BETHESDA, Md. – The Ryan family stood vigil, gathered around a hospital bed in Building 10, Ward Five East – a surgical ward at the National Naval Medical Center. Before them lay Marine Cpl. Eddie Ryan, silent and pale, a grievous bullet wound to his brain and a feeding tube in his belly, straight through the “N” in a blue tattoo that spelled “RYAN.”
Angela Ryan stroked her son’s fine hair. Christopher Ryan squeezed his boy’s hand. Felicia Ryan, 19, looked into her brother’s eyes, her hand on a Bible resting against his left leg.
The news was not good.
Eddie’s neurosurgeon, Robert Rosenbaum, had told the family that the young Marine’s frontal lobes had been terribly damaged by a bullet that tore into his skull during a firefight in western Iraq on April 13. It was quite possible that Eddie, 21, would never fully regain consciousness or recover what the doctor called full cognitive activity.
Christopher stared at his son’s smooth young face and spoke: “We need a miracle. Eddie’s going to be our miracle Marine. We’re praying that God gives us this miracle because my son is a great American.”
Across the hall the same day earlier this month, Marine Cpl. Bryan Trusty sat up in bed, wolfing down a chicken dinner on a hospital tray. His father, Steve, sat at his bedside, amazed that his son was eating and talking, and even laughing.
On April 3, a hot shard of shrapnel ripped a hole beneath Bryan’s left eye, pierced the length of his brain and lodged against his brain stem. He survived emergency brain surgery in Baghdad, but went into cardiac arrest on the flight to the United States on April 7. His doctors did not expect him to live.
Now Bryan, who turned 21 in the intensive care unit just four weeks earlier, was about to be discharged for outpatient therapy, with shrapnel still in his brain and his arm, and a distinct memory of all that had befallen him. He is able to walk and speak normally.
“I call him my miracle child,” his father said, watching him eat.
The number of service members wounded in Iraq has surged past 12,000, half of them injured so badly that they cannot return to duty. Many of the most critical cases end up here at the National Naval Medical Center, established in the early days of World War II.
On the worst nights at the Bethesda hospital complex, ambulances and casualty buses deliver up to 100 wounded Marines and sailors from Iraq. Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, more than 1,700 have arrived, most of them very young and suffering from the devastating damage inflicted on human tissue by explosives, bullets and shrapnel.
Some, like Bryan Trusty, stay only a few weeks. Others, like Eddie Ryan, stay longer. The soldiers are surrounded by attentive nurses and skilled surgeons, and by loved ones who cling to hope and share an ordeal that can be both traumatic and uplifting, their lives in turmoil and forever altered.
Eddie’s mother never leaves his side
If not for Eddie’s tattoos, Angela Ryan would not have recognized her son after she and her husband flew to see him at a military hospital in Germany. His face and body were grotesquely swollen. Before he was wounded, Eddie was lean and fit, 6 feet tall and 195 pounds. He had ballooned to 250 pounds because of severe swelling and fluid accumulation caused by injuries.
Eddie is a sniper, one of the Marine Corps’ elite. He signed up straight out of high school and was sent to Iraq. He was on his second tour there when an enemy bullet pierced his brain.
Since he arrived here in April, his mother has not left his side. She sleeps in his room or just down the hall in the visitors’ lounge. His father and sister have left the hospital just once, to drive Eddie’s beloved black Toyota Tacoma pickup from a friend’s house in Virginia to the family home in Ellenville, N.Y.
The Ryans have taken leaves from their jobs – Christopher, 43, as a heavy equipment operator and Angela, 46, as a school lunchroom monitor. Felicia has left community college and a job at an outdoor supply store.
“Wherever Eddie is, that’s our life now,” Felicia said.
The Bible resting on the hospital bed contained a photo of Eddie in his Marine dress uniform, looking handsome and fearless. Placed between his feet were an embroidered Marine Corps logo, along with a photo of Eddie and his family the day they picked him up at Camp Lejeune, N.C., when he returned safely from his first tour in Iraq.
Much of the time, Eddie’s eyes were open. He breathed on his own, but he did not speak. He was shirtless, and his tattoos were on display. His parents had not approved of them; for a while, Eddie wore long-sleeved shirts to hide them. But now the Ryans found comfort and inspiration in the body markings.
On Eddie’s abdomen is the RYAN tattoo. On his right arm is a tattoo of hands in prayer and the Marine Corps logo. On his left arm is an American flag and the words “Land of the free because of the brave.”
His parents read to him from the Bible, squeezing his hands as they prayed. His father read him a favorite passage, Psalm 50, Verse 15: “And call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee and thou shall glorify me … .”
“Eddie’s faith is very important to him,” Angela said, careful, as always, to speak of her son in the present tense.
The person they knew may be gone forever
Rosenbaum, the neurosurgeon, was candid with the Ryans about their son’s prospects: “From the beginning, I made it very clear to Eddie’s mom and dad that if we were successful in keeping him alive after the initial swelling, they’d be taking home a human form, but I did not think they’d be able to take home Eddie as they remembered him. He will not remember his dog or his best friend or his room at home. If a miracle of miracles happens and he wakes up and begins to interact, they’ll have a person they’ve never met before.
“And, unfortunately, that is the extreme best scenario.”
The bullet or bullet fragments that penetrated Eddie’s brain created a percussive wave that produced a temporary cavity and caused severe bilateral frontal lobe injuries, Rosenbaum said. Portions of his skull were destroyed on impact; others were removed by surgeons in Iraq to relieve brain swelling.
“The doctor told us that Eddie lost two-thirds of his frontal lobes,” Christopher said. “And the frontal lobes are what makes Eddie, Eddie.”
However, Rosenbaum said, Eddie’s youth and superb physical condition can improve his degree of recovery. He’s a fitness fanatic and an amateur boxer. On home leave, he would jog in his combat boots, lugging a backpack loaded with rocks.
In Eddie’s room, Felicia tried gently to get her brother to arm wrestle; they roughhoused often as kids.
“I was holding his hand down and I was like: Come on, let’s arm wrestle – and he pushed my hand down,” she said. “So I pushed back and I was like: Are you going to let me win? And he pushed my hand back down. That’s Eddie – he’s very competitive.”
The miracle Marine and his ‘plastic brain’
In his room, Bryan Trusty was up and walking, preparing to go home. His doctors had anticipated a stay of several months, but he was being discharged after just a few weeks.
“You should have seen this boy. He looked like he’d been shot in the face with a shotgun,” his father said. “He went into cardiac arrest on the plane ride home. He had no brain waves. Now look at him.”
Bryan shrugged and smiled. Slender and fair-haired, he speaks with a slight Midwestern twang. He said he remembered very little of the plane flight, but every detail of the firefight in which he was wounded. It happened during an insurgent attack on Abu Ghraib prison, when he rushed to a guard tower to help fellow Marines.
A rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside the tower, injuring Bryan and five other Marines. In all, 44 Americans were wounded during the battle.
There is a long red scar on Bryan’s scalp from surgery in Baghdad to remove shrapnel, and a tiny spot beneath his left eye where the shrapnel penetrated, shattering his spectacles. Surgeons decided to leave the shrapnel lodged against his brain stem because of the high risk involved in removing it.
Bryan’s swift recovery is highly unusual, “just an absolute tremendous turnaround,” said James Dunne, the first surgeon to treat him when he arrived at Bethesda.
There is no single reason, he said. “Just the luck of the draw, really. It depends on the path of the fragment, the extent of the damage – a lot of factors. But these young guys have very plastic brains and can overcome some really serious injuries.”
Both Bryan and Eddie joined the Marines in response to the Sept. 11 attacks and were based at Camp Lejeune, but they had never met. Even so, before Bryan left the hospital, he sought out Christopher Ryan.
“I told him to just be patient, Eddie will get better,” he said. “I said it may look bad right now, but they need to keep the faith and everything will be OK.”
Bryan’s mother told Angela: “We’ve seen amazing things happen here, and so can you.”
Sure enough, in mid-May, the amazing thing happened – or at least an early installment. Eddie was stable enough to be transferred to a VA hospital in Richmond, Va., for rehabilitation therapy.
He no longer needs a feeding tube, and he recognizes friends and family members. He is alert and responsive. He has smiled for the first time since he was wounded.
And then he managed to speak his first word: “Mom.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
