Mom won’t let son die from Iraq injuries
TAMPA (AP) – When the neurologist told Nelida Bagley her son wouldn’t survive his brain injury, all she could do was scream.
“You’re lying. My son is not going to die,” she wailed into the telephone before throwing it against the wall.
Bagley’s son, Jose Pequeno, a sergeant in the New Hampshire National Guard, had been ambushed while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. When a grenade exploded behind his head, he lost almost all the left side of his brain.
But Pequeno, 34, defied the doctor’s prediction. Within weeks he was off the ventilator, breathing on his own. Soon he was out of a coma, opening and closing his eyes. And this month, after 34 months and 17 surgeries in a half-dozen medical centers, he came home.
He was discharged from James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital, and his mother brought him to the family’s newly renovated five-bedroom house in Land O’ Lakes.
“No more nights in the hospital. No more,” Bagley said as she rolled her son in his wheelchair onto the back patio. “You’ve got the trees to look at now. … This is home, Jose. This is home.”
As she stood with her hand on Pequeno’s shoulder, friends and family gathered around. More than 150 people came to welcome him home, including representatives from U.S. Central Command at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base and members of at least six veterans motorcycle clubs who lined the road holding U.S. flags as his van approached. Pequeno rode a motorcycle before he went to Iraq.
He is one of the most traumatically injured soldiers to return from the Iraq war, said Steven Scott, director of the Tampa VA hospital’s Polytrauma Center. He can’t speak, walk or lift his arms. His nourishment comes through a feeding tube. Two surgeries to rebuild his skull have failed because of infections.
But he’s aware. His facial expressions tell his family and therapists when he’s in pain and at peace. He grimaces when his sister plays rap music on the radio, never his favorite. When his 13-year-old daughter visits, he watches her every move.
“You can see the sparkling in his eyes,” Bagley said.