Person of the Week: Sgt. Eric Edmundson

June 29, 2007 — -- Sgt. Eric Edmundson struggled to don his military jacket Friday morning. Once in his dress uniform, he was prepared for one of the biggest days of his life.

Edmundson, 27, was badly wounded while on patrol along the Iraq-Syria border in October 2005. He survived the blast from a roadside bomb, but went into cardiac arrest while awaiting transport to an American military hospital in Germany.

Doctors worked for 30 minutes to revive his pulse. They did, but Edmundson suffered what's called anoxic brain damage. In laymen's terms, his brain was deprived of oxygen. He was left seriously impaired.

"Eric could not walk, talk, eat, didn't have control of his bodily functions," recalled his father, Ed. "He just continued to go downhill."

Finding the Best Care, Without the VA

Ed Edmundson has nothing but good things to say about the treatment his son received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But, as with many other wounded vets, it is the postdischarge period he said that is badly flawed.

The U.S. Army sent him to the care of the Veterans Administration, which sent Eric to a VA hospital in Richmond, Va. There, officials recommended that Eric be transferred to a nursing home. He was told his son would never emerge from what was a persistent vegetative state. His family was incredulous.

"Eric needed to be receiving some pretty extensive therapy as quickly as he could get it," said Ed. "We just knew as a family that they [the VA] weren't able to -- or going to -- meet the needs that Eric had."

So Ed began searching his options. He knew that if the Army made good on its wish to discharge him, he would lose the chance to get insured care outside the government system. He insisted that his son be left on active duty. It was a hard-fought battle.

"Ever since Walter Reed," said Ed, "we were thrown into that labyrinth of bureaucracy."

Neither the military, nor his insurance, nor the VA wanted him to go to some private facility, he said. But Ed researched, educated himself, insisted -- and won the right for treatment from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

But the struggle left Ed with a bad taste in his mouth.

"It's frustrating, because Eric should have been here months ago. He should have done this months ago," he said.

Once he got to the RIC, though, Eric began making steady progress.

"Every week, I saw him getting better -- doing more, and wanting to get better and do more," said Ed.

Their time together at RIC also led Ed to a significant discovery.

"At the time he came here [in January], he was the only soldier here," recalled Ed, noting that some 27,000 American servicemen have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. "[He was] the only soldier at the No. 1 rehabilitation institute in the United States."

Father and Son Find a New Voice

So Ed decided to make Eric's cause the cause of all the other grievously wounded soldiers, sailors and Marines. Getting as much press notice for his son, he reasoned, might help the others.

"We decided if we're going to do this in an advocacy sort of way," Ed said, "we should do it for all soldiers.

"We're disappointed at how the system has built up such a bureaucratic labyrinth that these soldiers can't get -- when they come back broken and challenged -- they can't get what they need," he added.

When ABC News spoke to Eric, he was using a computer-generated voice box. He would point to an array of responses and the computer voice would "speak" for him.

"My name is Eric Edmundson," said one square he touched with his thumb.

"I am married and have one daughter," said another.

Friday, with some help from his team of physical therapists, Edmundson walked out of the RIC and into the arms of his wife, Stephanie, and daughter, Gracie.

Ed, wiping away tears, said, "We are so thrilled for what the future may hold for him."

Right now, a house built from donations is rising in New Bern, N.C. And some day Ed hopes to open a bait and tackle store with Eric at his side.

"He's home," Ed said, finally. "There's 3,500-plus families that don't have their boys or their girls home. So who am I to complain?"