....And then there is Eva Briseno.

[RadiomanATL]

AP Newswire | Stars and Stripes

Joseph Briseno Jr., Eva's 27-year-old son, is one of the most severely wounded soldiers ever to survive. A bullet to the back of his head in a Baghdad marketplace in 2003 left him paralyzed, brain-damaged and blind, but awake and aware of his condition.

Eva takes care of "Jay" in her suburban Virginia home where the family room has been transformed into an intensive care unit, with the breathing machine and tubes he needs to stay alive.

Try to imagine this life.

Each day starts with two hours of bowel care, an ordeal as awful as it sounds. She labors over his body, brushing his teeth, suctioning fluid from his lungs, exercising his limp arms and legs, and turning him every other hour to prevent bedsores.

She sleeps a few hours at a time, when the schedule says it is her turn, often slumped in exhaustion by his side.

She has been out to dinner with her husband, Joseph Sr., once in seven years.

She could have a better life if she put Jay in a nursing home. Or if she went back to using the home health care nurses the government provided. But one looked indifferently without wiping Jay's mouth when he drooled. Others fell asleep on the night shift, inattentive while Jay suffered seizures.

It's hard for a mother to watch such lapses. The nurses don't love Jay. His parents do. So they have chosen to care for him on their own, and you will not find them feeling sorry for themselves - only for him.

A lesser man would leave, Eva says of her spouse, whom she has known since grade school in their homeland, the Philippines. A lesser woman would cringe at the wound care and bodily indignities that Eva has learned to manage for her son, Joseph says.

"I can't walk away from this. She can't. I'm very proud of my wife," he said.

What keeps Eva going is hope that stem cells or some future treatment advance will help her son.

"I do believe in miracles," she says.

Yet desperation clouds her prayers. "Most of the time I ask God if I can take Jay's place," she confesses, unable to suppress a sob.

Hearing his mother, Jay cries too, the tears silently slipping from his blind eyes.

 

[Conspiracist]

I know a family that went through this with a son that was left this way from a car accident. SAME devotion.

Hats off. I have no idea if I could do it.

 

[JW Frogen]

My sadness for this mother's pain is tempered by profound admiration for the courage of her heart.

 

[Mr. H.]

Sometimes a mother's love knows no bounds. That's a poignant story.