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 Thursday, September 25, 2003
Welcome home By Dave Steffenson-- Assistant Editor
Chris Riley/Staff Photographer
And it wasn’t the fact that he has to drape his jacket over his arm because of the seven pins in his right hand and wrist looking like an erector set built an inch off of him as his broken bones begin to heal and reattached ligaments and tendons begin to strengthen. It wasn’t because of the hidden scar stretching from his back to his groin from the skin graft taken to give him new skin to cover his right wrist and thumb.
No, it was even more minute. It was in the traces of dirt and blood still showing on his right thumb, which was nearly blown off of his hand a little more than a month ago when the medic’s company, part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was attacked while on patrol in Iraq.
But that’s not what was on any of the 12 family members’ and four friends’ minds Sunday. It was a time of celebration. Cory was home, and it was time to go to Taco Bravo.
“It’s a big running joke they have,” said Carol McCarthy, Cory’s mom, at Maneta San Jose Airport, just after the group welcomed Cory with signs and American flags as he came from America West Airlines Flight 285. “They say if you take a girl out on a date, and she actually eats there, she’s a keeper.”
Cory has made sure to make Taco Bravo the first place and last place he visits whenever he’s come home on a break from the service. He will be home for the next month while on convalescent leave, although he must make three to five visits to a hospital in Palo Alto for occupational therapy for his right index finger and thumb while he gains his movement back and prepares for further surgeries when he returns to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Cory’s parents will take some vacation time from work next week and hope to go camping with Cory, even if he can only go for an evening because of his therapy.
“We’re trying to drag him away from his busy schedule so we can talk to him about what’s happened in the last six months,” said Mike McCarthy, Cory’s father.
While Cory cleaned up his wounds and tried to spend some time removing some of the dead skin and dirt still on his injured hand Monday morning, his father looked on and helped only when his son asked.
“It’s tough,” he said. “You want to be able to help him, but he needs to be able to do it himself. I have to hold myself back.”
Cory has quickly become adept at using his left hand to carefully clean and re-wrap his injured hand - mainly because of a lack of treatment at Walter Reed, where he was forced into the “in-and-out” ward of the hospital. Cory said he was kept with retired military veterans coming for brief visits and others making quick trips to the hospital instead of with other injured soldiers from Iraq.
“The ward was filled up,” he explained. “There were open beds, but they can only have so many patients for each nurse.”
After Cory’s parents visited him in Washington, D.C., nearly a month ago, he was moved to Ward 57, where other soldiers from Operation Iraqi Freedom were being cared for, and they could relate to what each other had been through.
“It was a lot better to be with people I could relate with,” he said.
However, Cory said he was bothered by some of the other less-injured soldier’s attitudes.
“They’re like, ‘Oh my God, my life sucks,’ and they’re only missing a finger or their shoulder is messed up,” he said. “There was one guy in the ward who was missing three of his limbs. You looked at him, and you tried to put on a smile. You look at him and say, ‘That’s not fair.’ ”
Cory also said it’s hard to come home knowing that so many of his fellow soldiers are still taking fire from Iraqis.
“They ask us if there’s anything they can do for us, and you say, ‘Yeah, get me shipped back out,’ ” Cory said. “You all jump in together; you’re all best friends. No matter what, you want to come back together.”
He also has trouble with being called a hero.
“All of us are doing our jobs, just like they would’ve done,” he said. “If you ask us, the ones that are still out there are the heroes.”
Cory has tried to keep up with what his unit is doing in Iraq, but he has received little information. He wrote a letter and hopes to receive a reply soon to find out how everyone is - including his replacement at medic.
“I don’t know how my guys are doing,” he said. “They really haven’t told me what’s going on. I’m really missing my buddies.”
While Cory remembers the attack on his unit well, he said he was told more information by a commanding officer after the attack. According to the officer, three guys started crying when they saw Cory’s injuries.
“That really touched me. They were guys that I wasn’t even that close with,” Cory said. “You realize the bonds you have with one another.”
Cory said as a medic it takes time to earn the respect of other soldiers because medics don’t fight. But they are solely responsible for the lives of their fellow soldiers on the field.
“When they stop referring to you by your name and start calling you ‘doc,’ you have their respect,” Cory said. “Doc is not a term they use lightly.”
When Cory was hit, he had to instruct another soldier to help him take care of his own wounds while he did his best to make sure another soldier in the unit who also was hit would be OK. While it may seem almost impossible for someone to think about helping others when his own hand has been injured and he’s applying a tourniquet on his arm, Cory said his instincts took over, and he was doing exactly as he had been trained to do.
“I just kept thinking, ‘It’s not my hand. It’s not my hand,’ ” he said. “When you think like that, you can do it.”
Along with bone grafts, Cory still needs to have a surgery to reattach a ligament in his thumb to give it full mobility, although the torn ligament had snapped back into his forearm and couldn’t be found in earlier surgeries. However, he is still optimistic about making a full recovery and continuing his goal to become a firefighter-paramedic when he leaves the service.
“I don’t want anything holding me back,” he said.
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