I went to Walter Reed hospital a couple of times to visit wounded soldiers, kids with no legs and one arm. You start to question some things.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
During a trip to Iraq last fall, I visited our theater hospital at Balad Air Force Base and witnessed these skilled medical professionals in action and met the brave soldiers whose lives they saved.
As someone who's spent time with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on USO tours and met wounded warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda, I feel a deep obligation to the men and women who have risked life and limb on our behalf.
During war time, when people were injured, I was really frustrated I did not become a doctor. It's painful not being able to save people, witnessing their pain.
Because my father was an army officer, I was told to enter the military school during the war. Luckily or unluckily, one month before the entrance examination, I got polio, which made my right arm numb. It's still numb.
I have no military application in my research. You know, we are all involved into rehabilitation medicine.
Vets are close to my heart, okay, and it's not only because I served, okay. It's because of what they go through, okay. A lot of these people have gave their lives, a lot of them have gave their limbs, okay, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a heap, you know.
I've never had to spend any time in the VA hospital, so I really can't speak for those guys.
I've been giving free money seminars for the troops at Walter Reed Hospital and one of the Iraqi War Vets realized that the military wouldn't pay for the dental work he needed.
It's hard for people sometimes to relate to me. They weren't in the military, they weren't injured overseas in Iraq, they weren't burned, they didn't go through 33 surgeries, or two and a half years in the hospital.
So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also.