To catch some of you up if you didn't see my first fanpost about this...

My friend from church (Joni) has a 19 year old son (Drew) in the Army who was injured in Iraq several weeks ago when the car in front of his armored vehicle hit an IED.  Drew was manning the .50cal gun on top of the vehicle and was the only one seriously injured.  He suffered massive trauma to the left side of his face, both eye orbits were broken as well as his jaw and upper pallet.

The good news is that Drew has been discharged from the hospital.  He and his father are staying in a hotel near Walter Reed for the next couple of weeks because the ENT still needs to do a couple more procedures and wants to monitor his healing. The bad news is that Drew will most likely never regain the sight in his left eye.  The surgeons have told him that the force of the explosion severed the optic nerve to that eye.  Drew has some lingering trouble with the muscles in his right eye.  The explosion tore the muscles that control eye movement in both of this eyes, his vision in his right eye is pretty good, but he has some trouble keeping the eyelid open and some tracking problems.  The ENT and vision therapist have told him that with therapy and time he should regain most or all of the function in the right eye.

Drew is in good spirits, and his biggest disappointment has been that he cannot rejoin his unit.  Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for Drew and his family.  I'll keep you posted in case of any other big developments.