Angel Flight benefit gets special visitor

Cheektowaga native hurt in Iraq returns

By Mark Sommer NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 09/14/08 7:35 AM

Derek Gee/Buffalo News

 

 

Army Spc. Michael D. Hauser sat at a table at the Angel Flight benefit in Orchard Park on Saturday.

He talked in small stretches and walked tentatively, with the help of a cane.

“I’m doing good — really good. I’ve been working hard with [physical] therapy,” Hauser said.

“I’m making a lot of progress.”

And that, friends and family say, is nothing short of remarkable.

In a flash last November, Hauser was paralyzed on his left side and suffered traumatic brain injury from a suicide bombing. It occurred while the Cheektowaga native and seven other soldiers, who also were seriously wounded, were on patrol in Baqouba, about 100 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Hauser was transported to a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where he underwent surgery to remove shrapnel that entered his head above his left eyebrow and lodged in the right side of his brain. Some pieces were lodged in inoperable areas but luckily did not cause an infection.

Hauser was put into a medically induced coma to help reduce the swelling.

Surviving the brain injuries alone would have been a feat.

But Hauser developed pneumonia. The gravely ill soldier was transferred to another German hospital, where doctors successfully placed him on a special machine called the Novalung, which is not approved for use in the United States.

Hauser was transferred the next month to an intensive-care unit at Walter Reed Medical Center for four weeks, then to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Richmond, Va., for four months.

“He’s a miracle in my eyes, and I think everybody else’s,” said Rachel Hauser, Michael’s wife.

Hauser, 24, the second oldest of four children; Rachel, and their 14-month-old daughter, Kyli, were flown to Buffalo from their Lakewood, Wash., home, courtesy of Angel Flight. The group flies patients to faraway medical centers for treatment, and has flown Hauser and family members several times around the country.

It’s also been quite an ordeal for mother and daughter, too. They have been with Michael at each hospital stop, beginning in Germany when Kyli was 4 months old.

“I’m proud to be his wife, and would do it all over for him,” said Rachel Hauser.

Rachel Hauser, who met her husband in 2005 when he was stationed in Fort Lewis, Wash., said he doesn’t remember much since his injury, or of the eight months he was in Iraq.

But he had no trouble remembering her.

“He woke up the same Mike that I married, and that’s what’s made the biggest difference,” Hauser said.

What her husband needs to continue working on, she said, is improving his memory and daily tasks such as eating, bathing and helping to take care of their daughter without the use of his left arm.

“It takes two years to heal from a brain injury, so it’s up to Mike and his endurance, and how much he really wants to fight for his life. He’s already proven himself to be a fighter.

“He has gone past doctors’ expectations.”

Margaret Hauser, Michael’s mother, struggled to hold back tears as she stood near her son.

“It’s just the happiest moment of my life, right now, what’s happening,” she said. “I never thought this would happen.”