On A Happier Note

I've been bitching about my neck a lot lately, so here's something positive.  There's young buddy of mine here at work who served in Iraq and got blown up in a Humvee.  He had a pretty serious back injury as a result, which has pretty much hamstrung him from leading a normal life.

I don't know how many surgeries he's had - his recovery has been long and slow - but he'd recently started doing some exercising again and trying to get back into the groove of things.  Unfortunately, his back was still giving him some really serious pain and the docs told him to stop exercising.  They did another MRI and found there was more shrapnel inside his back so they went in and removed it.  He's now feeling much, much better and the docs think they may finally have all the shrapnel out.  (He has two more follow-ups where the docs will search again to be sure.)

Even better, he's back to exercising and is dropping a lot of weight - this morning he showed me some pics of him when he was deployed - he was skinny back then, and has put on probably 50 or 60 pounds since being laid up.  So he's very excited to be dropping weight finally.

Also good news for him; the military informed him recently that he was owed back pay which he never even knew of.  Apparently when he got injured, his pay grade was elevated and he wasn't aware of it.  That increase in pay stretches all the way back to when he was injured (years ago) so he got quite a hefty check (he showed me the amount - wow!).  He and his young wife used it to pay off medical bills, their car they'd just bought, put some into savings, and the rest toward the house they just bought.  Things are really looking up for him and it's definitely well deserved.

Thank a vet.  They've earned it.