Army Sgt. P.D. Rains of Daphne still has trouble walking six weeks after
being critically injured by a bomb blast in Iraq, but he refuses to use a
wheelchair, his mother said Wednesday.
Rains, 21, who has moved into an outpatient recovery home called Malogne
House at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., could come
home for a visit in the next few weeks, if skin grafted onto his back during
surgery today takes like it recently did on his injured right arm.
Brenda Rains, also of Daphne, who has not left Washington, D.C., since her
son arrived there in serious condition Jan. 8, said P.D. Rains is making an
amazing recovery, sparked by his dogged determination. When he arrives home,
Rains wants to greet family and friends on his feet, she said.
"He walks up to the hospital every day. It takes him a little while, but he
gets there," Brenda Rains said. "When he gets off that plane (in Mobile),
he's decided that he's going to be walking. And he's so hard-headed that
he'll do it."
During a telephone interview Wednesday, P.D. Rains said he is pushing
himself in an effort to rebuild the muscles in his legs. He said doctors
also have him do lunging exercises every day in physical therapy.
"I still carry my cane with me, and I use it about half the time," said
Rains, who was promoted to sergeant Feb. 2.
A member of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, P.D. Rains was injured
by the bomb blast while his platoon was raiding a farmhouse in southern
Baghdad that had been a haven for insurgents, the wounded soldier said in an
interview last month.
Rains was standing with his platoon outside the vacant house, when the
bomb -- what appeared to be a 155 mm artillery shell reconstructed into an
improvised explosive device -- exploded near him, shattering his arm,
rupturing his ear drums and riddling his body with shrapnel.
After being moved 40 miles north to Balad, Iraq, Rains underwent life-saving
surgery, his father, Paul Rains Sr., has said. Rains' condition began to
stabilize at a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where he underwent further
treatment prior to his return to the United States last month.
The soldier's family, including his parents and wife, Elizabeth, who
graduated with him from Daphne High School, have taken significant time away
from home and work since then to be with him during his recovery.