A warrior's personal struggle (12/9/04)

A warrior's personal struggle

By JESSIE MILLIGAN

Knight Ridder Newspapers


subhed or reader: Sister keeps journal of her brother's painful ordeal after he was wounded in Iraq
She dreams she is standing in the hallway of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., when the doors slam open and voices shout: "Clear the hall!"

She jumps back as medics rush in with a fallen Marine on a gurney.

This happens over and over and over, the doors slamming, the shouts reverberating each time another shattered young man or woman arrives.

Then Lezleigh Kleibrink, 30, of Grapevine, Texas, wakes and goes about her day as a stay-at-home mom, a scrapbooker and keeper of family history.

She turns on her computer. Since September, she's been keeping an online journal so friends and family can keep track of the progress of her brother, Marine Cpl. Casey Owens, 23, of Houston.

Owens, on his second tour of duty in Iraq, was riding in an unarmored Humvee on Sept. 20, when an explosion ripped into it, tearing apart one of his legs, breaking bones and embedding about 200 pieces of shrapnel in his body.

His sister's electronic journal crackles with insight into one family's journey through the corridors of nightmares and dreams.

Sept. 21, 2004: "Donn, my step-dad, got a call from Twentynine Palms (Marine base) Tuesday afternoon. A sergeant read him an e-mail that Casey had been injured in an accident, that he had his leg amputated, that he had shrapnel in the neck and was going to be moved to Germany. And that was it."

The family scrambles to get overseas to see for themselves the seriousness of Owens' injuries.

Kleibrink and her mother, Janna Dunkel, turn to a friend, Houston restaurateur and AM radio talk show host Edd Hendee. He calls House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and in less than four hours, Kleibrink and her mother have passports. Dunkel tells her employers at an inorganic chemistry lab, where she is a secretary, and at Target, where she is a clerk at night, that she will be gone. That night, mother and daughter fly from Houston to Paris to Frankfurt.

Sept. 24 and 25: "We were able to go in and see him. It is not Casey. He is swollen, everything is broken. His mandible had been broken, and wired, therefore his face is twice the size of what it was. His nose is black with tubes coming out of it. His body is one big abrasion. He has several hundred stitches all over him, tubes on both sides of his lungs, exterior rods in his right arm and left leg to stabilize the fractures and his right leg is gone below the knee. We are living a nightmare ...

"We thought we were going to lose Casey last night, each time he coded. We have two chaplains with us who have been praying non-stop over him and with us ...

"This afternoon's prayer is for the 55 service men and women being brought into the hospital today alone. Mom and I watched and prayed as we watched each man brought into the ICU ward, and prayed for the staff who jumped into action as each medic crew brought another. This just brought home that THERE IS A WAR OUT THERE."

A drug-induced coma keeps Owens out of pain. He is at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where the recently injured are stabilized before being sent to the United States.

"Please pray that my Mom can have the strength to watch Casey learn of the news of his physical state, and the loss of the Marine he was with. It will be a horrifying moment that Hollywood could never re-create - pray that she can make it through without her heart breaking."

Owens' sister types these lines into an online journal on a Web site, www.caringbridge.org/tx/caseyowens, so family and friends can keep up with his progress.

She writes with desperation: "Please share this site with EVERY person you know, so that we can have him covered with prayer worldwide."

And, more frequently, she writes with optimism, finding strength in any positive sign. Owens barely lifts his eyebrows in recognition of her, and Kleibrink writes: "THIS WAS AWESOME, made me want to cry!!!"

A doctor pulls Owens' family aside and tells them his left leg probably will need to be amputated as well.

On Sept. 28, Owens is carried aboard a hospital plane and sent to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Kleibrink and her mother accompany him home. They do not sleep for 36 hours.

For a moment, he is temporarily off sedation and awake.

He asks if his face is OK. His sister says, "Yes."

He asks if his arms are OK. She says "Yes."

He asks if his legs are all right. She says, "Everything will be fine."

His mother and a surgeon later explain the details.

Sept. 29: "He is very disoriented, frustrated, and PO'ed, for lack of better words, at everyone," Kleibrink writes.

"The next day, surgeons amputate his left leg below the knee.

Oct. 2: A few days later, Owens shocks his family.

"We were surprised when, after a lot of writing it down so we understood him, that he asked for a camcorder. He wanted to document his progress from start to finish, so that he could show his (future) children how far he'd come and how good he'd had it. This just made us weep."

The ward around him is filled with men and women, some even more severely injured than Owens.

His sister begins to believe he is going to make it. She makes plans to contact Mattress Mac in Houston for help in getting special furniture into her mom's house so that Owens can stay there when he gets out. She makes plans to contact the "Monster Garage" TV show for help in outfitting her brother's car, and she makes a note to write "Designer's Challenge" on HGTV to see if they can help.

The night before, Owens woke up in a panic.

"At one point he asked if he had been kidnapped. He said he didn't believe 'them' when they talked to him, and they were laughing at him."

Patients often hallucinate under the influence of narcotic painkillers, says a nurse, who tells the family stories of the injured who claim that Iraqis are outside the window or yell for everyone to get down fast.

Owens hallucinates for days.

Oct. 5: "The standard scale for pain is 0 to 10 with 0 being no pain and 10 being unbearable. Casey has surpassed 10, which resulted in him being sedated all over to let his body heal, instead of dealing with the pain. He woke up for a short period around lunchtime only to scream in pain, yell at mom and let me know I was an idiot - some things never change between siblings :) He shortly thereafter was knocked back out."

Oct. 6: "It is very tough trying to tell a hallucinating 6-foot, 2-inch Marine that he has to stay still or he'll pull all his tubes out," his sister writes.

Oct. 7: "Casey had a very sad moment today, as we believe he had a moment of clarity of the explosion and the weeks before it ... he woke up sobbing to his core, telling Mom that he had seen one of his friends die."

The family found out later that the friend, a Marine one week shy of his 21st birthday, had indeed died in Owens' arms.

"Please pray for peace of mind for him, that he can sleep dreamless sleep so his body can heal."

Oct. 9: "He and I have watched a movie today, and I'm going to rent some more for him (made him watch one of my chick flicks, poor guy)."

The celebrity visitors start showing up just after Kleibrink returns to Grapevine to spend time with her husband, Kevin, and 3-year-old son, Matthew, who has been looked after by Kevin's mom.

Oct. 10: "Casey is really suffering from phantom pains in his legs. This is the phenomenon in amputees where the brain is still registering that the limbs are still there. He feels that his toes are all curled up, that they itch, and that the arch of his foot feels on fire."

He sits up in a wheelchair just 18 days after the explosion.

Oct. 15: "He had a couple guys come in - (actor) Rob Schneider and (country singer) Neal McCoy! ... They visited with Casey and took some pictures - Rob signed his with 'You can do it!' just like his character from 'The Water Boy,' which is right up Casey's alley, as he loves Rob!"

Oct. 16: "And he also had another visitor - Jon Stewart!! Casey loves Comedy Central, so between he and Rob Schneider this could not be more perfect! Mom said he was VERY sincere and genuinely nice and stayed to talk with Casey for a good 15 minutes ... Mom videotaped them. Man, did I leave at the wrong time!"

Oct. 19: "Casey is still waiting for a bed at Walter Reed (the Army medical center where he will go into physical therapy and learn to wear artificial legs). The hospital is so packed that they literally do not have space for him in the amputee ward right now."

The ups and downs continue. Owens finally gets a bed at Walter Reed. On Oct. 31, his mother rents a car and brings her son to a nearby mall, where she pushes him in a wheelchair. The next day, Kleibrink writes, "They were both glad to get out, but it was a very emotional trip experiencing the world with this new challenge."

Dunkel has spent seven weeks by her son's side. Kleibrink spent three weeks with her brother in the hospital and periodically returns to visit him in Washington, D.C. For Christmas, the family plans to travel from Texas to the East Coast in a recreational vehicle.

"Won't that be fun?" Kleibrink writes. "We want to spend Christmas together as a family."

The visits and the journal will continue as long as it takes, Kleibrink says.

Nov. 9: President and Mrs. Bush visit Owens in his room.

Owens is expected to be in the hospital at least several more months.

After that, he can come home to Texas and start a new life.