A home away from home: for residents of the Fisher House near Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home is truly where the military sends them

At the big, nondescript house near 6th Street gate of Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), life is as normal as anyone could imagine.

Just ask Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class (FMF) Joseph "Doc" Worley. For Doc, every morning is as routine as any other married father in America.

Nearly every day at the Fisher House, just before 7 a.m., he rises from his bed, checks on his seven-month old baby, and gets a shave and a shower. Then he ambles down the hallway of his home to the kitchen and fixes himself a considerable bowl of chocolate-flavored cereal. After putting away the bowl and grabbing a quick cup of "joe," Worley takes in some of the local news telecast before he glances at the dock beside him.

Everything is just like anyone would expect.

Well, not quite everything.

"I feel like I am like everyone else, with one exception," said Doc. "Fact is, I have no left leg. And until I can get up on a prosthetic, I have to somehow deal with that."

Dealing with it is something Doc learned to do very quickly after a firefight on Iraqi soil in September 2004.

It was in that circumstance that he was injured in Fallujah, Iraq while serving as part of a Marine expeditionary force. As a result of the battle, Worley, the unit's lead corpsman, lost his left leg and had his right leg reduced to shambles.

"We were in a rough spot and had a vehicle in the front of our convoy attacked by an IED (improvised explosive device). So I jumped out of our vehicle and tried to get to the [damaged] vehicle to treat my guys," Doc said. "But I never got there."

With about 50 meters to go until he reached the damaged vehicle, Worley fell victim to a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), which blasted through his left knee and knocked him to the ground within 25 feet of a second IED. "That's what took my leg off," he said. "At that point, I had a choice. I could have lain there, and I would have been with my Maker. But I thought about my wife and [daughter] Abby and decided I owed it to them to at least try to live."

While he lay there on the bridge, the IED went off, but not before Worley managed to move a few feet away from the blast. It still peppered him with shrapnel all over his body. From there, Worley managed to tie a tourniquet on his leg while the firefight raged on around him.

Within minutes, the firefight ended, but Doc had taken four bullets in the torso before it was done.

Once the battle was over, the combined military forces in Iraq were quick to act on his behalf.

"Within three days I was out of Iraq and in Germany," Doc said. "A few days after that, I arrived at [National Naval Medical Center] Bethesda, [Md.]. I was taken care of almost immediately."

Then, after spending several weeks as a patient at Bethesda, Worley was transferred to WRAMC in Silver Spring, Md.

With that, Doc, who had treated many Marines in combat, had gone from being a "doe" to being constantly treated by them. It's a harsh reality for him that requires some adjustment.

And that adjustment has already begun at Fisher House.

Fisher House is a non-profit organization that runs a group of homes across America where severely injured troops live while going through their rehabilitative process. The houses themselves, while large, don't necessarily look any different from normal homes on the outside.

Once inside, however, it doesn't take long to realize this isn't a typical home. With eight guest rooms to go along with an extra-large kitchen and dining room, the Fisher House has everything needed to make someone feel at home, even if they are thousands of miles away from home.

"That's what we strive to do for these [people]," said Fisher House Manager Vivian Wilson. "We take injured service members from around the world and try to make them forget about the fact that their house and other worldly belongings are far away. It's something that helps in their recoveries."

Making everyone fed like Fisher House is a home away from home is an ongoing process. Since the injuries suffered by troops staying there are severe, a service member's time at the house could go on for several years.

For the Worley family, that means relying on family and friends in their home state of Georgia to take care of things back home.

"That's what gets a little tough for them sometimes," Wilson said. "These people have lives, have homes and possessions back in Georgia or California or Germany. Leaving that for years at a time can be rough. We have to make them feel like it is all right."

Those kinds of feelings can be persistent, but Fisher House does what it can to make sure a service member is as close to home as possible.

As part of the house's operation, a service member's wife and children may stay with him. Having family there makes a huge difference to the injured, according to Doc.

"This little girl is the best kind of inspiration I can possibly have here," he said while playing peek-a-boo with his only child, Abigail. "Any time I even think about this being too tough, I look at her and I get a second wind."