wiggled his right big toe. When Ortiz visited him that evening, the nurse on duty told her to put her hand down at the bottom of her son’s right foot. He then wiggled all of his toes. The nurse instructed Adam to press that foot against his mother’s hand. He did.
The progress was slow, but palpable. Soon enough, Jacquet and Ortiz boarded a C-130 headed home to the U.S. An ambulance met them at the airport and sped off to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
*** Jacquet remained dazed.
“Hit the pedal!” a voice boomed through a megaphone. Doctors swarmed on Jacquet once he arrived at Walter Reed. One of the heads of the group told Ortiz he had worked at the medical facility for years and through multiple wars. When it came to the individual injuries, he said, Jacquet’s weren’t horrible. Put together, though, he was in the worst condition the doctor had ever seen.
Jacquet doesn’t remember the explosion or what happened
afterward. It’s all hearsay to him. His first true memory came about a month and a half later, on Nov. 24, 2011. It was Thanksgiving and his 20th birthday. He was helped into his wheelchair at Walter Reed and taken down the hall to get food. Then he was taken back to his hospital room. In December 2011, Jacquet moved to Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center in Richmond, Va. Two months later, he had surgery to amputate his left leg below the knee.
***
ARMY WOMEN
ON DECK With a
growing need for female officers in the U.S. Army, West Point added women’s
lacrosse and made a splash hiring Kristen Waagbo.
Ken McMillan checks in on the Black Knights as they work toward their historic 2016 debut.
Visit
LaxMagazine.com/ ArmyWomen
Jacquet returned to Walter Reed for rehab. It had been five months since the explosion. His lower left leg was gone. But he was alive. Walter Reed’s Military Advanced Training Center boasts a large facility solely for amputees. An indoor track lines the perimeter. A harness hangs from the ceiling so wounded warriors can relearn how to run and walk on the track without the threat of falling. Large padded tables with white sheets over them give the soldiers a place to lie down and do exercises. Medicine balls align one of the walls, with cardiovascular and other exercise machines nearby.
Jacquet came here five times a week to work with physical therapist Kelly McGaughey. He had chronic nerve pain. “He was a complex case,” McGaughey said. “Your heart’s still there and you
have to wait for your body to kind of catch up.” ***
Walter Reed offers an adaptive sports program for wounded veterans. It’s another way to get them physically active again. People from the program met with Jacquet and peppered him with different sports. None appealed to him.
44 LACROSSE MAGAZINE » November 2014
A SOLDIER’S CHILD
Christian Golczynski, the kid in an iconic Iraq war photo, uses lacrosse to pay it forward
Christian Golczynski doesn’t get recognized all that much anymore. Now 16, it seems like an entire lifetime since he
was the 8-year-old boy with the trembling upper lip, receiving the folded American flag at his father’s funeral, in one of the
Jacquet wanted to play lacrosse, the sport he fell in love with during his last year of high school. But Walter Reed didn’t have a lacrosse program. Not enough interest, they said. Jacquet didn’t buy that. Toward the end of 2012, two new people took the reins of the adaptive sports program. Jacquet became good friends with the administrators and told them he wanted to get a lacrosse program started.
Jacquet took matters into his own hands. One day, he rolled his wheelchair into the Military Advanced Training Center with a notepad and pen. He wrote down the names of every wounded warrior who wanted to play lacrosse. “After a year and a half, we finally got something done,” Jacquet said.
In the spring of 2013, Ryan Baker, co-founder of Wheelchair Lacrosse USA, came to do an indoor clinic on campus. The turnout wasn’t huge. About 15 people showed up. But because of who surrounded him and what they had put on the line while serving, Baker called it one of the most powerful events in his organization’s history.
Many attendees had never played. Baker was ready for this. He brought thousands of dollars worth of equipment with him and left it behind.
Baker returned to Walter Reed for another clinic the next fall. A third clinic was being scheduled as this edition of Lacrosse Magazine went to press.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
©ARMY
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