Hy-Vee Groceries for Year & Vikings Tailgate Kit Surprise Veterans

[Viktor]

Mossberg, an infantryman working as a gunner during a deployment to Iraq, suffered his life-changing injury when he fell from a military truck.


"I split open my knee and had a bunch of issues, but then six months after coming back from Iraq, I started to develop a lot of pain and having my calf swell up, so I experienced my first blood clot of many to come," Mossberg explained. "Over the last five years I've had over 20 blood clots in my left calf and two in my lung. They could have killed me at any time, so it's kind of the post effects of what happened overseas."


Mossberg began making frequent trips to Mayo Clinic, trying to find a solution about a year-and-a-half ago.


"I was losing feeling in my leg. I was constantly clotting, on blood thinners and everything. It wasn't good, so we went to Mayo and spent, I can't tell you how many days a year, trying to do testing and figuring it out.


"My leg was going dead at least twice a day," Mossberg said. "Just from standing at work, I'd come home and have to go straight to the bedroom, put a heating pack on and go to sleep. It just wasn't a life to live."


Mossberg and his wife, Zanetah, have a daughter and son. Viviana loves basketball, and Mossberg is hoping that young son Ragnar will be drawn to hockey.


"I've got two little kids that I love so much and want to play with, and as crazy as it sounds, the last stage was removing my leg, call it 'kind of cutting away the problem,' " he said.


Seemingly without another option to provide sustained relief, Mossberg underwent the operation. He will have to re-learn to walk with use of a prosthetic leg, making physical and mental strides along his journey.


"I'd like to be part of [their participation in sports] as much as I can, and then I have a lot of other friends that are amputees, too, that have really pushed me mentally to be in a better place and prepared me for this before I did it," Mossberg said. "Fortunately it wasn't directly combat related where I woke up without a leg. It was kind of a long decision of health and future, so it gave me some time to really be at peace with it."