Warrior Manages PTSD and Overcomes Invisible Wounds of War By Raquel Rivas, Wounded Warrior Project Sean Karpf is a husband, father, brother, son, business owner, and loving friend. He is also a veteran who manages post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Giving voice to the drive and purpose of men and women who sacrifice to serve our country and bravely reinvent themselves in the civilian world is a theme in Sean’s life. Sean has come through visible and invisible injuries to blaze new trails for other injured veterans. At a young age, Sean’s life plan was a career in the Army. “I was with the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina,” Sean said. “When I was injured in June of 2012, I was a sergeant, a weapons squad leader.” Sean signed with the Army because he admired his uncle, who served in the 101st Airborne Division. Sean felt fulfilled as a soldier and reenlisted the month before he was injured in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He trusted his Army unit and they trusted and protected him.
“You knew there were people around you who cared for you and loved you just as much as you did them,” Sean said about his Army unit. Sean was on a dismounted patrol and responding to a call to move to the front with his unit when he stepped on the pressure plate of an improvised explosive device (IED). He heard others yell his name, and then it was just the ringing in his ears and a cloud of dust. Before the dust settled, Sean started to pull himself out of the crater left by the explosion. He worried a second explosion could cause further injury or hurt any fellow soldiers who were rushing to help. Sean was conscious as he was carried on a stretcher with only a tourniquet on his left leg and bones poking out of his foot and lower leg. He remembers steadying the pieces of his injured left leg with his right leg as they bumped along the path to safety. There was enemy fire aimed at the medevac helicopter as it attempted to land. After a gunfight, the helicopter picked up Sean on the second attempt. There was another injured soldier already in the helicopter. Sean couldn’t see what was happening on the ground but could hear his unit still fighting. “My injuries, the ones you can see, are the amputation of my left leg below the knee and my traumatic brain injury,” Sean said. Continued on next page >
WWW.HomelandMagazine.com / JUNE 2022
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