Iraq veteran turned artist finds her creativity sparked by battlefield brain injury

Melissa Hooppaw had an artistic side, but didn't get to show it much until an explosion changed her life.

In 2004, the Navy lieutenant was stationed at Al Asad, the second largest air base in Iraq. It was her first deployment, and the corpsman — the Navy's version of an Army medic — had heard things were pretty quiet along this stretch of the Euphrates River.

That wasn't the case.

The base was hit regularly by rocket-propelled grenades. One fall evening, a mortar landed a few hundred feet from her quarters, causing "the loudest noise I ever heard in my life," she said.

She was knocked unconscious. When she woke up, her head was in a fog, her ears rang and people seemed to move in slow motion.

When somebody yelled, "Doc," she scrambled for her medical bag and tended to the wounded throughout the night.

She didn't give the blast much thought until her second deployment to Iraq in 2006, when she started having seizures.

Two months before she was supposed to go home, she was tested for epilepsy, but didn't have it. She assumed she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, like many around her.

"I shrugged it off and went on with my life," she said.

She finished her duty and settled in Locust Grove with her husband, Jim, and son, Paul.

Now 37, Hooppaw took an assignment as director of public health services at Quantico Marine Corps Base.

Things got worse.

She started stuttering. She had memory lapses. She couldn't finish anything she started.

"I was having seizures four times a day," she said. "Or I'd collapse like a rag doll."

She eventually was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury — one of the signature injuries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One in five returning vets has been exposed to blasts that affect the brain's functions, according to a 2008 study by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

Hooppaw's injury was considered mild. A severe injury can leave a person in a coma.

She's waiting to get a medical discharge from the Navy, after 15 years of service. She can't keep a job because of her condition, and the medication she takes often leaves her impaired.

She hardly thinks the changes are mild.

"My attention span is this big," Hooppaw said, holding up her thumb and pointer finger. "And my ADD (attention deficit disorder) is off the charts."

Hooppaw, who recently dyed her blond hair red just for the heck of it, started noticing other changes.

She studied art in high school, but hadn't had the chance to be creative at sea.

In the basement of her Orange County home, she got out paints and brushes, glues and compounds. She started doing crafts as a form of therapy and discovered the creative side of her brain was in overdrive.

"It was like the left side of my brain wouldn't work and the right side wouldn't shut up," she said.

She started scanning local thrift stores and antique shops. She bought old buckets and roasting pans, pretty pieces of china and tons of costume jewelry, figuring she'd recycle the items into flower arrangements, mosaics or magnets.

On her way home from appointments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, she drove through subdivisions and picked up items people left out for the trash.

She didn't dive into Dumpsters, though.

"I'm a curb diver," she clarified. "That's the chic way."

She advertised her refurbished dressers and handmade arrangements on Craigslist, eBay and Etsy, an online sales site for handmade items.

Word of mouth started to spread. One woman asked her for an antique-looking headboard — she'll make it look old, or "distressed," by painting it, then sanding away some of the paint.

Another wanted a princess-theme bedroom set for her daughter.

Hooppaw tends to talk excitedly as she bounces from one topic to another.

She works the same way. She looks at purses that she'll add beads to, then pulls out the pieces for a funky birdbath she plans to put together.

She also spouts the vogue vocabulary of her trade as she flitters from one project to another.

"Junk-tiquing" is the process of turning one person's trash into another's treasure, and "shabby chic" is furniture that's prized because it's old, or has been made to look that way.

She says her work is good for the environment because she's recycling old items. She knows that people still want pretty things — even in this tough economy — so she will do makeovers of current tables, chairs and other sets.

"I make a little bit of money, but really, I don't care about the money," said Hooppaw, who earned a master's degree in public health in the Navy. "This is still a way for me to be out in society and contributing. My life has to mean something."

She won't go so far as to say that getting injured in Iraq was a blessing, but she believes the creative therapy has been her saving grace.

"My mom said that one day I'm going to realize that this was the best thing that ever happened to me," Hooppaw said, "and I already see that."

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Information from: The Free Lance-Star, http://www.fredericksburg.com/