Travis Mills: Incredible Story about Owning Your Attitude

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SSG Travis Mills was devastated when a bomb took away all four of his limbs... until a fellow amputee changed his perspective on life.   Speaker: SSG Travis Mills for NCQA - National Committee for Quality Assurance  Overcome Fear, Change Your Life and Change the World

Transcript

00:00When I walked out here, I gotta be honest, I was pretty nervous.

00:03I hope I didn't, you know, bomb this.

00:08You know, because last time, what happened?

00:12So, on the screen, you were gonna see my best friend, my wife Kelsey.

00:17She winds up telling me, with excitement and fear, that she's pregnant.

00:21Nine months go by, and my daughter's born.

00:24And the reason I know that my wife is the best in the world,

00:28is because when I looked at my wife, and I said, what do you want to name her?

00:30You think Madison or Avery?

00:32She looked at me and said, no, we have to name her Chloe Lynn, don't we?

00:36I said, we don't have to do that, why would you even think that?

00:39And she said, because, you idiot, you already got your ex-girlfriend's name tattooed on your arm.

00:45Yeah.

00:46So we named her after my ex-girlfriend.

00:51It's not true. It's not true.

00:55No, my ex-girlfriend's the devil, but it's on...

00:59So everything's going my way. I'm coming up on my third deployment.

01:02I gotta go over to Afghanistan for my third time.

01:04Start putting our stuff on like normal.

01:06As we're going over, what we're gonna do, we're strapping our gear on.

01:09We go out with the minesweeper, and we start sweeping the ground, back and forth.

01:12Back and forth, nothing alarms us, there's nothing there.

01:14I take my backpack off, and I set it on the ground.

01:18It hits the ground, and underneath it is a bomb.

01:20And it takes my right arm, right leg, automatically.

01:23They rush me into surgery, right, we're gonna fast forward into the surgery here.

01:26And they cut my left leg off because it's already gone.

01:29And then two days later, they have to cut my left arm off because the skin had necrotized.

01:33So I'm a quadruple amputee.

01:35Three days later, I arrived at Walter Reed in Bethesda, Maryland.

01:38My wife came up to me, right, and I saw her.

01:41And I finally got a chance to talk to her.

01:43I said, Kelsey, you don't have to do this.

01:45Take the house, take the cars, take whatever money we have saved up and go.

01:49This is not the life I would choose for you.

01:51And she thought about it, and she said, you know, I was thinking that.

01:55Yeah.

01:58Yeah.

01:59And then she came around, and she said, you know what?

02:01Handicap parking sounds enticing.

02:03I'm...

02:05I'm gonna stay.

02:08But if you can imagine, she actually at 23, and I'm 25, and our daughter's six months old,

02:12said, you know what? I'm gonna be here. We're gonna get through this together.

02:15So I'm at Walter Reed, and I'm trying to recover, and I had to find motivation.

02:19But I find motivation in my wife and my daughter.

02:21And all of a sudden, there's a brotherhood at Walter Reed.

02:23A robot walked into my room.

02:25And the first thing out of this guy's mouth was, hey, man, welcome to the club.

02:29I said, I want to be in your club.

02:31He said, kind of late now, don't you think?

02:33I said, oh, you got me there.

02:35And his name was Todd Nicely.

02:37He showed me that with hard work and determination, I could walk again.

02:41And two things went off.

02:42Number one, this guy showed me the way that I can get better.

02:45I can still be there for my family.

02:46And number two, he's a Marine.

02:48And if a Marine can do it with how dumb they are, you know.

02:52So the things I wanted to accomplish, I wanted to be able to feed myself again.

02:57I wanted to be able to pick a fork up and put food in my mouth.

03:00You see, I couldn't do that for five weeks.

03:02At five weeks, I was out of my recovery stage enough where I was healed up,

03:06and I could grab a fork.

03:07I also was tired of sitting in a wheelchair.

03:09I thought, you know what? I want to be able to walk again.

03:11So seven weeks and four days into my recovery,

03:14I took my very first steps at Walter Reed.

03:16It was very painful.

03:17It was not easy.

03:18And as I was walking around the track, they said,

03:20you'll walk one lap today.

03:21And I went ahead and walked three laps that day.

03:23And when I got done, I sat down, took a breather,

03:26and realized this could be something that I do.

03:28Now the next thing, ladies and gentlemen, is my hand.

03:31And this thing is the coolest thing in the world.

03:33On the screen, you're going to see the most important hand that I own right there.

03:36It's not the one I'm wearing.

03:37No, that one.

03:38That one's called a greifer.

03:40That hand is in a crown royal bag on the top shelf of my closet.

03:44Yeah, and nobody touches that hand

03:47because that hand causes 25 pounds of pressure.

03:50And you see my daughter is seven years old.

03:52Yeah, in nine years, Johnny's going to come knocking at the door.

03:56And he's going to be like, hey, bro.

03:59I'm like, did you just bro me, Johnny?

04:02That's 25 pounds of pressure.

04:04He's like, oh, dude, that hurts.

04:05Johnny, there's no strike two and three.

04:07This is two and three right here.

04:10Crunch.

04:11I break his hand.

04:12I know, sad.

04:13He's like, let me go.

04:14Let me go.

04:15I pull Johnny close.

04:16I don't let him go.

04:17No.

04:18I say, Johnny, guess what?

04:19I don't know what.

04:20No fingerprints, Johnny.

04:24Remember that, Johnny.

04:30When I got blown up and I was down and out and I was wondering, why did this happen?

04:33I was embarrassed.

04:34I was angry.

04:35I was questioning, am I a bad person?

04:36Does God hate me?

04:37The biggest question I honestly had, ladies and gentlemen, was why didn't I just die?

04:42Why did I live through this?

04:44And I found the answer in my family.

04:46And I found the answer in Todd Nicely, that corporal that came to see me that was retired

04:49from the Marine Corps, that told me I would be fine.

04:52So I decided I was going to talk to everybody I could that was at that hospital.

04:56And at Walter Reed, amputees are what you normally see.

04:59And me missing all four limbs, that was the worst you were going to see.

05:01So I'd go room to room.

05:03And I'd say, hey, I'm Travis.

05:04You're going to be fine.

05:05And that's the message Todd gave me, from that experience.

05:07Some people found out I did that.

05:09I became known as the mayor of Building 62.

05:11And they made a documentary on me.

05:13I don't think my problems outweigh anybody else's.

05:16I am fortunate to live in a nation where I can wake up in the morning with no arms and no legs.

05:21Strap my legs on.

05:23Throw my arm on.

05:24Go in the elevator and go out and live life to the fullest.

05:28Take my wife and my daughter wherever we want to go.

05:33The two life lessons that I have learned, that I want you to go and pass along to everybody that you meet,

05:38is number one, don't dwell on the past.

05:41I learned that.

05:42Because when I was sitting in my hospital bed, closing my eyes and wishing that this did not happen,

05:47I realized you're not going to change the past.

05:51I can't change what happened yesterday.

05:53And I can't change what happened six years ago in Afghanistan.

05:56So I reminisce the 25 great years I had with legs and arms.

05:59And I've had six pretty great years without them.

06:02But with that experience and so many more, you can't always control your situation.

06:09But I can always control my attitude.

06:29For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov

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