Learning and thriving: Disabled Navy Veteran discovers purpose through adaptive sports

By Brian Buckwalter

Content warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of physical assault that may be triggering for some readers.

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.

“I celebrated my 50th birthday in Kuwait,” she said.

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 dissolvable 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. She credits her doctors and treatment team at the Atlanta VA Medical Center for helping her get to a place where she can open up about the experience.

There was still a missing piece, though. Athletic and outgoing before her injuries, Travis was withdrawn and reclusive, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Her brother, whom she now lives with in the Atlanta suburbs, suggested she try playing tennis at their neighborhood courts as a way to get out a little more. It helped; she found tennis to be a therapeutic outlet.

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.

“It was just an experience I’ll never forget,” Travis said. “For the first time in my life, I met others who had TBI and PTSD, and through it, I found a community that could understand me.”

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.”

She did, and now Travis has a renewed outlook.

“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.”