TIME Senior Correspondent Michael Weisskopf tells his story in a book, “Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57. ” Weisskopf’s prosthetist was John Miguelez, CP, head of the Advanced Arm Dynamics’ team at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

(See “Blood Brothers” excerpts on reverse side)

… When a batch of soldiers missing arms arrived a year later, he* called in John Miguelez, a renowned upper-extremity specialist who heads his own prosthesis company in California. … Miguelez’s company, Advanced Arm Dynamics, was hired full-time. He came up with a plan approved by the army to provide each patient with three types of prostheses---myoelectric, body-powered and cosmetic. … Miguelez had chosen his unusual field because it combined a childhood love of electronics with a desire to help people. After earning a graduate degree in prosthetics from Northwestern University, he decided to specialize in arm amputees, a smaller but more dynamic class of patients. …

*1st Lt. Joseph Miller, Certified Prosthetist, United States Armed Forces Amputee Patient Care Program, Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Blood Brothers,” page 123

… Most lower extremity amputees fall on the downside of life, elderly victims of diabetes or vascular disease. By contrast, 75 percent of Miguelez’s patients had lost their arms in work-related accidents in textile and lumber mills, meatpacking plants, and farming. They had most of their lives to live with an injury that couldn’t be concealed. Ward 57 was stocked with Miguelez’s kind of patients: twenty-something, athletic, and hardworking. Making rounds in a white lab coat, he pushed them to the casting room less than twenty-four hours after their stitches came out. Most civilian amputees waited months to be fit. But Miguelez figured the soldiers were too aggressive to be kept waiting for long. They might get used to one hand and face problems of overuse later in life. By then it would be harder to learn how to use a prosthetic arm. …

“Blood Brothers,” page 124

… Staff Sergeant Andy McCaffrey thrust out his right hand to introduce himself. It was prosthetic. The thirty-one-year-old Green Beret had lost his real one seven months earlier in a hand grenade accident in Afghanistan. … He wanted to be the first amputee to return to combat and pushed John Miguelez to help make it happen. The prosthetist took it as a challenge. He customized a flexible plastic hand that allowed McCaffrey to do push-ups when he still had stitches in his stump. When McCaffrey got stronger, Miguelez designed a “war hand” fortified with steel strips and carbon-fiber fingers that withstood the tough treatment it would undergo in active duty. …

“Blood Brothers,” pages 129, 130

… Before Iraq, the technology of arm prostheses hadn’t changed much since World War II. … Miguelez used the burst in demand from Walter Reed to lean on manufacturers for progress. Before long, he was outfitting Iraq war amputees with an electronic hand that opened and closed two and a half times faster and could be programmed to function at different speeds and grip strength. …

“Blood Brothers,” pages 220, 221

Michael Weisskopf