What Wounded Soldiers Need Most After Battle — and How This Org Helped Them Get It

It was every Army wife’s nightmare: Jessica Allen’s husband, Chaz, was injured in an IED explosion that took both of his legs. But knowing the love of her life wouldn’t walk unassisted again wasn’t the hardest part. That came later, while Chaz convalesced at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and Jessica and her children were hundreds of miles away in their home in Tennessee, wondering about his condition and worrying about how to pay for his treatment.
“Wounded soldiers are stuck at whatever military facility you are supposed to be at until the Army tells you to leave,” Jessica says. “I had to drop everything I was doing. I was running a tax business, the girls were in school, I ran five Girl Scout troops at the time he was injured…and I had to drop all of that to go take care of him.”
Jessica was on the verge of tapping into her emergency funds to pay for flights and hotels in order to be close to her husband’s hospital bed. Increasingly anxious, she reached out to the Fisher House Foundation, a group that had supported many of her friends when their loved ones in the service had been injured. The Foundation offered to cover the cost of her plane trips and provide her with housing. Continue reading “What Wounded Soldiers Need Most After Battle — and How This Org Helped Them Get It”