Bomb tech rebuilds life after losing hearing, sight

PENSACOLA Army Sgt. Aaron Hale rendered one improvised explosive device safe. He was returning to gather evidence from the first bomb on Dec. 8, 2011 in Afghanistan, when a second undetected device blew.

Just 14 minutes after the blast, he was en route to a Kandahar medical station. Within 24 hours he was at a U.S. military medical hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. A day later, he arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The blast, which came from his right side, fused his eyelids together, perforated his eardrums and cracked his skull. Spinal fluid was leaking from his nose.

“I began to suspect that my eyesight was lost,” Hale said.

After multiple surgeries, his suspicions were confirmed.

Hale’s right eardrum never healed, but he was able to hear out of his left ear.

He slowly began to adapt to a life without sight.

“It is not about what you don’t have, it’s about the tools you do have in your kit — my creativity, my senses, my patience,” he said.

He eventually returned to Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal School at Eglin Air Force Base where he instructed others on how to rid war zones of deadly bombs. His presence at the school was a sobering reminder of the seriousness of the job.

Hale started rebuilding his physical strength through running, climbing and kayaking. He ran marathons. He reunited with a longtime family friend who later became his wife.

And then Hale became deathly ill.

He contracted bacterial meningitis likely related to his extensive facial and head injuries. It happened in 2015, four years after the blast that took his sight.

He eventually his hearing.

His then-girlfriend, McKayla, stayed at his side, communicating with him by writing on his palm with her finger. She moved into his Destin-area home and helped him negotiate life without his hearing or sight.

Doctors thought Hale was a good candidate for a cochlear implant system to allow him to regain hearing. lost all of But Hale had to wait for his body to heal before he could undergo the implant surgery.

During the six months Hale was without his hearing and sight, he turned to cooking as therapy. But he couldn’t use the tools he had used before he lost his hearing. He had a scan and barcode system that helped him to identify items in the kitchen when he could hear.

“It was something I could still do. I started making fudge. I made so much fudge. It was something that gave me purpose, something I enjoyed doing,” he said.

McKayla started giving the fudge and other candy to friends, family and people in the neighborhood. They started a small home business selling it.

In the meantime, doctors implanted the cochlear devices.

The damage to his right ear was too extensive and the implant didn’t work, but he regained some hearing in his left ear.

He uses a Bluetooth device that connects to a microphone to help him hear. The device also connects to his iPhone, which reads text messages and emails for him.