One explosion in Afghanistan shattered Army medic Sgt. Thai Lee’s hopes of one day becoming a father.

In 2014, Lee was stationed in Pasab, Afghanistan when his camp was rocked with a series of explosions. He ran to join the fight, only to pass out after feeling an intense heat between his legs.

NBC News provides a breakdown of the nitty gritty of Lee’s injuries:

Three days later at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, Lee learned the extent of his injuries: he’d suffered a stroke and a neck wound that had partially paralyzed the left side of his body; he was hit in the stomach and lost part of his intestines; his penis had been severely cut; one testicle had been blown off, and the other crushed.

After completing his service, Lee planned to start a family with his wife and settle down. Thanks to irreparable damage to his genitals, that dream went up in smoke.

Though this type of combat injury is seldom discussed, at least 1,200 American veterans suffered groin injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014. Almost all of them were caused by the detonation of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The military has become adept at saving the lives of IED victims, but fertility is a different matter.

Fortunately, medical science has made progress in reconstructing damaged genitals. For example, Johns Hopkins University Hospital provided experimental penis transplants to a group of unnamed veterans.

Lee didn’t get a transplant, but he did get something else–a breakthrough medical procedure that successfully retrieved his own sperm from the seminal vesicles. Using an ultrasound as a guide, doctors extracted the Army medic’s own semen to fertilize his wife’s extracted eggs. Only a handful of veterans have ever consented to the treatment.

Now Lee’s wife is pregnant with their first child, and Lee is due to become a father in April.

“I can’t wait to be a dad,” Lee told NBC. “When she got pregnant, I finally felt complete.”