The Struggle of Fatherhood for a Wounded Veteran

My name is Beth, and my husband is Jimmy.  Jimmy was injured in Iraq in 2004 by a roadside bomb, which resulted in him losing his left leg due to an infection that had set into his wounds. He also suffers from PTSD and a TBI. Jimmy and I met at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was in recovery, a few months after his injury. In the beginning, he did great in his prosthetic, but over the next five years, he suffered several myodesis failures and lost several more inches of his femur in his residual limb.  This resulted in his stump being too short for a regular socket to fit well and too long to be fitted as a hip amputee, so for the last 10 years, he has been on crutches as his primary means of getting around.  

We have three children, Hunter (13), Mackenzie (9), and Jaxon (6).  As a caretaker, it is a given that you are going to take on a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities and duties that having a family requires, but something that I have not figured out how to take on, is when my husband looks at me and expresses feelings of inadequacy in his “manly” duties as a father.  He cannot teach our kids how to ride a bike, how to do martial arts (something he grew up doing), or the ins and outs of sports mechanics like throwing or fielding a ball.  Back when he was still in the early phases of recovery, people would often ask what it was like to be an amputee, and, for Jimmy, it did not seem that big of a deal. He was always an athletic person who had great balance, and since he still has his dominant leg, the day-to-day things he had to do on one leg were not a problem.  I can stand in and do most of these things, but this does not help ease his feelings of inadequacy in any way. 

If you were to ask our kids, they would tell you that they see him as their hero.  I remember once our son Hunter had a friend ask him why his dad only has one leg and what it was like. Hunter, all of six years old, responded defensively that his dad does more on one leg than their dad does with two!  Our children obviously have never known their dad any other way, and are fully aware and proud of how their father fought for our country and lost his leg.  Jimmy does as much as he possibly can with them, and even if he does not talk about it, I know he struggles with the fact that he cannot do more.  If only for a moment, I wish I could make Jimmy see what our kids see when they think about their dad.  I try to tell him, but I cannot make those feelings go away.  

I decided to write about one of the hardest things my husband has dealt with emotionally, next to the loss of the Marines he lost over there, in hopes of sparking a discussion with others that have dealt with this type of issue or might be currently going through it and have some advice to offer.

Written By: Beth, Veteran Caregiver & HTH Representative