Meet Cpl. Bobby Joseph.

The Naples, Fla., native wanted to serve his country, and he did so with honor, serving with 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, in Iraq. Joseph was struck by a roadside bomb, Nov. 11, 2006, causing severe nerve damage to his legs. He thought his Marine Corps career, one of the things defining his life, was over.

‘‘When I would go home, my sons would run around saying, ‘Come on daddy, play with us,’ and I would think, ‘How can I keep up with them?’” said Joseph, a wounded warrior with Wounded Warrior Battalion East. ‘‘It brought tears to my eyes. I cried every day.”

Joseph was placed on several prescription drugs to alleviate his pain. However, he said the only time they worked was when he was lying in bed.

‘‘My bedroom was a dingy, dark prison. I couldn’t do anything by myself. I couldn’t even take a bath without help,” said Joseph, beginning to choke up. ‘‘I was a prisoner of a war taking place in my mind.”

Joseph broke out of his prison July 8, when he became the first Marine aboard Camp Lejeune to receive a revolutionary spinal cord stimulator procedure. The cell phone-sized implant, which is attached to nerve endings in the spine, tricks the brain into believing there is no pain.

The stimulator sends an electric current through the spine, confusing the nerves and stopping them from sending impulses to the brain that lets it know the body is in pain, Cmdr. Jerry Foltz, the pain management specialist at the Naval Hospital, explained. The procedure has a 75 percent success rate, low risk of complications and is reversible if necessary.

Joseph was terrified of the operation at first; he dreaded the thought of another surgery after enduring 12 already and said he found drugs made it easy to say no to anymore.

Terrified of having the operation at first, Joseph dreaded more surgeries after enduring 12 already and found drugs made it too easy to say no to anymore procedures.

‘‘The medications were controlling my life,” said Joseph. ‘‘It was as if I was watching some stranger control everything I did.”

Close to giving up on life, Joseph discovered he would never receive custody of his sons while on medication. Knowing he had to make drastic changes, Joseph became determined to move forward with surgery.

‘‘I was walking through a dark tunnel, like the one people see before they die,” explained Joseph. ‘‘Then the light came. It was Cmdr. Foltz, the man who saved my life.”

‘‘(Joseph’s) attitude is awesome, but the chronic nerve pain he has is very complex,” said Foltz, the pain management specialist at the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital. ‘‘There is no permanent cure.”

Although he does not know who ultimately made the decision to bring him here, Foltz said that he knows the upcoming expansion of the Wounded Warriors’ Battalion created a necessity for a pain management specialist on base.