Greene Recovery 04-07-07


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Soldier slowly recovering from Afghanistan axe attack

Meghan Hurley, Victoria Times Colonist, 4 Jul 07

 

Capt. Trevor Greene startled his caregivers on the weekend when he asked for eggs and toast by yelling for them.

 

During the year after he was struck in the head with an axe in Afghanistan, Greene could barely whisper.

 

In response to his fiancee's questions, he could only lift an eyebrow or blink. In addition to speaking, now he can move his arms and lift his head.

 

"We've always been able to communicate, but it's just gotten better because he started to talk with one word, then more words and then a whisper," Debbie Lepore said from her Vancouver home.

 

For the past two months, Greene has been getting speech therapy twice a week.

 

He will soon get specialized treatment at the Centennial Centre for Mental Health and Brain Injury in Ponoka, Alta. The centre is the only place in Canada that offers long-term care for brain-injured patients, where they get individualized treatment programs created by a team of experts.

 

It all began on March 4, 2006, when Greene was talking with elders in a village in Afghanistan. An attacker crept up from behind and struck him over the head with an axe.

 

The Edmonton-based soldier was flown to Germany, where doctors removed parts of his skull so his brain could swell. Two days later, Lepore and Greene's parents were by his side. Greene was put into a medically induced coma and later flown to the Vancouver General Hospital, where he underwent two surgeries to repair the gap in his skull.

 

After more than a year, he was transferred to a private-care rehabilitation centre in Langley.

 

But the blow to his head hasn't affected his mental state or his memory.

 

"His personality is the same, because that part of his brain wasn't damaged," Lepore said. "He's the same old Trevor."

 

Instead, the blow injured the area of the brain that controls motor functions, which means Greene will have to learn to move, walk, and talk all over again.

 

Lepore took time off work as a chartered accountant and eventually cut her work-week down to two days.

 

She and her two-year-old daughter Grace plan to move from Vancouver to Ponoka, south of Edmonton, by the end of July.