Warriors of Camp Southern Ground

ALLISON TRAVIS

Allison served nine years in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She joined the Navy at 49 after 9/11. This is her story as told by Allison and VA Adaptive Sports & Arts.

Learning and Thriving: Disabled Navy Veteran Discovers Purpose Through Adaptive Sports
By Brian Buckwalter

Allison Travis watched on television as people jumped out of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and she immediately had an idea about what was coming.

“So the next day, I went to the Navy and Marine Corps reserve center and volunteered because I knew we were going to war,” she said.
Travis, who is named after her uncle, Navy Capt. Michael Allison Patten, was 48 and a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner in Texas when she signed up to serve. Eighteen months later, she was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve and deployed overseas with Fleet Hospital Dallas.

While Travis was there working as the mental health triage officer for the troop medical clinic at Camp Arifjan, her life changed.

Her commanding officer, a doctor within the unit, got a call from the military police about a soldier who had abandoned his post and was found wandering by himself in the desert talking to his weapon. In detainment, he was refusing to eat and continued talking to people who weren’t there.

“In my experience, I knew this was most likely first [episode] schizophrenia,” Travis said.

He needed treatment to break through psychosis, so Travis recommended a cocktail injection that would address the symptoms. Her commanding officer disagreed, instead ordering her to administer treatment in dissoluble pill form.

As Travis went to put the pill in his mouth, the soldier—who she thought was handcuffed and shackled—immediately struck her in the right eye with his fist.

The force behind the attack sent Travis reeling backward. Her head slammed into the wall behind her, knocking her unconscious. She woke up to MPs tackling her patient to subdue him.

In that moment, Travis’ career as a nurse was over. She’d sustained a traumatic brain injury with a loss of cognitive function. Ever since the assault, she’s had migraines and issues with her memory and balance.

She also experiences post-traumatic stress. Ten years ago, she couldn’t even talk about the incident but has since gone through extensive therapy.

The Atlanta VAMC, and over 10 years of extensive CBT work, helped me feel less reclusive and depressed. However, I was still feeling extremely anxious, unsafe, hypervigilant, and struggling with self-esteem issues after my job of 15 years working with a large non-profit agency secondary to “loss of funding during COVID” led to “elimination of my position.” I met a person who asked me if I knew about Camp Southern Ground? Long-story-short, I applied to CSG’s Warrior PATHH Program, and it literally changed the trajectory of my life!

Once I began to work the program, it was probably the hardest internal work I’ve ever done! From working through my vulnerability which not only included the traumas associated with my line of duty injury, but I quickly came to realize also included major self-esteem issues resulting from the loss of my job, especially since I had never lost a job in my life.

The next critical healing session for me during PATHH was the Equine Module. I was feeling extremely vulnerable and guarded after “letting go of everything” the day before, but I walked into the Calvin Center and immediately connected with this beautiful, handsome gentle giant of a horse named Glock.

After PATHH, I began volunteering at The Calvin Center every week to not only continue my friendship with Glock but also helping the Calvin Center staff with their Horses & Warriors Therapeutic Riding Program for Veterans. Upon completing Warrior PATHH and Warrior Week, I was finally able to understand the concepts “Struggle Well” and “Shift Happens.” It was at this point in my life that I realized the main joy in my life prior to the military was SPORTS. I was an athlete in high school – varsity tennis, swim team for 10 years prior to tennis, played on a church softball team, as well as volleyball, badminton & bowling intramural teams.

Then she saw an email from the Department of Veterans Affairs advertising adaptive sports clinics through its Sports4Vets program, which she and her VA doctors hadn’t heard of before. Intrigued, she applied and was invited to the 2024 National Veterans Summer Sports Clinic in San Diego, where at 69 years old, she learned to surf. And while in San Diego, she learned about the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic and applied.

“I thought, ‘Well, if I can learn to surf at 69, I can learn to ski at age 70,” she said. “So my goal is to not only learn to ski but thrive. Whatever they want to teach me, I’m there to learn and thrive.”

She hopes to apply what she learned while attending the summer clinic to what she’s going to experience in Snowmass Village, Colorado.

“If you don’t work the program, the program won’t work for you,” she said. “These are outstanding programs, but you’ve got to want to be there and you’ve got to be committed and you’ve got to have goals. My goal was to learn as much as I could and hopefully come out of it a stronger, healthier person.”

“I have a new excitement in life—a new purpose in life that I can still serve others,” she said. “By experiencing these sports clinics for disabled Veterans like me, I can spread the word so that others like me can find out about these and find another way to survive and thrive.”

Thank you, Camp Southern Ground, for helping me realize that a SHIFT truly did HAPPEN and I am not only STRUGGLING WELL; I am literally THRIVING at age 70!