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
Speaker: SSG Travis Mills for NCQA - National Committee for Quality Assurance
Overcome Fear, Change Your Life and Change the World
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FunTranscript
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