To Iraq and Back

 One particular incident shows just how difficult it has been for Bob to reconnect with his own brain's function

As he was sitting with his brother, Bob was struck by the need to write something down. "At one moment I said, 'I've got something to think about here. I'm just thinking about something right now.' And I had to write it down. I laid on the ground and I scripted all of this stuff about how I saw this factory and the snow was outside and everyone seemed happy and I thought I realized something in life was truthful here. I wrote it all down for about a half an hour. The next day we woke up and I said, 'Show me what I wrote last night.' And I saw this piece of paper. I couldn't recognize anything.

"When you realize what's going on with your brain during these kinds of issues, I mean, this is what's wrong with the brain. You think that maybe it's working. You don't really understand how bad it is. But it is."

Despite the hard work—and Bob says he's still not 100 percent recovered more than a year later—the Woodruff family believes Bob's life is an unbelievable blessing. "I think Bob's recovery is one of those unexplained miracles in life," Lee says. "I heard the doctors say to him, 'You should not be here, Mr. Woodruff. You should not be able to speak. You are defying every textbook out there.'"