabaughs? closeness is the main reason her son experienced such a spectacular recovery.

But she also said she was thankful for all the help the Army provided.

?The Army has done everything it can to make sure we didn?t have huge financial burdens,? Tammy Rodabaugh said.

The military provided airplane tickets for two family members when Benjamin was transferred to different hospitals. Also, military social workers found places for the family to live while he was undergoing treatment.

Most importantly, ?he has received amazing medical treatment,? Tammy Rodabaugh said.

Then, too, the family has received immeasurable emotional and spiritual support from Magic Valley people and others on virtually every continent except Antarctica, Tammy Rodabaugh said.

As for whether Rodabaugh is bitter about his experience, the answer is an unhesitating ?No.?

?Everyone in Iraq fights for different reasons,? he said. ?Most went to make Iraq a better place to be. It is not a very fun place to be. It?s really not. There might be some of the administration that?s over there for oil or for money ? I don?t know. But most of us are over there because it?s our job. Our job is to protect people.?


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Sempers,

Roger