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Limbs Lost to Enemy Fire, Women Forge a New Reality
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Changes revealed themselves one at a time.
Wilson remembered that her daughter eyed a plate of croissants in the hotel-like room where the family stayed at Walter Reed that first time they were together again. The child asked her mother for a sandwich.
"I realized, 'Oh, I can't even make a sandwich,' " she said. "It was a hurting feeling, your kid asking you to make her a sandwich and you're saying, 'You'll have to make your own sandwich' to a 6-year-old."
In November 2004, she heard that a female pilot had just been shot down in her Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. Within days, Tammy Duckworth arrived at the hospital missing both legs, her right arm in jeopardy. She lay in a coma, her husband and parents at her bedside. "You care about everybody, but somehow amputees connect to amputees," Wilson said, especially if they are women. "It was a big deal to me," she said.
Wilson headed to the pilot's room to sit with her family. She found herself returning to Duckworth's bedside again and again -- arranging her get-well cards, decorating her room, kissing the top of her head. One day, when Duckworth, now 37, was conscious, Wilson rolled up her sleeve to reveal her own amputated arm.
In a soft voice, Wilson said, she reassured her that another soldier was with her now. Wilson told her she could not imagine exactly how she felt but that she cared deeply.
She could not hold the pilot's hand because Duckworth was too injured.
Instead, Wilson stroked her hair.
'The Sky Is the Limit'
By mid-2005, Juanita Wilson was back to the rhythms of daily life with her husband and daughter. The couple bought a house in the suburbs of Baltimore. She took a new job with the Army, is a staff sergeant and is up for a promotion.
At 6:30 one winter morning, Wilson was cooking Cream of Wheat on her stovetop -- taking great care to pour with her prosthetic and stir with her other arm. In her life as a woman, a mother and a wife, there are limits she once didn't face and could not even imagine.
"Kenyah," Wilson called.
When the child came down the stairs in bright pink pajamas, she saw her mother's trouble: Wilson was in uniform, almost ready for work, but she needed help with her hair.
