You’ll remember that Ricky, in his short tour from 2010 to 2011, got shot twice, an axe in the face once, and blown up six times by IEDs, with the last one giving him traumatic brain injury. His brain was injured in such a way that no pain medication of whatever kind touches the pain. If they give him too much of one type he stops breathing and it doesn’t help anyway. If they give him the other kind, even dozens of times the max, it still doesn’t touch the pain. In this way he lays down his life every single day, every moment of every day, for all of us. Put it this way: If you help one Afghani, you help us all. Thanks, Ricky.
Just to say, although when he came down to visit my neighbors at the hermitage he had his best day in his best week in all these years, he’s now paying the price for having way over-exerted himself. Seizures, maxed out headaches, dizziness, way overtired… And on top of that, and I feel guilty about this, he took a tumble while giving me some pointers on how to shoot. Many tumbles actually. He didn’t seem to mind, and I remembered my own tumbles when I was on crutches and didn’t want others to mind. It’s just that he actually broke a finger on one of those tumbles and didn’t say a word until they were back in South Dakota. He didn’t want anyone to be concerned… Please, remember him in prayer. He does his battle every second of every day for you and I. Hail Mary…
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
Doing better, Father, not perfect – but you’d put down the evil thing. Have you ever thought of blessing your ammo? No silliness intended here – just a thought – maybe it would make for spiritual plus physical protection and accuracy.
Great thought!
Yes, thank you Ricky.
Update on Ricky. He wound up back in the emergency room this past Sunday. It has been 6 weeks since his last ER visit so that is good but it will take him some time to get over the long trip he took.
The other thing he did share with us was that the doctors have told him that due to the damage to his brain, seen as black spots on the scans, he is looking at full dementia in about 5 years. This is why he is doing everything he can now. Sort of a bucket list.