"The biggest thing about Kimberly is how driven she was and how hard she worked," says Amy Jones, one of the physical therapists at Kernan who was involved in Dozier's rehabilitation. "She came in every morning with a really positive attitude, worked incredibly hard, and that's why she had the kind of recovery she did."
The recovery continues - at least the emotional and professional parts. In the book, Dozier recounts a meeting with members of CBS News' London bureau, where her two colleagues who died had worked. While she says she found much support, she also encountered the complex mix of darker emotions - anger, guilt and sorrow - that live on after a tragedy.
"I went to embrace one old friend, and as I stepped forward, he crossed his arms and stepped back. I froze halfway to a hug. That hurt like hell," she writes.
When asked about the passage, Dozier said she thought the colleague who refused to hug was receding as much from the pain he felt over the deaths of his friends as he was recoiling from her.
"I am the living embodiment," she says. "People have to aim that pain somewhere. OK, now I understand: It's got to be; it's got to be."
The Peabody Award-winning reporter thinks she also became the embodiment of the war for many who saw her reporting it on TV - and that, in part, is why there was front-page interest in her injuries and recovery.
But Dozier repeatedly stressed her hope that Breathing the Fire would shed light on what thousands of soldiers and Marines are experiencing.
"I want Americans to know what the troops are going through. I want the troops to know that there is a way out of dealing with their trauma and recovering from it, whether it is a blast injury or an injury to their heart and soul - or both," she says. "And I want to make people think about the choices they're making and how much they have criticized us for trying to give them the information they need to make that choice."
Philip Seib, a professor of journalism and public policy at the University of Southern California, says books like Dozier's can play such a role.
"There might be a tendency in some quarters to term these books narcissistic, but I don't think they are. I think they serve a tremendously good purpose," Seib says, linking Dozier's book to In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing, the 2007 account by ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and his wife, Lee, of his road to recovery after being seriously wounded in Iraq.
