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May 14, 2023

Savannah U.S. Army Ranger recounts recovery from injury in Afghanistan

Ryan Davis stares out from under his baseball cap in midtown Savannah’s Hull

Ryan Davis stares out from under his baseball cap in midtown Savannah's Hull Park one recent September morning. He answers questions about the night he nearly died: The explosion and torn limbs, the failed helicopter attempts to rescue him, his bleeding and suffocation.

But that hot summer night three years ago lying in the Afghan desert was actually "rewarding," according to the U.S. Army Ranger, Sgt. 1st Class. He saw Americans rally to save him.

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But he awoke in a Texas hospital bed unable to talk with a tube down his throat and "missing things."

"That was the worst part," says Davis, 36.

Here's how the elite soldier, once wedged between a desire for battlefield death and distaste for life with lost limbs, stayed resilient.

Before the military, the Oklahoma native was a wild, outdoorsy child. He was bored working in insurance after college. From his desk, Davis would see a flight medic out the window and question his own career.

He needed more active work, agreed his soon-to-be-wife Asia, a preschool teacher from Chicago whom he met at a party in Oklahoma City. So, Ryan joined the military. In basic training, leaders tapped him for special forces, and he volunteered to become a Ranger.

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On Aug. 16, 2019, a grenade exploded near him in Afghanistan. Ryan's lungs collapsed and he saw that his mangled right arm and leg were useless.

Davis was bleeding and suffocating. He calmly envisioned his name on a black, Killed in Action bracelet. "I was totally OK with it, " he says.

But he felt bad that Asia wouldn't have a husband and their son wouldn't have a dad.

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They learn to laugh in hardship, be it after a 40-mile hike with bleeding feet or in the face of evil. "You find a way to enjoy those things. You find a way to be happy," Davis says.

He recalls that August night after the explosion in a positive light.

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He suffered a traumatic brain injury and laid awaiting rescue for two hours in the hot, dark desert. Multiple needles to his chest gave him breath, and a hefty fellow Ranger pressed his knee into Ryan's stomach to stall the bleeding.

"Get your knee off my stomach. You’re so fat!" he recalls saying.

A buddy told Ryan he would die if the man removed his knee. Ryan consented. Also, fellow soldiers gave him blood — from their own bodies.

A helicopter trying to rescue Ryan went down. Enemy contact sent away a second rescue helicopter. Finally, a third rescued him, but shook violently over its weight limit. Close to the ground, the enemy shot at them, Davis recalls.

Dozens of soldiers lined up to give around two dozen gallons of blood for Ryan's 8,000-mile flight to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Asia sits across Ryan in Hull Park, scrolling on her phone with long, blue nails. Her Facebook memory from three years ago pops up about Ryan's "best day yet."

He no longer needed dialysis or a feeding tube by Sept. 20, 2019, a reversal after a month of decline from the explosion.

"We were finally starting to not die," Ryan says.

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Ryan awoke one day to hear yelling in the hospital hallway. It was Asia, pushing for more aggressive care for him. "They called her ‘The Warden’ in Texas," Ryan says.

"They didn't like me," she added.

Asia playfully slaps Ryan's arm: "He hated me, too."

Infection and lack of blood flow drove more and more surgeries — too many, according to Asia. "They just kept cutting. There's not going to be anything left," she recalls thinking.

Ryan, who lost three limbs, would keep only his left arm. She asked around for ways to stop his infection and went up the chain of command for help.

"I just thought there was something else we could try," she says.

Someone told her about a Japanese medicine. The antibiotic Cefiderocol arrived in a box with big block letters: "Not FDA approved." Asia signed papers saying she understood the risk.

Ryan's health turned around in three days. "Without the medication, he would not have survived," Asia says.

Another boost came from online videos Ryan watched of retired Army Staff Sgt. Travis Mills, who lost both arms and both legs after an explosion while serving in 2012 in Afghanistan.

Mills visited Ryan. "He said I was going to be just fine," Ryan says. "That's all I needed."

People say the triple amputee is lucky to be alive.

"Well, you should see me put my pants on this morning," Ryan laughs.

Davis instead would say he's lucky to have survived. Ten years as a Ranger forged resiliency, and he says Ranger work is harder than having some 50 surgeries.<this is ryan's opinion and needs to be attributed him rather than fact ryan calls them "frankenstein surgeries," where "chunks" of his body were attached elsewhere.< p>

The couple agrees life is difficult. But theirs isn't a sob story. "My wife is by far my number one motivation to pretty much do anything," Ryan says.

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"She completes me," he jokes in a funny voice. Both laugh.

Ryan says he signed up for the military and volunteered for special forces work. A sad mindset helps no one, according to Ryan.

"Don't make it sad," he says of his story. "If it sounds like LeAnn Rimes in the background, I don't want any part of it."