At 8:30 AM on August 30, Tammy Gollinger's phone rang. It was the phone call every soldier's mother dreads.

Dr. Wendy Walsh: There had been a bomb attack on a humvee in Iraq that was being driven by her 20-year-old son, Private Randy Gollinger. The humvee was destroyed. The only thing the government employee was able to tell her was that her son was alive -- but barely.

"My immediate thought was, 'I have to get to him. I need to be there!'"

But as the days progressed, the impossibility of her urges sunk in, and her anxiety got worse. "I got so many calls from so many different bureaucrats, giving me all kinds of conflicting reports, we had no idea how severe his injuries were until a week later" -- and no word from Randy himself because he was mostly unconscious.

Then he was transferred to a hospital in Germany, still unconscious, with his right leg hanging on below the knee by only skin, and his right eye and socket shattered. Tammy's husband had served in Desert Storm, and Tammy worked at a hospital in upstate New York. With their combined knowledge and contacts, they dodged the military machine of non-information and managed to get a phone number for the ICU nurses at the hospital in Germany. Once this mom had a voice contact with Randy's actual caregivers, she made plans to get on a plane for Germany. But before her flight left, she was told Randy was shipped to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Her hopes were dashed when the next voice on the phone told her to stay put. Randy had "coded" in flight and he was returned to Germany to become stabilized and get fresh blood, enough to fly again. A week later, stabilized and still unconscious, Randy flew back to America. Tammy, her husband, and daughter drove eight hours to be there at the gate of Walter Reed Hospital when he arrived.

But she was denied entry. At the gate, she was told that the military had told her to stay put.

"They thought he was going to die. They didn't want me there. But I knew one thing they didn't know. Randy made me a promise. My son promised me he wouldn't die over there," she said, her voice cracking as she told the story.

After some magical paperwork wrangling and a loaned fax machine in a nearby hotel lobby, Tammy stormed the gates of the military hospital, with paperwork as her weapon.

"The devastation of walking into that hospital room for the first time will never leave my mind," recalls Tammy. "The smell alone was terrible. His leg was gangrenous. Since they didn't think he was going to live, they left him in one piece. My first order of business was to order the doctors to remove my son's leg and save his life. I knew in my heart that if he lived 48 hours, he had a chance of surviving."

But the trauma of Randy Gollinger continued. While his family spent months at his bedside caring for him, the military issued discharge papers because he wasn't well enough for active service, thus also ending his medical care.

Finally home with his family, Randy slipped into a deep depression. "He couldn't look in the mirror without seeing a monster. His face was so disfigured. I worried every day that my son would commit suicide."

That's when Tammy's 25-year-old daughter, Kristie, came up with a last-ditch idea: to write to television host Dr. Phil. Twenty-four hours later, a producer from the "Dr. Phil" show e-mailed the Gollingers and invited them to come to California.

The next weeks and months were a whirlwind of life changes. On the show, the Gollingers were introduced to a private charity called the Iraq Star Foundation. They help connect plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, and other reconstructive doctors with soldiers who have been disfigured in war. The doctors donate their services, and Iraq Star raises money for airfare and accommodation.

Over the course of three surgeries, Randy received a facial reconstruction and a new eye. His state-of-the-art eye implant is made of sea coral, which naturally attracts muscle tissue to grow around it and create movement. The work was donated by Dr. Michael Groth in Beverly Hills, and all his OR staff also donated their services.

Today, after years of fighting for her son's life, Tammy is filled with mixed feelings -- anger at how the military treated her son, and worry for the thousands of other injured young men and women who do not have parents so vigilantly fighting for them. But at the same time, this past weekend, she watched Randy -- now 23, and living with his new girlfriend -- playing a game of kick-the-can with his family, and smiling from ear to ear.

Dr. Wendy Walsh holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and her area of interest is Attachment Theory, a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory that provides a descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding interpersonal relationships between human beings. As a psychological assistant registered with the California Board of Psychology, Dr. Walsh has treated individuals, couples and families for a variety of mental health concerns including personality disorders, anger management, eating and substance disorders, and depression. Connect with Dr. Walsh on Facebook.