Corpsman amputee prepares for historic return - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Corpsman amputee prepares for historic return

SAN DIEGO — The explosion of a bomb buried in a road in Ramadi, Iraq, killed the Marine driving the Humvee, fatally wounded the vehicle commander and ripped through the body of then-Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class (FMF) Daniel Jacobs.

Jacobs had landed in Iraq just weeks after joining the infantry unit — India Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines — when another corpsman couldn’t deploy. Months after that Feb. 25, 2006, blast, doctors amputated Jacobs’ mangled left leg below the knee.

However, life as an amputee isn’t ending Jacobs’ career as a corpsman.

Even as he endured 49 surgeries, Jacobs was twice found by physical evaluation boards to be “fit for duty” — rulings that mean he could continue to serve in the Navy and enable him to return to fight in a combat zone. He is the only hospital corpsman with a below-the-knee amputation serving on active duty, Navy medical officials said.

In mid-June, Jacobs, 25 and now an HM2, with orders for another “green side” tour to the 1st Marine Division, checked in at the infantry division’s headquarters at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Later this year, he will prepare to go to Afghanistan with the division’s forward element. When he does, he will be the first amputee corpsman to deploy to combat.

Jacobs, who joined the Navy in 2004, recently re-enlisted for another six-year tour.

“I just wanted to get back to the green side,” he said. “I didn’t want to go work in a hospital. I didn’t want to go work on a ship.”

Jacobs, whose injuries include several lost toes, fused fingers and fractured bones, said he was surprised by the PEB rulings.

“A lot of doctors at the time were telling me I couldn’t stay in,” he said.

But Jacobs, son of a retired Navy quartermaster, harbored no doubts about his long-standing plans to do a 20-year naval career and more immediate goals of becoming an independent-duty corpsman or serving with a seagoing Marine expeditionary unit. Along with his father’s support, he said, “I had a lot of people pulling for me.”

While recovering at National Naval Medical Center Bethesda, Md., Jacobs had a chance encounter with then-Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Harvey, who pinned on his Fleet Marine Force pin. He later got a sit-down meeting with Harvey, now the four-star head of Fleet Forces Command.

“He told me that nothing is impossible,” Jacobs said. That nudging from a senior officer, he said, “helped my recovery, and my career as well.”

The long road back

After several years of rehabilitation at Naval Medical Center San Diego, Jacobs said, the transition back to work as a corpsman has gone more smoothly than he would have expected.

In 2009, Jacobs transferred to Camp Pendleton to work at the School of Infantry-West. Initially, he wasn’t sure how he’d be viewed and accepted by the Marines. He worried the students, most fresh out of boot camp and getting their first dose of combat infantry, would see him and think, “this is what you have to look forward to.”

His fears were unfounded, though. “A lot of the students thought it was pretty awesome,” he said.

The school’s staff members “were very supportive,” he said — even the young corpsmen who hadn’t realized that Jacobs was an amputee until he showed up, in shorts, for physical training one morning.

“They were pretty amazed,” he said.

He can do all of a corpsman’s work, even inserting IVs and giving vaccines, despite having lost two fingers on his left hand and a fused ring finger on his right. And for all that medical paperwork that has to be done, “I type even faster than I did before,” he said. “No real issue.”

Jacobs has kept fit with regular exercise, including running on the treadmill and rock-climbing to strengthen his arms and upper body. It wasn’t always easy: The high school cross-country runner initially struggled in his rehabilitation, battling fitful sleep and the “phantom limb pain” that plagues many amputees, and found himself on the bad path of self-medication with alcohol.

He eventually found his recovery in PT. It wasn’t long before he ran and passed the physical readiness test, and the competitive athlete took to racing with road bikes or hand cycles as a way of keeping fit and active.

After completing his first marathon in 2007, Jacobs cycled in October 2009 as part of a “Road to Recovery” group from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He ran the Chicago Marathon in October 2010. He continues to race with the Achilles Freedom Team and hopes to run the Detroit Marathon this fall, if the pre-deployment training schedule permits.

“Working out was probably the best thing,” he said. “A lot of people ... are going to have to try their own thing.”

Helping him throughout his recovery is his wife, Jenean, and dog, Romeo, who Jacobs got as a puppy to help him through his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jacob now works at the battalion aid station with the division’s Headquarters Battalion as he trains for his eventual deployment. Aside from his prosthetic, he expects to take the same gear into combat as any corpsman.