 Everybody pays a price. Anybody that's deployed has scars, whether visible or not, I'd say, but we adjust fire and find new goals all the time. I enlisted in 2008. I usually tell people that it was laundry day and I needed the free t-shirt. One of our career fairs, there happened to be an Army recruiter that showed up and I got to talking to him while visiting boots and he convinced me to take a meeting with him. He said, I'm meeting with a recruiter next week. And I said, you are? You do know there's a war going on, right? And he said, yeah mom, that's why I'm doing it. I have to make my life count for something. And he told me about this very little known but awesome job of civil affairs in the Army where you go into foreign lands and you connect with people and it really spoke to me. Adam and I were stationed in Afghanistan. I was the deputy commanding officer for the provincial reconstruction team and Adam was at a fire base called Shumkani. It fell on me to take the conference call with our deputy commander. All of a sudden he broke in and said, hey sir, gotta go, we're under attack. And I said, hey, keep your head low, stay safe. That was the last order I've ever disobeyed in my military career. I got on a gun truck and was firing on the enemy positions and ended up taking her out from a sniper in the head. Everybody kept fighting and they got me patched up as best they could and took me to the med shed. The phone rang and they explained to me that Adam had been shot and they told me that he was alive and they had gotten him to Salerno. But beyond that we didn't know a lot. So we ended up having to wait six days before Adam was able to be brought back to the United States. And those six days were awful. They had to remove several portions of my skull to give my brain room to swell so it could swell out and set it down onto the brainstem and kill me. They did lots of procedures in country to stabilize me and then got me to Germany and did a few more procedures. Then got me to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda where they did the big surgeries and that kind of stuff. And then they transferred me to the VA hospital in Minneapolis where I did all my rehab, which was about a 10 month process. He was suddenly struggling with things that he never had to struggle with before, which I would think would be horribly frustrating. But he never showed that frustration. He never showed anger. He just showed determination. My only real focus was to get back home because I had met my then-girlfriend, now-wife, shortly before I left for Afghanistan and we really started to connect. We had a wedding planned and bought and paid for and so if I wasn't out of the hospital by the time this wedding rolled around she'd probably find somebody else to fill my spot. Adam has always been a jokester, always. Don't play dumb with me. I'm better at it and I'll win. And it's amazing to me how it's come out now with this injury. It didn't go away. Adam, as a person, his personality hasn't changed. He's still Adam and that's the greatest gift of all. Any other conflict, I can tell you Adam would be deceased. Praise God, great medical technology. He's here today. And all of a sudden one of the names was Adam Alexander. And I was like, wow! So I quick shot an email and said, Adam, is this you? Sure is. Well, how about we meet for coffee? So we met for coffee and he told me about how he was getting into the DAV local here in Oshkosh and that I should come check out a meeting. So I went with them to a meeting and he got me to become a life member of our chapter. He does a lot more with DAV than most people do. He does a lot of guest speaking to schools and really, really dedicated to what he's doing, which is we need that. He's testified in Madison on our reimbursement tax credit bill. He's here to do whatever he can to make sure more veterans like him are taking care of us. So you have this fearless warrior on the battlefield that one has faced the enemy, two has just brought himself physically back from these insurmountable odds and now he wants to talk to you about veterans issues. You're going to listen to him. It's been healing for me to tell my story and hopefully allow somebody else to get something out of it. So I really wanted to give other veterans a platform to tell their story and hopefully find that healing as well. And there's two components we look at with the Outpost. One, sharing the DAV message and what we really like to do is we like to hone in locally. So what does DAV mean for me in this county? The second thing is every veteran's got a story. I always like to say every veteran is a piece of U.S. history. It was the first time I've talked about my past to anybody. And his family got to hear it from start to finish by watching the show and I think it helped them understand his situation a lot better and him kind of get a weight off of his chest. I think with veterans they realize that Adam's somebody that does care and is compassionate and that they can sit down and just share what's on their mind. To be able to take something so painful and negative and turn it into something positive is amazing. And we all have a gift to share and Adam has chosen to share his as opposed to hiding in his house. He's literally out there showing people what you can overcome as long as you have the heart and the drive to do so. He fought and got to where he needed to be and who knows where he's going to go in five more years. I mean, his story, he continues to write it. I felt like I was alive for a reason so I'm still figuring out what that reason is but there's definitely a reason. Every day above ground from here on out is a good day because they gave me a 5% chance to live when I was injured and here I am over 10 years later with a new baby and life is good.