WOUNDED VETS SOLDIER ON

WOUNDED VETS SOLDIER ON
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/9/07
BY KELLY-JANE COTTERSTAFF WRITER Post Comment

ABOUT 90 PERCENT of the soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq survive their injuries.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that a new generation of veterans must learn to survive with extraordinary injuries — brain damage, multiple amputations, blindness and post-traumatic stress disorder so severe it almost seems visible, like a sizzling cloud of pain.
Wounded soldiers, and the medical professionals who treat them, speak of the day they were attacked as their "Alive Day," the day they nearly died. It makes for a macabre anniversary.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070909/ENT/709090318/1031

Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick gave his all in Iraq.

Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick gave his all in Iraq. But when the Gretna man came home -- minus a leg and with his arm in shreds -- he found a veterans' health-care system that didn't return that commitment
Sunday, September 09, 2007
By Bill Walsh

The bomb that tore through the floor of his Humvee in the fall of 2004 shredded his legs and left arm. Forty-six surgeries later, Schick is an amputee still learning to cope with physical limitations that as a star high school athlete he never dreamed he would face.
Perhaps just as daunting has been learning to navigate the veterans' health care system, which he says demeans the sacrifice of all veterans.
"When you have to deal with the VA (Veterans Affairs) or TRICARE (the federal health insurance program), you feel beaten down," Schick said. "You are a number, and you feel like a number. It's a total, total beat-down."
Schick, 25, who grew up in Texas and Louisiana and now lives in Gretna, is one of the 10 injured veterans featured in an HBO film, "Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq," that airs tonight. The title of the documentary, produced by "Sopranos" star James Gandolfini, refers to the date that the injured narrowly escape death and realize that they are still alive.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-9/118932307262670.xml&coll=1

Gandolfini's 'Alive' honors war wounded

Gandolfini's 'Alive' honors war wounded
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By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY

Just days before HBO film crews were to descend on Walter Reed Army Medical Center to record the plight of the Iraq war's wounded soldiers, the Pentagon nixed the plan — fearful of publicity about to surface over lax outpatient care.
HBO's longtime documentary chief, Sheila Nevins, had lined up Sopranos star James Gandolfini and 24-7 access on the heels of 2005's Emmy-winning Baghdad ER. A dozen filmmakers were stationed throughout the hospital.
Nevins and Gandolfini were forced to Plan B. The result: Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq (Sunday, 10:30 ET/PT), a stark, intimate look at the physical and emotional toll for many of the military's more than 25,000 war wounded.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-09-04-gandolfini-alive-day_N.htm

Families fear sacrifices forgotten

Families fear sacrifices forgotten
By David McLemore
The Dallas Morning News
(MCT)
FLOWER MOUND, Texas - Debby Schick remembers the day in September 2004 when her world collapsed.
Her son, Marine Cpl. Jacob Schick, called from a military hospital in Germany saying he'd been injured and was coming home. A nurse got on the phone to tell her his right foot had been amputated.
Then came the hurried flight to a military hospital in Bethesda, Md., the antiseptic smell in the hall outside his room as she overheard him tell a nurse to cover him: "I don't want my mom to see this."