I am always reluctant to claim my disability – it is a slippery slope. While on patrol in Fallujah, in 2004, my convoy was attacked by insurgents. The very first rocket fired landed at my feet, but it was certainly not the last. My left leg was blown off above the knee, my right leg looked like chopped liver, my lung was punctured, and I said to myself, “if I die here, my mamma will kill me.” I was lying on the ground, seemingly paralyzed as I could not feel or move anything below my waist, for the shrapnel that pierced my body armor was only a couple millimeters from my spine. All I remember is all hell breaking loose and the terrible sounds of grown men screaming. At last, my moment of reckoning had arrived.
I woke up nine days later, at National Naval Medical Center, hooked to machines and contraptions I never knew existed. I was hallucinating and scared and feeling like I was still fighting for my life, and I was. As my parents stood over me in the intensive care room next to the room of the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, assuring me that everything was alright, I realized that I had made it home. What took me time to grasp, however, was that my battle had just begun. This was the beginning of the hardest two years of my life.
I spent the next 22 months undergoing 42 surgeries to save my right leg, but the eventual removal of my right knee, gallons of high-powered intravenous antibiotics, hundreds of sleepless nights, and thousands of arduous hours of physical and occupational therapy, in order to learn to walk all over again and ultimately transition back into society; but let me assure you that I have never complained about that day in Iraq. As an all too familiar face around NNMC and Walter Reed, I began to realize from my bedside, however, that the men and women with whom I fought in the “War on Terror” are truly heroes, and they deserve to be treated better. And this is where the “Walter Reed Story” began, and most importantly where I realized my purpose – to advocate for those who risked, and gave, everything for their country and family.
I could tell you about how difficult it has been for me to transition back into society, in a place like Georgetown University, or how much it hurts to walk from class to class or to sit in an uncomfortable chair in the library long enough to get any meaningful work done, but I won’t. The fact is that there are not many severely wounded service-members who would ever think of applying to Georgetown Law, which is symbolic of the larger picture. Nevertheless, I am always reluctant to discuss my disability because of those warriors who did not make it home, and because of those wounded warriors who are much worse off than me, and because of those who feel like society thinks they are crazy. I would rather you know that I am still fighting the good fight, and that I, as much as anyone, will make the most of my opportunities.