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WOUNDED WARRIORS GET NEW HIGH-TECH REHAB CENTER
IN SAN ANTONIO -- Private donations built the
$50 million
facility at Brooke Army Medical Center.
A couple of notes:
This center is the best. But, it's
a sad commentary that VA or DoD did not have the funds to build it.
It had to be done with private donations.
The story below does not mention two
people who made this happen.
First, Ken Fisher of the Fisher
House Foundation who spearheaded this project.
And, radio/TV personality Don Imus.
The I-Man raised over $12 million of the needed funds by badgering his
listeners, sponsors and friends.
Hats off to both of these friends of the
veterans community.
Story here...
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/
news/2007-01-29-military-rehab_x.htm
Story below:
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Army opens $50M high-tech rehab center for amputees, burn victims
Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Of the roughly 20,000 soldiers injured since the
start of the Iraq war, more than 500 have lost a limb — many of them in
roadside bombings.
On Monday, a $50 million high-tech rehabilitation center opens that is
designed to serve the growing number of soldiers who return from war as
amputees or with severe burns.
The 60,000-square-foot Center for the Intrepid will allow the Army to
move its rehabilitation program out of the Brooke Army Medical Center
and into a separate facility.
"The Center for the Intrepid is going to let us keep advancing what
we've been doing," said Maj. Stewart Campbell, the officer-in-charge of
rehabilitation at Brooke.
The facility tells soldiers "we're going to take care of you for as long
as you need us, to get you back to where you want to be," he said.
At Brooke, amputees were being treated in offices and facilities carved
out of the larger hospital. The new facility includes a rock-climbing
wall, wave pool and a 360-degree virtual reality sphere to help soldiers
recover their balance and other basic skills.
The center will be officially dedicated at a ceremony Monday. Sens. John
McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., both 2008
presidential hopefuls, are scheduled to attend.
Brooke's amputee program started two years ago and has about 50
patients, but the new center will allow it to expand and offer more
advanced rehabilitation, Campbell said.
Prior to the Iraq war, amputees were generally given acute care by the
military and then turned over the Department of Veterans Affairs, said
retired Col. Rebecca Hooper, program manager for the Center for the
Intrepid. But since 2003, the military has kept those patients and made
rehabilitation part of its mission.
Amputee rehab programs are now being run at Brooke, Walter Reed Medical
Center and Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
Because the new Center for the Intrepid offers high-tech equipment and
better facilities for severely injured soldiers, Hooper expects it to
become a magnet for advanced amputee rehabilitation.
The center was funded by private donations to the Intrepid Foundation, a
charity that has built dozens of houses to shelter families of wounded
soldiers while they undergo treatment.
As part of the construction at Fort Sam Houston, two new houses have
been added to two already there so that additional families could be
housed near the center.
Staff Sgt. Jon Arnold-Garcia, who lost part of a leg in a grenade
attack, got his first look at the rehab center on Sunday.
"This place is amazing, that the American people donated the money for
this," said the 28-year-old from Sacramento
Arnold-Garcia has been in rehabilitation at Brooke since May, but he was
anxious to get to work at the Center for the Intrepid, a four-story
glass building decorated with art and modern decor.
Arnold-Garcia and other amputees have been eyeing the rock climbing
wall, visible through the glass. They have also heard about the wave
pool, in which they can use wake boards to strengthen their back and
stomach muscles.
"It doesn't look like a hospital," Arnold-Garcia said, sitting in the
center's cafe. "It's a place I can see myself getting up and being
motivated instead of walking hospital hallways with doctors."
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Larry Scott
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