thedrifter
06-18-08, 02:31 PM
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008
Marine thriving despite arm injury
BY NICHOLAS SPANGLER
The arm was on a table in a Chili's in Homestead.
It was a right arm and it didn't extend. The wrist didn't rotate and the hand didn't clench and the fingers didn't grasp.
It was a mostly useless arm, and if it doesn't improve, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Ricardo Allen of South Miami-Dade may have it amputated and get something robotic instead.
''Everybody looks at me weird when I say that, but I'd rather have something I can use that doesn't cause me pain every day,'' he said.
Allen is 25. If he goes through with the amputation, he will join more than 1,031 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have lost limbs, hands, feet, fingers, thumbs and toes fighting the current wars.
The arm and the man were shot March 16, 2007, in Ramadi, Iraq. He was on post when a man across the street opened fire with a heavy machine gun, sending bullets about half an inch wide and 1 ½ inches long through sandbags, ballistic glass, the steel door of the post, the Kevlar vest on his chest.
One punctured his right lung. Another hit the top of his right forearm and ripped through the back, severing the brachial artery and severely damaging the nerves.
The bullets felt like ''a hot sledgehammer'' but didn't hurt right away because he had so much adrenaline pumping and he was thinking really hard about all the blood coming out of his mouth and chest.
The artery snapped back into his body and had to be replaced by a vein from his leg. The nerves didn't heal.
DRUGS FOR PAIN
Morphine and Vicodin and Lyrica and Ketamine and Dilaudid took care of the pain.
But he has sadness and dreams, too.
In one, his battalion is in the open desert and the men around him are getting machine-gunned in droves.
''Go back and get more medical supplies!'' the corpsman shouts, but then he's shot dead, too, and Allen is briefly, horrifyingly, alone.
''Oh my God,'' he screams.
They even have drugs for sadness and dreams. He doesn't take them anymore, doesn't scream in his sleep anymore, but small sadnesses persist.
It seems unlikely to him that he will ever again work on his car, something he once loved to do.
It was in the Chili's parking lot and he pointed to it: big, glossy and black. ''It hurts me because I have a car like that and I can't even work on it without my buddy,'' he said.
''I can't even rotate my tires.'' He can, of course, give orders about what valve to tighten by how much, but ``it's not really the same.''
Try to get through a day without using your dominant arm. ''I can't tie my own shoes,'' he said. ``I can bathe myself, stuff like that, wrap rag around [the] arm and go through motions.''
What work is there for a man with one arm? ''I can't even do a desk job with one arm,'' he said.
COLLEGE DREAMS
He graduated from Southridge High School and was taking classes at Miami Dade College before he enlisted. He'll go back to school, maybe to the University of Miami or Florida International University, places he couldn't afford before.
Tuition was why he signed up in the first place. Working as a cook at Hops Grill in The Falls, he couldn't afford more than one or two credits at a time. He might have graduated in 15 years at that rate. He couldn't bear the thought of that. The Marines offered a quick payoff, by comparison.
He has trouble remembering things, possibly because of the head trauma he sustained when a grenade blasted him off his feet, and it takes him about half a minute to write his name with his left hand because he can't hold a pen with the right, but he got the payoff.
This isn't to suggest he's bitter. He knew the risk going in. He doesn't want to avenge himself on the man who shot him.
``He was over there fighting. I was over there fighting. We probably both don't know what the hell we're fighting for.''
He's not even angry at him. 'If the guy came up to me right now and said, `I'm sorry for what I did,' and if he really genuinely was, I'd forgive the guy.''
DOING OK
So the arm is a disaster, but the man attached to the arm is OK. Better than OK, maybe. He lives on and off with his girlfriend, flies up to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md., for treatment, says he's going to apply to college as soon as he's got this whole arm thing cleared up.
''I enjoy life more than I ever did with both arms,'' he said.
``I got money in the bank, a nice ride, a girl who cares about me a lot. That's all you really need.''
Ellie
Marine thriving despite arm injury
BY NICHOLAS SPANGLER
The arm was on a table in a Chili's in Homestead.
It was a right arm and it didn't extend. The wrist didn't rotate and the hand didn't clench and the fingers didn't grasp.
It was a mostly useless arm, and if it doesn't improve, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Ricardo Allen of South Miami-Dade may have it amputated and get something robotic instead.
''Everybody looks at me weird when I say that, but I'd rather have something I can use that doesn't cause me pain every day,'' he said.
Allen is 25. If he goes through with the amputation, he will join more than 1,031 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who have lost limbs, hands, feet, fingers, thumbs and toes fighting the current wars.
The arm and the man were shot March 16, 2007, in Ramadi, Iraq. He was on post when a man across the street opened fire with a heavy machine gun, sending bullets about half an inch wide and 1 ½ inches long through sandbags, ballistic glass, the steel door of the post, the Kevlar vest on his chest.
One punctured his right lung. Another hit the top of his right forearm and ripped through the back, severing the brachial artery and severely damaging the nerves.
The bullets felt like ''a hot sledgehammer'' but didn't hurt right away because he had so much adrenaline pumping and he was thinking really hard about all the blood coming out of his mouth and chest.
The artery snapped back into his body and had to be replaced by a vein from his leg. The nerves didn't heal.
DRUGS FOR PAIN
Morphine and Vicodin and Lyrica and Ketamine and Dilaudid took care of the pain.
But he has sadness and dreams, too.
In one, his battalion is in the open desert and the men around him are getting machine-gunned in droves.
''Go back and get more medical supplies!'' the corpsman shouts, but then he's shot dead, too, and Allen is briefly, horrifyingly, alone.
''Oh my God,'' he screams.
They even have drugs for sadness and dreams. He doesn't take them anymore, doesn't scream in his sleep anymore, but small sadnesses persist.
It seems unlikely to him that he will ever again work on his car, something he once loved to do.
It was in the Chili's parking lot and he pointed to it: big, glossy and black. ''It hurts me because I have a car like that and I can't even work on it without my buddy,'' he said.
''I can't even rotate my tires.'' He can, of course, give orders about what valve to tighten by how much, but ``it's not really the same.''
Try to get through a day without using your dominant arm. ''I can't tie my own shoes,'' he said. ``I can bathe myself, stuff like that, wrap rag around [the] arm and go through motions.''
What work is there for a man with one arm? ''I can't even do a desk job with one arm,'' he said.
COLLEGE DREAMS
He graduated from Southridge High School and was taking classes at Miami Dade College before he enlisted. He'll go back to school, maybe to the University of Miami or Florida International University, places he couldn't afford before.
Tuition was why he signed up in the first place. Working as a cook at Hops Grill in The Falls, he couldn't afford more than one or two credits at a time. He might have graduated in 15 years at that rate. He couldn't bear the thought of that. The Marines offered a quick payoff, by comparison.
He has trouble remembering things, possibly because of the head trauma he sustained when a grenade blasted him off his feet, and it takes him about half a minute to write his name with his left hand because he can't hold a pen with the right, but he got the payoff.
This isn't to suggest he's bitter. He knew the risk going in. He doesn't want to avenge himself on the man who shot him.
``He was over there fighting. I was over there fighting. We probably both don't know what the hell we're fighting for.''
He's not even angry at him. 'If the guy came up to me right now and said, `I'm sorry for what I did,' and if he really genuinely was, I'd forgive the guy.''
DOING OK
So the arm is a disaster, but the man attached to the arm is OK. Better than OK, maybe. He lives on and off with his girlfriend, flies up to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md., for treatment, says he's going to apply to college as soon as he's got this whole arm thing cleared up.
''I enjoy life more than I ever did with both arms,'' he said.
``I got money in the bank, a nice ride, a girl who cares about me a lot. That's all you really need.''
Ellie