..."This hasn't been a good day," his mom, former local actress and singer Debby Schick, said from her son's bedside. "They removed his nerve blocker and they've turned off his morphine pump."
Doctors substituted a candy-type sucker laced with pain medication, but it knocked Schick out, so he lapsed in and out of the holiday like a shopper going stall to stall at a bazaar...
...Jacob Schick, 22, was wounded when an improvised explosive device, a roadside bomb, detonated under the armored Humvee he was driving in Iraq's al Anbar Province on Sept. 20. That was less than two weeks after he and his unit, Bossier City-based Bravo Co., 1/23rd Marines, arrived in the strife-torn country.
His right foot had to be amputated. And he suffered compound fractures of his left leg and arm, with severe tissue damage to both and to his left hand. Doctors battled infections with antibiotics..."
I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm not considering these guys (and ladies) and their tremendous sacrifices when I write my anti-war screeds. While I will continue to scream into a vacuum about the circumstances that necessitated their sacrifice, I will never, ever blame them for their geopolitical location. They've been put there by (charitably speaking, and in no particular order) a combination of bad policy, lies, and a continuing lack of critical thinking on the part of the 51%'ers.
When I think of the thousands of Iraq war vets like Jacob Schick, I think about the thousands of homeless, displaced, broken vets from a war nearly 40 years ago. And I know that the 'system' will eventually deal with the current crop of young men and women no better than it has dealt with the vets of past wars.
It's truly sad, and as hopeful as the media portrays guys like Jacob Schick, the dark dispair will remain for a lifetime with many of these wounded, maimed, and psychologically traumatized men and women. If the entire truth about the current war ever makes it into mainstream conciousness, America will again have succeeded in little more than creating a whole class of embittered and forgotten vets.
Maybe we can make a small difference with at least one guy. Drop Jacob a Christmas (or a "get well") card at:
Lance Cpl. Jacob P. Schick -- 4 West
Brooke Army Medical Center
Building 3600
3851 Roger Brooke Drive
Fort Sam Houston, Texas
78234-6200
