Special to The VOICE, Part 7 of 8
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FOR HIS PARENTS, NO SMALL PART OF HELPING THEIR SON, ZACERY Blaisdell, required
mastering the culture and the ins and outs of the massive Walter Reed complex.
The Main Medical Center, a large concrete structure, sat on 113 acres in the nation’s
capital and was open to visitors around the clock. Upon entry, family members and
friends were met by one of three greeters, described by Leanne as “always very welcoming.”
Whether getting there by vehicle or by foot, guests had to show their drivers licenses,
which were checked each visit.
The walls were draped in the flags of military units. Framed pictures of former
hospital commanders hung prominently. As a virtually self-contained community, there
was a barbershop, a beauty salon, a laundry and dry cleaners, a flower shop, a credit
union, a post office, a PX or hospital store, and a vending machine room. In the
Main Medical Center, there was an all-denominational chapel and there was another
one located near Mologne House where soldiers stayed as outpatients. For those who
grew weary of hospital fare, there were three commercial restaurants: a Subway,
a Dunkin’ Donuts, and a Burger King. Computer labs were accessible to patients as
well as to their family members at all times and free phone service was available
to them anywhere in the United States.
In the words of Terry Blaisdell, “there was no waiting in line for anything you
needed,” a sentiment shared by Leanne Blaisdell-Stevens. “Whenever I asked for anything,
they jumped to help me.” For those with a specific issue or concern, the Soldier
Family Assistance Center responded to every imaginable request.
Parents, wives, husbands, and other immediate family members did not reside with
the patients at Walter Reed. They were put up by the Department of Defense in local
hotels and motels located throughout the city. Zac’s family stayed at the Crowne
Plaza Hotel about two miles from the Main Medical Center. Shuttle buses began running
at eight o’clock each morning and continued transporting visitors throughout the
day and well into the evening. The last returning bus left Walter Reed at ten o’clock.
Adjusting to the patterns of the hospital required patience and some trial and error.
Balancing the habits of family members with those of Zac did as well. For example,
Terry is early to bed and early to rise. So he started walking to Walter Reed, getting
to Zac’s room at about four o’clock each morning, but waking his son. After a few
days of such routine, Zac decided to speak to his father about it: “Dad, can you
not get here so early?” he complained. “I want to sleep.” So Terry asked him when
he wanted him there. “How about eight?” Zac offered. And so it was. From then on
Terry was careful to keep to the set time.
For everyone, and especially for Zac and his medical team, it was all business.
Virtually each waking hour of every day was filled with a regimen of complex and
physically-draining diagnoses and treatments, those which could unleash a range
of dramatic and shifting emotions, highs and lows that could change over a minute’s
time and were nearly impossible to control.
A heartbreaking instance of this occurred just a few days after their arrival at
Walter Reed. In a visit with his doctors, Zac and his parents were presented with
devastating news. “Hard day,” Leanne wearily posted on her Facebook page late that
evening. “Zac had surgery this morning” and “met with his eye surgeons today.” Although
Zac knew he could not see out of it, his physicians now put it in terms that were
unequivocal. “He is blind in his right eye,” they said. Seven simple single-syllable
words, but crushing ones that cut deep, a nightmarish, worst of all possible scenarios
outcome. Weighing the magnitude of what she had been through, Leanne divulged that
she had been experiencing “moments of tears about every two hours.” Without question,
she admitted freely, this qualified as one of those times.
As did this one. A few days later, Zac was in eye surgery until nine in the evening.
It “went great,” Leanne reported, although the doctors “had to do more than what
we discussed.” More agonizing was the fact that the extreme pain that they had been
warned would accompany his treatment was suddenly becoming a reality. “HE IS FEELING
IT ALREADY!!” Leanne wrote, and it was affecting his attitude. “He apologized for
being mean and yelling at me,” Leanne commented,” giving the assurance that Zac
“would never have done it if he wasn't in pain.” “GREAT KID!!!!!!” she praised.
Phase one of the experimental Muscle-Vein Skin Graft procedure got underway on September
13, about a week after Zac’s arrival. During the surgery, Zac’s abdominal muscles
were exposed and laid out in such a way so that the weaker tissues would die, leaving
those that lived available for later use. That took two weeks. Then Dr. Shashikant
connected the abdominal tissue, applying half of it to Zac’s arm, with an artery
behind Zac’s navel supplying blood and oxygen to the treated area (to disturb his
one remaining artery in his arm by attempting to use it for that purpose had been
deemed too risky). This second part of the process had been projected to last twenty-one
days, but Zac responded so well to treatment—he had no dead tissue, no elevated
fever or blood pressure, and his heartbeat in the graft grew steadily stronger—that
it required just thirteen days.
But it had been far from easy. Zac had not been allowed to get out of bed and he
had had to lie twenty-four hours a day with his arm resting on his stomach. The
lack of motion had caused him to develop his first bedsore.
This set the tone. In those first six weeks, Zac remained in what he calls “a dazed
state with all the surgeries and medications.” He underwent so many operations—about
twenty—that he “lost track of them all.”
Zac’s days and nights blurred into a succession of good and bad moments as his body
suffered through the excruciating process of healing. And through it all, his family
and especially his mom were there with him, bearing witness, lending assistance,
shouldering the setbacks, and celebrating the positive steps forward.
Each day Leanne performed a range of duties that included everything from clipping
her son’s nails (both fingers and toes) to helping him to bathe, shave, and brush
his teeth to dressing and using the bathroom. She assisted him in eating, monitored
his medications, and served as a liaison between him and the medical staff. When
he laughed, she laughed; when he felt pain, she felt pain; when he cried, she cried.
She was his greatest ally and his primary caregiver.
More than once and sometimes for hours, when Zac suffered through bouts of extreme
nausea, Leanne held a paper bag for him to heave into. “You know your mom can’t
stand puke,” she told Zac at one point, “but you’re toughening me up.”
She committed herself to doing anything that would aid in her son’s recovery and
ease his suffering. Another time, when Zac craved Chicken Alfredo from Pizza Hut
(but which didn’t deliver to Walter Reed), she set out on foot to hunt down a franchise.
And when Zac wanted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, she left again to find a
grocery store so he could enjoy one of his favorite foods.
There was a battle—physical and emotional—raging within Zac’s body.
On October 16, Zac awoke with a sharp pain in his neck. So doctors “removed the
epidural in his shoulder” and “the pain did not come back.” Leanne considered that
a “GREAT SIGN.”
The next day, with the increased mobility that was coming with the passage of time,
Zac promised to get in his wheelchair and get outside for some fresh air.
But there was another operation planned for the following Monday, this time “just
a washout and maybe more skins grafts.”
Twenty-four hours later, Zac achieved a milestone. Leanne overheard five nurses
remark: “Wow Zac that is amazing.” The cause of their enthusiasm was that their
patient had “picked up his left leg off the bed about 12 inches, [and] moved it
right & left.” He had “even put weight on it & did a few shuffle steps.” Posting
about it on Facebook, Leanne quipped: “Now for the funny part. Zac said, ‘I can’t
believe my mom wore me out today.’”
But again that optimism failed to last. “Zac got disappointing news today,” Leanne
wrote three days later, although “he is holding his head high. The [stabilization]
bars will stay in his arm until January.”
Two days after that, Zac underwent another major surgery. “Went well,” Leanne informed
family and friends. The physicians took a “graft from his left thigh for the rest
of the graft on his left arm. Poor guy doesn’t have much skin left for donor sites.
[They] took the drain out of his chest. Ate gummy life savers & Gold Fish for dinner,
now to somehow get to a store and buy him Honeycomb cereal or golden grahams.”
Another two days passed and Zac finally “got outside.” He also “sat up in bed 100
% himself & moved to the edge.” Unfortunately, in doing so, he “tore 3 spots on
his flap.”
Despite the disappointments, by late October most signals were pointing in a positive
trajectory and what had once seemed so far in the distance now appeared within reach.
For Leanne, it was the realization of her most cherished wish. “I can cry now that
I am at my hotel, crying in pure joy and happiness,” she confessed following another
grueling fourteen-hour day. “All Zac wanted was to keep his arm, to see and to walk
again and as of now [all three are] 100 % possible.”
But they were far from out of the woods. Just forty-eight hours later, Zac was “sick,
vomiting all day” and not until after ten o’clock that evening was he able to get
a little food down and take his medications, which finally allowed him to sleep.
The treatments continued. That same day, Zac had received a new brace for his foot
that enabled him to walk “somewhat normal” although, as Leanne wrote, “the nerves
in his foot do not work YET so his foot just hangs there [and] he can’t pull it
back up.”
The rehabilitation exacted a heavy personal toll. Leanne had not been back to work
in Minnesota since learning of the attack that first day of September and almost
all familial duties had had to be delegated to others. Sometimes it was all she
could do to hold everything together. “I keep SMILING and NEVER GIVE UP!!!” she
declared on November 7.
At another point, she commented: “Too many emotions, and if you were to physically
hug me now I would bawl like a baby!!” Then, Leanne added, “Okay, I did anyways!!”
Zac experienced similar emotions, which sometimes spilled over onto those he loved
and was closest to. On one occasion, he returned to his room only to become angry
at everything: from how his bed felt to not having a table tray or pillows to how
his IV had been put in to how his blood was drawn. At his mom he “yelled” that he
“didn’t need her” and he ordered her to “leave now,” which she did, but not before
deciding not to come back for a day. She thought that would give Zac some time alone
and a chance to cool off.
Helping her to cope, Leanne possessed a strong support network of family and friends.
“Stay strong Leanne, take some time for yourself!!” her sister, Colonel Laura Ludwig,
counseled from her hospital post in Landstuhl, Germany. “It is OK to have a good
cry. Pain and frustration can make ZAC lash out....and you are a safe and convenient
target. He still needs you, his Mom.”
The plan to stay away had the intended effect. When Leanne returned, Zac seemed
in better spirits. “I do not mother him as I want him to improve,” Leanne wrote
at the time. I “just want him not to be so mean to everyone, docs and nurses included.
I want to see him smile once in a while too. We are all suffering with him.”
Not everything that had happened in their lives, though, could be made whole again.
Six weeks later, Leanne confided: “This is only the second half of a VERY BAD YEAR!!!!”
All those “months lost away from my family due to the Taliban!!!!!” But she was
accepting of her fate. “It is what it is!!!!!” she concluded. “God get me thru it!!!!!”
On December 31, Leanne posted an end-of-the-year message on her Facebook page: “Happy
New Year to everyone,” she wrote. “May this year be what you dream it to be. I have
to say I am glad 2010 is leaving, the worst year as a mother. Without my friends
and family I would not have made it thru all of this.”
