Not long after they got married, Ed and Karen Matayka, both medics in the Vermont National Guard, were deployed to the Middle East.

"We honeymooned in Kuwait," Karen, 32, says. "They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. I don't know, is it harder or easier in a combat zone?"

Now the couple is facing a different kind of battle.

They're celebrating Valentine's Day not at home but in San Antonio, where Ed is undergoing therapy at San Antonio Military Medical Center after he sustained life-threatening injuries in Afghanistan.

He has been learning how to walk on prosthetics after both his legs were amputated above the knee. Complicating the process are a spinal cord injury, head injury and weakness on his left side resulting from a stroke.

Doctors once predicted he wouldn't survive. He owes his tremendous progress, he says, to Karen.

Without her devotion and support, "I think I would still be sitting in a hospital bed," Ed, 34, says. "I was motivated to quit feeling sorry for myself and get better."

Karen and Ed married in summer 2004. After a 14-month deployment working security in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, they settled in New Hampshire, bought a house and contemplated starting a family.

Then came another deployment. They left for Afghanistan in March 2010.

At first, they loved it, says Karen, who interacted with the locals, went hiking and bought local food and garments.

Then, on July 2, Ed was riding in a military vehicle when an IED exploded.

"I don't remember it at all," he says.

Karen was awakened at 5 a.m. She immediately suspected what had happened.

"It was a gut instinct," she says.

The doctors told her Ed wouldn't make it 24 hours.

"Everyone else who's had these injuries passed away," Karen says. "He broke every lumbar vertebrae, broken jaw, liver laceration, kidney bleed, bruised lung, stroke, amputation. His liver failed."

Ed was in a coma for five weeks. As he was transported first to Germany, then to the U.S., Karen wrote him letters, talked to him, played music for him, rubbed his head, held his hand.

"He would actually respond to me," Karen says. "He'd answer questions by squeezing my hand. The doctors and nurses were shocked that when I would enter the room, his blood pressure would go down, his heart rate would go down, his respiratory rate would go down."

Despite predictions, Ed eventually woke from the coma and began recovering from his injuries. After bouncing around to several hospitals across the country, the Mataykas came to San Antonio in 2011.

When Ed became an outpatient, Karen took over her husband's daily care. She had to dress him, help him shower, shave him, prepare his meals, cut his meat and give him his medications.

He's slowly becoming more independent, but she still helps him dress - it's faster - and helps him in the bathroom.

They live in a small room in one of the Fisher Houses at Fort Sam Houston, a home for wounded warriors and their families.

In addition to Ed's hours of daily therapy, they take classes, such as cooking or crafts, at the Warrior Family Support Center on base.

They're also working on having children (he originally wanted six; she's talked him down to two or three). Because of Ed's injuries, they're relying on in-vitro fertilization.

The Mataykas know how often couples split after one spouse is injured in war; they've seen it happen.

"Either the relationship wasn't good to begin with and the spouse stays out of guilt and they become resentful and it blows up," Karen says, "or the spouse feels bad so then they don't express their feelings, they get bottled up, and things go sour from there."

But Karen and Ed aren't afraid to let each other know when they're frustrated or irritated.

"We still fight just as bad as ever," Ed says.

They also tease each other - a lot.

"I wear sandals everywhere," Karen says. "I'll say, 'Man, my toes are cold. How are yours, Ed?' I'm sure there are people who are out there who go, 'My God, she's a horrible wife.' But that's how we cope with it. We laugh a lot."

jbelasco@express-news.net

Read more:
Wife's love gets fellow veteran through near-fatal war injuries

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