Ski Therapy Helps Healing Process for War Veterans

TOM BEARDEN, NewsHour Correspondent:

Twenty-three-year-old Army Specialist Natasha McKinnon has learned a lot about facing adversity over the last year-and-a-half. When an explosive tore through her leg in Iraq, she applied her own tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

For the past 14 months, she's been undergoing rigorous physical therapy, including one-on-one basketball at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

SKI INSTRUCTOR:

This is a thing called a Biski. And the way it turns, it's you lean the ski, all right? So Cory's going to lean you.

TOM BEARDEN:

And just last month, she decided to take up skiing, even though she had never tried it when she had two legs. She says she refuses to think of herself as disabled.

NATASHA MCKINNON, Wounded Iraq Vet:

It's just my leg. I still have my arms, my eyes, my ears, my personality, my humor.

TOM BEARDEN:

McKinnon was just one of 60 soldiers wounded in the Iraq war who took part in a week-long ski program in Breckenridge, Colorado, sponsored by Disabled Sports USA.

KIRK BAUER, Disabled Sports USA:

One of the reasons we have so many of some of the best instructors in the country here is because they want to come out here and be able to be of service to you wounded warriors who have been of service to our country.

TOM BEARDEN:

The program is led by Kirk Bauer, a Vietnam veteran who lost his leg in that war 37 years ago. He said, after he was wounded, he was so depressed he contemplated suicide, but then some other veterans taught him how to ski.

KIRK BAUER:

It just completely turned my head around. You know, I'd been living in a slow-motion world. I was frustrated. I'd been in pain.

And all of the sudden, I was able to get out in the fresh air, go down a hill feeling free and feeling all the speed. And it was just the most incredible high in the world. And it was that thing that really lit my fire and just started me thinking about possibilities and thinking about what I could do with my life.

TOM BEARDEN:

Disabled Sports USA is a nonprofit organization founded by Vietnam veterans in 1967. Each year, it holds numerous events for some 60,000 disabled athletes, both veterans and non-veterans. Ski week is the biggest, and the organization pays for veterans and their families to come to Colorado.

Veterans like Army Lieutenant John Fernandez, who lost both his legs during the initial invasion just south of Baghdad. After months of rehab at Walter Reed, Fernandez was able to ski again, using his two prosthetic legs and no adaptive equipment.

He now works for the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps sponsor ski week. He says the event inspires many injured vets to try things they didn't think were possible.