Tan muses about the happy toddler beside him.
"She's going to do things I didn't get to do," says Tan, who lives in Woodlyn. "I just don't want her to think daddy's a failure."
Tan is among the 38,497 U.S. service members wounded in action in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the total from the start of the war through most of June. The great majority of these injuries occurred on the Iraq battlefield, though the numbers in Afghanistan are rising as more troops are deployed there and fighting intensifies.
Two types of wounds are considered the "signature injuries" of those battlefields - traumatic brain injuries and, as in Tan's case, amputations. Lifelong medical treatment and disability benefits for veterans of the wars could run as high as $663 billion, a 2007 Harvard University study projected, a figure that likely is higher now.
Most of these injuries are the result of the prevalence of IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, bombs built with easily available materials and set off near specific targets, such as an Army convoy.
Diagnoses by the military health system of traumatic brain injuries rose 136 percent between 2001 and 2009, from 11,830 cases to 27,862 cases, according to a Congressional Research Service report released in May.
It also notes that 1,345 U.S. service members have had major limb and partial amputations over the course of the wars.
Because of better battlefield medicine and body armor, more than 90 percent of those wounded in combat have survived - compared with 76 percent in the Vietnam War and 70 percent in World War II.
That means more military families get to welcome a loved one home again - but more also face living with the wounds of war.
"Your life changes from that moment forward," says Barbara Cohoon of the National Military Family Association.
