"12 years also is a long time. We now have a lifetime responsibility to a generation of service members, veterans and their families." Dr. Jonathan Woodson 11 Sep. 2013: 'With 9/11 Came Lifetime Responsibility'
February 11, 2014 - Where to begin talking about what Rory Dunn has been through since he was wounded that day in Fallujah? His best friend, who bled out next to him? His traumatic brain injury that has altered his personality? His forehead held together by a plastic prosthetic?It’s hard to know where to begin, so Issaquah’s Dr. Theresa Cheng concerns herself with what she knows best as a dentist: his teeth.
In the nine years since his unarmored Humvee in Iraq was hit by explosives on his 22nd birthday, Dunn has been making a long, hard recovery. His mother, Cynthia Lefever, has been by his side the whole time — sleeping next to her then-comatose son at Walter Reed Army National Military Medical Center and later traveling the country to advocate for veteran care.
Inspired by a profile of mother and son in The Seattle Times in 2008, Cheng began providing free dental care for veterans in need and has signed on dozens of other professionals to do the same.
Cheng has three sons, now in their early 20s, and she remembers thinking what it must have been like for Dunn’s mother to get that phone call and to drop everything to go to her son in a hospital thousands of miles away.
“I was thinking how, when something like this happens in your life, you just put everything else on hold,” Cheng said.
In the upheaval, dental care was sure to fall by the wayside — and she could do something about that. read more>>>
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