Hometown Hero: Huffman petty officer now in battle for life
After surviving a suicide bomb attack in Iraq, ANTHONY THOMPSON and his family find victories in the small stuff
Pregnant wife waits by bedside, prays for recovery
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/humble/news./4939068.html
July 3, 2007, 5:29PM
By KIM HUGHES
Chronicle Correspondent
ON her first wedding anniversary June 17, Humble native Ivonne Thompson told her husband Anthony how proud she is to be his wife and how proud she is of him.
But she's not sure he heard, as he lies in a Bethesda hospital bed deep in a coma.
"I am proud of him, and everything that he does and has done, and I know he will do in the future," said Ivonne, 29. "Every time he opens his eyes or has a good cough, the littlest thing, I tell him I'm proud of him."
Serious head, back injuries
Anthony, a 25-year-old Navy corpsman petty officer who graduated from Hargrave High School in Huffman, suffered severe head and back injuries last April in Fallujah, Iraq.
It was his second tour of duty, but this time he and his squad were hit when a suicide driver blew up a truck right underneath the bridge on which Anthony was standing.
Ivonne said eight men were on that bridge, and although nobody died, their injuries ranged from punctured lungs to limb amputations.
"I was in Twenty-nine Palms (California) teaching high school Spanish when I got the call," Ivonne said. "A Navy officer said, 'Mrs. Thompson, I have some information about your husband. Are you sitting down?' I mean, my heart was just in my throat. He said 'I need you to calm down. Your husband is still alive.' "
Ivonne said the officer read a verbatim report listing her husband's injuries, and told her that he was being transported to an intensive care facility in Germany.
Ivonne caught a flight to Germany as soon as she could.
"When I first saw him ... I started sobbing," Ivonne said. "But what amazes me the most is, it still looked like him. It looked like Anthony."
Ivonne was not allowed to touch her husband without going through an intensive gowning up ritual.
But the day he was being prepared to fly back to the United States, she got to feel his skin for the first time in months.
"I was starting to gown up, and the flight doctor said ... You don't need to put that on. Just come in here'," Ivonne said. "So I got to hold his hand for the first time without a glove on."
Now back in Maryland, Anthony's recovery continues to be a waiting game.
"He suffered a head injury, which they compared to shaken baby syndrome," Ivonne said. "He suffered multiple spots of bruising in his brain, and it takes a long time to heal those bruises."
Ivonne prays he will recover in time for the birth of their first baby, a boy due Sept. 12.
"Anthony had already picked out the name before he left," Ivonne said. "He wants a 'mini him,' and so it's going to be Anthony. Anthony Cavett Jr."
Ivonne admits she is sometimes "mad as hell" this happened to her husband, but takes solace in the fact Anthony would tell her to "stop freaking out and just deal with it."
Patriotic to the core
His mother, Humble resident Sheila Rooney, said that's because her boy is patriotic to the core.
"This wouldn't change his patriotism," Rooney said. "He knew what he was getting into. Of course, I wanted him to go on a boat and be a corpsman in a hospital setting. But he wanted to be with the Marines. He said 'Mom, they need me out there with them in battle.' "