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When you’re standing on a land mine, time stands still. Romanian Army Staff Sgt. Laurentiu Serban certainly felt so seconds before he lost his leg.
***image1***As he sprinted through a minefield in Afghanistan June 20, trying to reach a vehicle full of wounded coalition Soldiers, an ominous metallic click under his left foot stopped him in his tracks. Instantly, Sergeant Serban knew the antipersonnel mine would explode the moment he lifted his foot, but what options did he have?
“Suddenly, I’m thinking about so many things because I think I’m going to die,” Sergeant Serban recalled from a hospital bed in the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. “I’m thinking about the wounded Soldiers. If I die, they could die (without him alive to render first aid). I’m thinking about the Soldiers behind me. If they get close to me, they will die.”
Sergeant Serban decided to lift his foot before anyone was able to approach him. He remembers his body blasting skywards; thinking he’d never feel the Earth again.
“I’m lucky to be here,” said Sergeant Serban, who didn’t know at the time that the mine beneath him was connected to buried artillery rounds that inexplicably failed to explode. “If I had a religion, I would say I had a miracle.”
After the incident, medics transported Sergeant Serban to a Canadian military hospital in Kandahar where doctors amputated the tattered remains of his lower right leg and arranged for his transport to LRMC the next day.
There, he underwent five months of intense treatment for his injuries.
Besides taking his leg, the explosion ripped off Sergeant Serban’s pinky finger on his left hand and peppered the lower half of his body with shrapnel.
Because the explosion destroyed the skin and muscle on the back of his hand, it had to be sewn onto his abdomen for several weeks, enabling skin to regenerate over the wound. Without muscle tissue to draw nutrients from, skin grafts fail.
Since the incident, much has changed for Sergeant Serban. But, life is getting better, he insists, thanks to care provided by U.S. Army doctors.
“The road to maximal functional independence has many steps,” said Lt. Col. Bryan Boyea, chief of LRMC’s Physical Therapy Clinic. “For amputees, our strategy is to focus on the whole person to include physical rehabilitation, psychological wellness and education regarding options for community and work reintegration.”
Sergeant Serban has undergone various surgeries, said Dr. (Maj.) Derek Cooper, Sergeant Serban’s primary care provider. “He’s recovering from his physical injuries just fine, but he’ll have a lot of adjusting to do,” he said.
Sergeant Serban has been working with LRMC’s physical therapy professionals, who prepared him for a life he never thought he’d step back into.
“The initial rehab was to simply maintain the range of motion in his knee and muscle strength,” said physical therapist Maj. Julie Johnson. “Serban also came down to the Physical Therapy Clinic for cardiovascular exercise.”
Besides therapy, Sergeant Serban received multiple surgeries on his amputated leg to optimally shape it to fit a prosthesis provided by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.
The custom-fitted titanium prosthesis uses shock absorption and energy return technology to mimic the “roll and bounce” of a human foot. Doctors said it should enable Sergeant Serban to accomplish his goal of being the first Romanian Soldier to remain on active duty after losing a limb during the Global War on Terrorism.
“I have a lot of work to do if I want to stay in,” said Sergeant Serban, who must perform sets of 82 push-ups and 90 sit-ups, each in less than two minutes, and run six kilometers in less than 40 minutes with a rucksack, weapon and full combat equipment to remain in the service. “It won’t be easy, but they tell me walking and running won’t be a problem.”
Sergeant Serban even has plans to parachute.
“I want to do airborne operations again,” he said. “I have to, if I want to keep my job.”
Sergeant Serban’s leaders stand behind his efforts to return to active duty. Twice, his commander visited him in Germany. His recovery is close to complete, according to his doctors, but amputees often experience complications that can take years to heal. For example, Sergeant Serban swears he can sometimes feel the lower half of his right leg. Aggravation takes him when he tries scratching the itchy ghost limb.
“Sometimes it’s very strange to have an itch like this, that I know I can feel but can’t make my mind believe is not true,” he said.
But the treatment Sergeant Serban received at LRMC is what he needed to expedite a return to his comrades still in the fight, he said.
He’s not the only allied Soldier, though, whose road to recovery has been paved by LRMC professionals.
Since the U.S. and its allies declared war on terrorism in 2001, the hospital has cared for wounded troops from 38 countries. As long as Soldiers fight, LRMC will continue its universal treatment of allied forces, said Dr. (Col.) Steven Princiotta, the deputy commander for clinical services.
“At Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, we give all of our patients the same high level of care, regardless of what nationality they may be,” Dr. Princiotta said. “These men and women are fighting against terrorism. We are honored to care for them.”
LRMC provided more treatment to Sergeant Serban than he expected, he said. Thanks to the efforts of his doctors and nurses, Sergeant Serban has come back from a crippling injury. The rest of his recovery is now up to him.
“I have so much to do, I don’t want to think about it,” he said. “But I don’t want to think about staying in this bed, either. I will miss some people here, but nobody wants to live in a hospital,” he said several weeks before returning to Romania in October. “I’m ready to go back to my business. Soldiers don’t belong in bed.”
