Perspective: Living with the scars of war

Faoa "AP" Apineru, who suffered a brain injury in a bomb blast in Iraq, expresses frustration when he loses his train of thought and forgets what he was going to say

Faoa Apineru should be dead.

In May 2005, he was in a humvee driving down a road in Iraq near the Syrian border when a roadside bomb went off right next to him. The blast was enormous. A shard of metal pierced his face and rattled around his brainpan. He was flown to a hospital in Fallujah, then to another one in Germany and to Bethesda, Md. After many surgeries to fix his brain and face, Apineru made his way to the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System hospital for treatment and rehabilitation.

He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He was barely alive.

Read the rest at the SF Chronicle