A step forward: Injured Marine faces life’s challenges head-on
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More than a year has passed since Marine Lance Cpl. Tomy Parker took that fateful step that changed his life forever.
Parker’s platoon was on the way back from running combat patrol, when disaster struck.
Five Marines had already been injured by IEDs that week; traveling by foot was extremely dangerous for the platoon. Intelligence had notified them of three IEDs, which they successfully detonated. It was evening on Dec. 10, around dusk, when an IED detonated beneath Parker’s feet.
“It was the end of the day, and we were heading back to patrol base,” Parker said. “I stepped on it, and it blew up.”
The explosion left Parker with his left leg amputated at the hip and his right leg amputated above the knee. The blast also caused him to lose four fingers from his left hand.
Three days later, Parker was transported to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where his mother, Lisa Jennison-Corbett, was waiting to meet him.
Parker was then transported to the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif., a place he would call home for the next year. It was there Parker began the tedious journey to walk again.
“Me getting injured is easier to deal with than the memories of having to treat my friends who were injured,” Parker said.
It hasn’t been easy, the young Marine says, with a lot of trial and error coming from his new prosthetics. Last summer, Parker began using power legs, but the untested technology went south when the new legs were too heavy and unreliable, requiring him to use all of his strength just to take a few steps.
“The left leg weighed 17 pounds, and the right was 15,” his mother explained. “It wore him out.”
“Now I’m using old hydraulic knees that have probably been used for more than a decade,” Parker said. “I’m still kind of learning it; it’s been lighter and gives me the opportunity to walk more and farther.”
Parker has endured approximately 25 surgeries in the past year, six of which were to rebuild his eardrums.
His last surgery, during the first week of November, kept him away from rehab for months, as the recovery process was longer than expected.
Parker says his prosthetic legs will always be a work in progress, as the size and shape of his limbs change. But for now, switching to the older-style prosthetic knees has allowed Parker increased self-sufficiency, and to begin to get back to the active lifestyle he once had, according to stepfather Tim Corbett.
Corbett says they plan to send Parker’s modified truck to San Diego later this month, giving him some much-needed freedom.
Thanks to more than $70,000 raised at Parker’s homecoming a year ago, his parents were able to construct an addition on their home so their son won’t have to spend his time back in Montana in a hotel room. The proclaimed “man cave” allows the young Marine to spend all of his leave time back in Ronan with his family.
“Being able to have him home to have a meal ... there’s no words,” Corbett said. “It’s just such a big difference.”
“I want to stay in Montana; I love the area,” he noted.
He said he is also interested in getting his open salt and freshwater diving certification, and is in the process of earning some belts in martial arts.
