USD Magazine Spring 2013

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plex care — either because they have lost limbs, sustained massive burns or severe wounds, or, because their physical injuries are combined with a traumatic brain injury or PTSD — bypass the Warrior Transition Unit altogether and are brought back to the United States. Thometz has the soldiers swim and cycle, practice archery, play seated vol- leyball or wheelchair basketball — all of which allows them to be active, increase their heart rates and get an endorphin rush without putting direct pressure on their injuries. They like wheelchair basketball, but also get a lot of benefits from archery. “These soldiers are used to holding a weapon, but because of things like PTSD, holding a weapon that goes boom is not advised,” she says. “Archery gives them the opportunity to focus on something else, to concentrate on their breathing, on their sightline, on the angles of the wind. It requires a high level of concentration, but gets their mind off whatever else may be going on in their lives.” Helping these soldiers physically also helps them heal in other areas. Thometz tells the story of a soldier who had a heart condition. these soldiers are used to holding a weapon, but because of things like ptsd, holding a weapon that goes boom is not advised.”

inda Stanley used to love crawl- ing into her bed at 7:40 a.m. after her nightshift as a charge nurse at the 32 nd Medical Group in Balad, Iraq. She lived in a sparsely furnished dormitory at the Balad Air Force Base. She duct taped a screen meant for a car’s windshield to her only window to block the sun while she slept. She had a locker, a table she made out of scrap wood and family photos taped to the wall. But it was Stanley’s bed that gave her refuge from the war around her. She draped her twin-sized bed with a colorful comforter. She reinforced it with a slat of wood to keep the sagginess at bay. She topped it with a foam cushion so she wouldn’t feel the worn out springs that poked through. Best of all, she washed her own sheets so they smelled like Downey fabric softener, rather than the grime of filthy fatigues, masked with military-grade laundry detergent in industrial washers. One night, however, while she slept, a mortar hit close to her trailer. Even now, six years later, the smell of Downey takes her back. “I didn’t hear any sirens go off when the mortar hit,” says Stanley, who still prefers not to discuss the details of that night. “All I remember is waking up on the ground and then hearing the sirens. It was the only time I really felt helpless.” Stanley ’12 (MSN) served as a nurse in the military for 20 years before joining the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science’s inaugural psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner class. Today, she works in an emergency psychiatric clinic at the VA Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif. She shares her own story of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and helps other veterans suffering from its effects. “I share my story and my journey to nurs- es, residents, doctors, generals and members of Congress,” she says.

“I need people who are taking care of veterans with this condition to understand and have empathy for what's going on in their heads. If they understand it better, they'll take better care of veterans.” W hile Stanley takes care of veterans here at home, Elizabeth Thometz ’06 focuses on soldiers abroad. Her work is all about helping wound- ed troops regain a sense of normalcy in their lives. She helped develop an adap- tive sports program for Army soldiers who are part of the warrior transition unit in Vilseck, Germany, a small town in north- eastern Bavaria. Thometz isn’t an athlete, unless, she says, you count the fact that she played basketball her freshman year of high school before realizing that the show choir was more her speed. She was never in the mili- tary, even though for a brief period at USD she thought she’d go into an officer-train- ing program for the Marines and worked out diligently with other candidates before deciding it wasn’t quite the right fit. In the end, Thometz went on to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She earned a master’s in athletic training and went on to work as an athletic trainer at the U.S. Army base in Fort Jackson, S.C. Nearly three years later, she got a call from a former professor who’d heard about a new job that was being created to help wounded soldiers in Germany. “Soldiers are taken out of combat or other units and assigned to this unit,” says Thometz, who moved to Germany in September 2011. “Their sole mission is to focus on getting better — to recuperate and heal.” There are nearly 200 soldiers in the unit. They may stay between six to 18 months, but most are rehabilitated in about a year. Soldiers who need more com-

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