Hero: Ted Wade

Ted Wade

Ted went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2002, spending six months moving from place to place with his unit, rounding up Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents. He saw combat patrolling in and around Kandahar and Bagram, and later out of Khost in the mountains. The unit performed numerous raids looking for weapon stockpiles, and they searched for enemy troops coming over from Pakistan. Ted got through this tour unharmed.
In July of 2003, he had only five days' notice before he was sent to Iraq. He first went to Baghdad, and then to Mahmudiyah, a Shiite town near the southern edge of the Sunni Triangle. In this area, Ted’s unit did a number of patrols looking for weapons of mass destructions (WMD). They also experienced several firefights with insurgent forces.
On February 14, 2004, Ted was in the fifth vehicle in a convoy. The first four vehicles got past an improvised explosive device (IED) planted in the road. Roofless, doorless, and unarmored, Ted’s Humvee didn’t offer much protection to the nine American soldiers it carried.
When that unarmored Humvee hit the IED, the blast did its worst. It tore Ted’s right arm off. It broke one of his legs. Worst of all, the damage to Ted’s brain was serious.
He was rushed from the scene of the explosion to the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, and on to the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for neurosurgery. Because the hospital there was not equipped to deal with Ted’s specific case, he was transferred to a civilian hospital in Germany, where his life was saved by a neurosurgeon. He didn’t wake up until after his arrival at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Ted suffered multiple injuries, and his recovery continues. It will be a long journey; however, Ted is absolutely committed to the fullest possible success in his recovery, and he has the support of an extraordinarily determined wife.
This has proven exceptionally important. In Germany, American doctors were ready to give up on Ted, believing he had no chance to live. However, one doctor kept Ted in a civilian hospital in a nation that does not allow people to be removed from life support. When Ted returned to the United States, doctors from the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs (VA) gave Ted little chance of ever walking and talking again. Yet Ted’s wife, Sarah, fought to get the best possible treatment for her husband. Eventually, she got the VA to authorize a nongovernment doctor, one of the nation’s leading experts on traumatic brain injury, to treat Ted.
Considering the dire initial predictions, Ted has achieved amazing results in his rehabilitation. He’s not only walking and talking. When we first interviewed Ted and Sarah Wade at the end of 2006, he was participating in the first of three ski clinics during that winter.