Healing and family are next missions for Afghanistan vet

Healing and family are next missions for Afghanistan vet from Lake Worth

By John Lantigua

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — U.S. Army paratrooper Travis Brown of Lake Worth is bursting with frustration.

He is 21, with a 6-foot-4-inch body full of broken bones - including a pelvis fractured in eight places and shattered legs. A foot-long scar that looks like the stitching on a football descends from his chest to his belly, where his spleen was removed.

Ten of his teeth are broken and he wears a pirate patch over his left eye because powerful medications have given him double vision. His nose looks normal, but only because military surgeons did a good job sewing it back on.

He is in bed, restless but immobile, and desperate to convince the people around him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that today, the meds aren't working well. Simply by touching him they are causing him excruciating pain.

"It's your fingertips," he utters through his clenched remaining teeth to veteran physical therapist Arnette Smith, who is gently moving his left leg.

"Don't you understand? Your fingertips are hurting me."

Brown is a tough, brave, idealistic young man who pictured himself fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But he never did engage the enemy.

Frustration and pain are about all he has known since he was deployed there on April 30. In that respect, he is much like the nation as a whole when it comes to the war.
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Healing and family are next missions