thedrifter
03-30-09, 08:23 AM
Paralyzed Marine vet lives grueling days with remarkable spirit
Posted by Ted Roelofs | The Grand Rapids Press March 29, 2009 09:42AM
Joshua Hoffman, paralyzed from the chest down by a sniper's bullet in Iraq, must undergo 90 minutes of therapy every four hours at his Middleville home just to survive. That does not even begin to touch rehabiliation in skills such as speaking and eating. Yet his fiancee, Heather Lovell, his friends and his nurses testify to the Marine veteran's never-say-die attitude.
MIDDLEVILLE — Over the hum of an oxygen machine, a nurse leans over Joshua Hoffman.
She listens to the lungs of this quadriplegic former Marine.
"Good morning, Josh. You ready to start?"
It is not yet 9 a.m. Hoffman's fiancee, Heather Lovell, is already out of the bed next to him and in the kitchen.
And soon it begins, a sometimes painful 90-minute regime of medication and respiration therapy Hoffman needs to stay alive.
It is repeated five times over the next 24 hours, afternoon, evening, middle of the night, just as it is seven days a week. Hoffman will be driven hours later to Grand Rapids for therapy to help him utter single words and learn to swallow solid food.
To some, it might sound like a prescription for pity.
Hoffman, 27, feels otherwise.
He spells out for a reporter later in the day why he decided to fight for his life when he lay in a hospital and saw no hope.
He starts with a "B." Adds an "E" and a "T."
It takes a while.
He does so by stopping the nurse, Char Sanok, 50, as she works through the alphabet. With a nod of his head, he stops her each time she reaches she reaches the right letter.
The letters and words continue until he spells: "BETTER THAN DEATH."
It is Joshua Hoffman to the core.
No quitting, no complaints
One year after he returned to West Michigan, two years after he was shot in Iraq, it speaks to the wry sense of humor that survived the sniper's bullet that severed his spine and changed his life forever. It also testifies to a remarkable spirit that drives him on through a minefield of reasons to quit.
The visiting nurse who tends to Hoffman through the night talks about the patient who has become an inspiration to her.
"He doesn't complain, not in the middle of the night, not ever," says Judy Zender, 54. "He doesn't say stop."
Hoffman lives in a house he moved into two months ago, built to his needs with donated labor and materials and the help of a Massachusetts-based charity called Homes for Our Troops.
It has oxygen tanks in the basement and hardwood floors to make it easier to roll his wheelchair. A motorized hoist lifts him out of bed and into a bath or shower. The cost of his care, which could reach several hundred thousand dollars a year, is paid by the Veterans Administration.
But at the end of the day, it is up to Hoffman to say if all this is worth it. He must decide to go on.
Endless love
Fiancee Lovell, 22, is the first to admit the journey has never been easy, not for Hoffman, for those closest to him or for the troops who made it back safely while he did not.
But Lovell said she and Hoffman learned long ago not to look back.
"Josh doesn't do what-ifs. I don't do what-ifs," she said. "What-ifs don't exist. We go with what we have today.
"If you love him from the beginning, you'll love him always."
Lovell and Hoffman met in Grand Rapids about five years ago, introduced by a mutual friend.
"We hit it off right away," recalls Lovell, a graduate of Rockford High School. That was two years after Hoffman joined the Marine Reserves, hoping to earn money for college.
He was sent to Iraq's Anbar province in October 2006. By then, Lovell and Hoffman were talking about marriage.
The critical moment
In a photo taken before his unit departed, Hoffman seems the very picture of a Marine, standing at 6 feet and about 220 muscular pounds, with a crew cut and the hint of a smile.
Seven months later, on the morning of Jan. 6, 2007, he was on patrol in Fallujah.
Hoffman and several other Marines walked down a narrow alley in front of a Humvee, on the lookout for a reported insurgent with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
A single shot rang out.
"Everybody else went for cover," recalled Navy Corpsman Sean Baney, 35.
"I looked around and saw Josh lying face down. He wasn't moving. He wasn't talking. I knew he was badly hurt by the position he was lying in."
The bullet entered Hoffman's neck and exited his shoulder blade, shattering his spine at the base of his neck. He was paralyzed from the chest down.
Baney and several Marines loaded Hoffman into the back of a Humvee. He stopped breathing on the way to a surgical center at the Marines' Camp Fallujah.
"I gave him mouth-to-mouth and he started breathing again," Baney says.
Hoffman was transported to a military hospital in Balad, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and to Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, D.C.
Ten days after he was shot, doctors summoned family members. Spinal fluid was leaking into his wound and causing infection. His fever spiked to more than 108 degrees, and doctors feared brain damage.
"We were told he had 12 hours to live," recalled his mother, Reed City resident Hazel Hoffman.
"They said to fly the family in to say goodbye to him."
Somehow, Hoffman pulled through. He was transferred the next month to Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center in Richmond, Va.
Friends, family, comrades
Hazel Hoffman and Lovell were at his side the next 13 months. That spring, some of the Marines with whom he had served stopped in to see him after their return from Iraq.
Navy Corpsman Baney, among that group, wonders to this day how he would have coped had he been the one sprawled in the alley in Fallujah.
"It's probably the worst injury that anybody could encounter over there," Baney said. "To me personally, the physical shape that he was in over there — and to be fully mentally aware and have little use of your body ..."
He never finishes the sentence.
Baney adds: "I don't think I could do what Josh has done. It's amazing."
On March 25, 2008, the former Wayland High School student returned to West Michigan when he landed with Lovell at Gerald R. Ford International Airport. Hundreds of supporters gathered in a hangar cheered as he was rolled away from the plane.
Hoffman was loaded into a medical transport vehicle and taken to the Kentwood apartment he and Lovell would share for the next 10 months. He has been hospitalized about 10 times since his return, for a variety of infections related to his paralysis.
Infection is the enemy
Hoffman now weighs 165 pounds, the result of muscle atrophy that follows paralysis. He needs supplemental oxygen as he sleeps at night. Because he cannot easily swallow, he depends on a feeding tube for all his nutrition.
Nurse Char Sanok begins Hoffman's 10 a.m. treatment as Lovell, their dog, Motley, and a friend, Rachael Crooks, 20, of Byron Center, come in for company.
The constant enemy is lung infection, a common cause of death in quadriplegics with a compromised ability to expel fluid from their lungs. It is a primary reason their life expectancy can be below average.
Sanok connects an aerosol container to a tube that enters Hoffman's throat and extends to his lungs.
With medications that include a bronchial dilator and a steroid, it is designed to ease breathing and loosen mucus that forms in his lungs because Hoffman is unable to cough.
After 20 minutes, Sanok leans over Hoffman with a set of vibrating paddles that gently pound his chest.
She follows with a machine that forces air deep into his lungs and then out, to force a cough Hoffman cannot produce on his own. His face turns red at the effort.
The last step is a suction device that pulls mucus out of his lungs.
The treatment complete by about 10:30 a.m., Sanok begins preparations for a bath. She straps Hoffman into the motorized harness that lifts him from bed, transports him and eases him into the water.
By about noon, Hoffman is back in the bedroom, along with Lovell, the dog and Crooks.
It takes about 20 minutes to dress Hoffman, leaving little time to make it to Grand Rapids for his 2 p.m. speech therapy appointment at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital.
Lovell wheels him out toward the garage. Pasted to the back of his wheelchair is a bumper sticker that reads "I Heart Hooters," courtesy of his brother, Jacob.
Learning to eat again
By 2:30 p.m., Hoffman is seated in front of speech therapist Beth Pearce, who also is helping him learn to swallow solid food.
Pearce spoons chocolate pudding into Hoffman's mouth as he tries to coordinate the tongue, lips and mouth in a sequence most of us never think about. Pudding dribbles back out the first try. Hoffman manages a small swallow on the second.
They move to speech lessons, as Hoffman blows out on a party favor to start air flow he needs to form a word. With considerable effort, he enunciates, in a hoarse whisper, the word "no."
A quiet night
Hoffman is home by about 4 p.m. in front of a big-screen television and the movie "Space Cowboys." His lung treatments continue.
Lovell and Crooks will depart a few minutes later for shopping and dinner, a rare evening out for Lovell.
Over the next few hours, Hoffman also would watch "Robocop" and a movie about the escort of a slain Marine from the Iraq war to his final resting place. The treatments continue.
Hoffman's brother, Jacob, 25, stops in from his home in Wayland. He tells stories of some of their teenage adventures, including a mud fight and the time Hoffman allegedly stole his brother's girlfriend. The brothers laugh at the memories.
Lovell returns a short time later. By now, Hoffman is nodding off in front of the TV.
Nurse Zender wheels him into the bedroom. She brushes his teeth. She hoists him out of the chair and into bed.
It's a few minutes after 11 p.m. as Lovell whispers to him before lights out. In three hours, another treatment will begin.
Spelling it out
Earlier that day, Hoffman lays out a few things that keep him going from one day to the next.
He starts with Heather Lovell.
He spells out what she means to him: "E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G."
Asked how he views his life today, he thinks a minute.
This one takes some time.
"I," he starts. Then "F" New word. Another "I."
Then another word.
The message finally comes clear: "IF I CAN DO IT, ANYONE CAN."
E-mail Ted Roelofs: troelofs@grpress.com
Video
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/news_impact/2009/03/paralyzed_marine_vet_lives_gru/print.html
Ellie
Posted by Ted Roelofs | The Grand Rapids Press March 29, 2009 09:42AM
Joshua Hoffman, paralyzed from the chest down by a sniper's bullet in Iraq, must undergo 90 minutes of therapy every four hours at his Middleville home just to survive. That does not even begin to touch rehabiliation in skills such as speaking and eating. Yet his fiancee, Heather Lovell, his friends and his nurses testify to the Marine veteran's never-say-die attitude.
MIDDLEVILLE — Over the hum of an oxygen machine, a nurse leans over Joshua Hoffman.
She listens to the lungs of this quadriplegic former Marine.
"Good morning, Josh. You ready to start?"
It is not yet 9 a.m. Hoffman's fiancee, Heather Lovell, is already out of the bed next to him and in the kitchen.
And soon it begins, a sometimes painful 90-minute regime of medication and respiration therapy Hoffman needs to stay alive.
It is repeated five times over the next 24 hours, afternoon, evening, middle of the night, just as it is seven days a week. Hoffman will be driven hours later to Grand Rapids for therapy to help him utter single words and learn to swallow solid food.
To some, it might sound like a prescription for pity.
Hoffman, 27, feels otherwise.
He spells out for a reporter later in the day why he decided to fight for his life when he lay in a hospital and saw no hope.
He starts with a "B." Adds an "E" and a "T."
It takes a while.
He does so by stopping the nurse, Char Sanok, 50, as she works through the alphabet. With a nod of his head, he stops her each time she reaches she reaches the right letter.
The letters and words continue until he spells: "BETTER THAN DEATH."
It is Joshua Hoffman to the core.
No quitting, no complaints
One year after he returned to West Michigan, two years after he was shot in Iraq, it speaks to the wry sense of humor that survived the sniper's bullet that severed his spine and changed his life forever. It also testifies to a remarkable spirit that drives him on through a minefield of reasons to quit.
The visiting nurse who tends to Hoffman through the night talks about the patient who has become an inspiration to her.
"He doesn't complain, not in the middle of the night, not ever," says Judy Zender, 54. "He doesn't say stop."
Hoffman lives in a house he moved into two months ago, built to his needs with donated labor and materials and the help of a Massachusetts-based charity called Homes for Our Troops.
It has oxygen tanks in the basement and hardwood floors to make it easier to roll his wheelchair. A motorized hoist lifts him out of bed and into a bath or shower. The cost of his care, which could reach several hundred thousand dollars a year, is paid by the Veterans Administration.
But at the end of the day, it is up to Hoffman to say if all this is worth it. He must decide to go on.
Endless love
Fiancee Lovell, 22, is the first to admit the journey has never been easy, not for Hoffman, for those closest to him or for the troops who made it back safely while he did not.
But Lovell said she and Hoffman learned long ago not to look back.
"Josh doesn't do what-ifs. I don't do what-ifs," she said. "What-ifs don't exist. We go with what we have today.
"If you love him from the beginning, you'll love him always."
Lovell and Hoffman met in Grand Rapids about five years ago, introduced by a mutual friend.
"We hit it off right away," recalls Lovell, a graduate of Rockford High School. That was two years after Hoffman joined the Marine Reserves, hoping to earn money for college.
He was sent to Iraq's Anbar province in October 2006. By then, Lovell and Hoffman were talking about marriage.
The critical moment
In a photo taken before his unit departed, Hoffman seems the very picture of a Marine, standing at 6 feet and about 220 muscular pounds, with a crew cut and the hint of a smile.
Seven months later, on the morning of Jan. 6, 2007, he was on patrol in Fallujah.
Hoffman and several other Marines walked down a narrow alley in front of a Humvee, on the lookout for a reported insurgent with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
A single shot rang out.
"Everybody else went for cover," recalled Navy Corpsman Sean Baney, 35.
"I looked around and saw Josh lying face down. He wasn't moving. He wasn't talking. I knew he was badly hurt by the position he was lying in."
The bullet entered Hoffman's neck and exited his shoulder blade, shattering his spine at the base of his neck. He was paralyzed from the chest down.
Baney and several Marines loaded Hoffman into the back of a Humvee. He stopped breathing on the way to a surgical center at the Marines' Camp Fallujah.
"I gave him mouth-to-mouth and he started breathing again," Baney says.
Hoffman was transported to a military hospital in Balad, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and to Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, D.C.
Ten days after he was shot, doctors summoned family members. Spinal fluid was leaking into his wound and causing infection. His fever spiked to more than 108 degrees, and doctors feared brain damage.
"We were told he had 12 hours to live," recalled his mother, Reed City resident Hazel Hoffman.
"They said to fly the family in to say goodbye to him."
Somehow, Hoffman pulled through. He was transferred the next month to Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center in Richmond, Va.
Friends, family, comrades
Hazel Hoffman and Lovell were at his side the next 13 months. That spring, some of the Marines with whom he had served stopped in to see him after their return from Iraq.
Navy Corpsman Baney, among that group, wonders to this day how he would have coped had he been the one sprawled in the alley in Fallujah.
"It's probably the worst injury that anybody could encounter over there," Baney said. "To me personally, the physical shape that he was in over there — and to be fully mentally aware and have little use of your body ..."
He never finishes the sentence.
Baney adds: "I don't think I could do what Josh has done. It's amazing."
On March 25, 2008, the former Wayland High School student returned to West Michigan when he landed with Lovell at Gerald R. Ford International Airport. Hundreds of supporters gathered in a hangar cheered as he was rolled away from the plane.
Hoffman was loaded into a medical transport vehicle and taken to the Kentwood apartment he and Lovell would share for the next 10 months. He has been hospitalized about 10 times since his return, for a variety of infections related to his paralysis.
Infection is the enemy
Hoffman now weighs 165 pounds, the result of muscle atrophy that follows paralysis. He needs supplemental oxygen as he sleeps at night. Because he cannot easily swallow, he depends on a feeding tube for all his nutrition.
Nurse Char Sanok begins Hoffman's 10 a.m. treatment as Lovell, their dog, Motley, and a friend, Rachael Crooks, 20, of Byron Center, come in for company.
The constant enemy is lung infection, a common cause of death in quadriplegics with a compromised ability to expel fluid from their lungs. It is a primary reason their life expectancy can be below average.
Sanok connects an aerosol container to a tube that enters Hoffman's throat and extends to his lungs.
With medications that include a bronchial dilator and a steroid, it is designed to ease breathing and loosen mucus that forms in his lungs because Hoffman is unable to cough.
After 20 minutes, Sanok leans over Hoffman with a set of vibrating paddles that gently pound his chest.
She follows with a machine that forces air deep into his lungs and then out, to force a cough Hoffman cannot produce on his own. His face turns red at the effort.
The last step is a suction device that pulls mucus out of his lungs.
The treatment complete by about 10:30 a.m., Sanok begins preparations for a bath. She straps Hoffman into the motorized harness that lifts him from bed, transports him and eases him into the water.
By about noon, Hoffman is back in the bedroom, along with Lovell, the dog and Crooks.
It takes about 20 minutes to dress Hoffman, leaving little time to make it to Grand Rapids for his 2 p.m. speech therapy appointment at Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital.
Lovell wheels him out toward the garage. Pasted to the back of his wheelchair is a bumper sticker that reads "I Heart Hooters," courtesy of his brother, Jacob.
Learning to eat again
By 2:30 p.m., Hoffman is seated in front of speech therapist Beth Pearce, who also is helping him learn to swallow solid food.
Pearce spoons chocolate pudding into Hoffman's mouth as he tries to coordinate the tongue, lips and mouth in a sequence most of us never think about. Pudding dribbles back out the first try. Hoffman manages a small swallow on the second.
They move to speech lessons, as Hoffman blows out on a party favor to start air flow he needs to form a word. With considerable effort, he enunciates, in a hoarse whisper, the word "no."
A quiet night
Hoffman is home by about 4 p.m. in front of a big-screen television and the movie "Space Cowboys." His lung treatments continue.
Lovell and Crooks will depart a few minutes later for shopping and dinner, a rare evening out for Lovell.
Over the next few hours, Hoffman also would watch "Robocop" and a movie about the escort of a slain Marine from the Iraq war to his final resting place. The treatments continue.
Hoffman's brother, Jacob, 25, stops in from his home in Wayland. He tells stories of some of their teenage adventures, including a mud fight and the time Hoffman allegedly stole his brother's girlfriend. The brothers laugh at the memories.
Lovell returns a short time later. By now, Hoffman is nodding off in front of the TV.
Nurse Zender wheels him into the bedroom. She brushes his teeth. She hoists him out of the chair and into bed.
It's a few minutes after 11 p.m. as Lovell whispers to him before lights out. In three hours, another treatment will begin.
Spelling it out
Earlier that day, Hoffman lays out a few things that keep him going from one day to the next.
He starts with Heather Lovell.
He spells out what she means to him: "E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G."
Asked how he views his life today, he thinks a minute.
This one takes some time.
"I," he starts. Then "F" New word. Another "I."
Then another word.
The message finally comes clear: "IF I CAN DO IT, ANYONE CAN."
E-mail Ted Roelofs: troelofs@grpress.com
Video
http://blog.mlive.com/grpress/news_impact/2009/03/paralyzed_marine_vet_lives_gru/print.html
Ellie