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"Oh My God, I'm Hit!"
Hot dust choked the air over the desert outside Rawah, Iraq. It wasn't even noon last June 27, but already the temperature had climbed to 100 degrees. Perched in the gun turret of his Stryker light-armored vehicle, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jacque Keeslar surveyed the dirt road ahead while on a mission to raid a safe house for suspected insurgents. As his patrol sped through the dusty landscape, 36-year-old Keeslar never saw the improvised bomb buried beneath the road. Suddenly an explosion ripped through the vehicle with a roar. "Oh, my God!" cried Keeslar as he frantically tried to pull himself out of the turret. "I'm hit!"Three out of five soldiers in the Stryker sustained serious injuries, but his were the worst: The blast had shredded both his legs. Within 48 hours, surgeons in Germany amputated his right leg below the knee and his left one at the kneecap. "I don't remember when I realized my legs were gone," says Keeslar today. "All I could think about was starting the recovery process so I could walk again."
A mere four months after the attack, Keeslar is getting his wish. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he strides around the physical therapy center with barely a hitch in his gait. Beneath baggy sweatpants and jogging shoes, he wears a revolutionary prosthetic device known as a C-Leg, so named because of a computer microprocessor in the knee that makes 50 calculations per second to adapt to a user's gait.
While in previous wars the loss of a leg meant a lifetime of restriction, service members like Keeslar can reclaim their independence thanks to the $50,000 C-Leg, a wonder of titanium, graphite and technology made by Germany's Otto Bock HealthCare. At Walter Reed, technicians programmed his C-Leg's circuitry to keep him stable and upright -- no matter the surface or angle of terrain.
With a C-Leg on his left side and a mechanical prosthetic on his right, Keeslar soon began to walk naturally, climb stairs and return to a normal life with his wife, Vanessa. Last November, he competed in the New York City Marathon, riding a hand-cranked recumbent bicycle to reach the finish line of the 26-mile course in a little over three hours. This year, he hopes to return to active duty as an instructor at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and looks forward to spending weekends riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. "As soon as I put on the C-Leg, I was walking again," Keeslar says. "It's an awesome piece of equipment."Though Keeslar's recovery seems miraculous, military medical marvels like his C-Leg are becoming increasingly common. Since the war in Iraq began in 2003, Americans have suffered more than 3,000 deaths and about 23,000 casualties. But the conflict has produced an unexpected payoff: remarkable advances in treating trauma and injuries. Military doctors and researchers are making impressive gains in healing injured soldiers and rehabilitating them to active lives. And many of these innovations are finding their way to general medical use, aiding civilians as well as troops. Against the backdrop of a divisive war in the Middle East, here are several heartening advances in military medicine that have the power to help us all:
Neuro RescueMost military doctors once considered traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) received in combat to be fatal. Less than ten percent of soldiers survived severe head injuries, and fewer than five percent went on to lead independent, functioning lives. But when coalition forces landed in Iraq in 2003, a group of eight U.S. neurosurgeons and neurologists decided to try a new front-line approach to TBIs called damage control neurosurgery, or neuro rescue.
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