Four cardiac arrests. A severe traumatic brain injury. Soaring temperatures and blood pressure rates.
Tony Truong simply wasn't expected to live.
"I really was supposed to die. The doctor said a five percent chance of living," said Truong, now a sergeant with Bravo Company.
After he was severely injured in September 2012, just one month before his unit deployed, Truong was put into an induced coma at Madigan Army Medical Center. He can't say just when he woke up during his month as an inpatient there, but he knows that he awoke confused. What surprised him the most was that when he tried to talk with others, they couldn't understand him.
"When I woke up I thought I was normal," said Truong. He thought that he could still speak clearly and that he could still move well, that he would be shortly returning to jiu jitsu mats and football fields.
He would later find out that doctors said he wasn't supposed to walk or talk again. Although he's struggled with both, months of therapy at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California enabled him to move past using a walker and a cane as he regained his balance; speech and cognitive therapy allowed him to once again learn to communicate with others. Truong eventually joined the Warrior Transition Battalion here in January 2013 after he gained more independence.
"He has had such a wonderful attitude from the day that I met him," said his nurse case manager here, Kim Fontenot.
Even with his notably upbeat mindset, Truong knew his outlook had changed drastically since he got hurt. Once very social, his difficulties with speech kept him from talking and interacting as much with others. Once exceptionally active, his struggles with balance and dexterity kept him from the sports he loved.
"When I got injured, I lost all of my motivation, all my confidence," said Truong, a former ammunition specialist. "I woke up one day and I said, 'You know what, I'm going to try to be the old me again.'"
He's picking up new activities, working on dexterity and hand-eye coordination while he steadies a bow in archery and blows glass at a hot shop. And, once again, he's picked up his paintbrush.
"Now that I paint, I get the satisfaction like wow, I can still do this," said Truong, who started painting in high school. The paintings never end up on his own walls; each is a gift he starts with someone in mind.
"I give it to them so they remember me, like I'll be a part of their life forever," Truong said.
He's given a few to Fontenot. "She's just a big support system for me," he said. "She truly is one of a kind."
He also cooks for her and her officemate, preferring to make dishes with crunchy textures since he can no longer taste or smell. He says he remembers which foods tasted good, though.
Fontenot still marvels at Truong's attitude after surviving his injury.
"So many people would've been bitter and would've been angry," she said.
Truong credits his positive outlook to simply being alive -- "Just that I'm still here," he said.
He treats his rare moments of depression as a part of his injury.
"I get depressed sometimes, but I tell myself that's just one symptom, because I never used to get depressed. There was never a bad day in life for me," he said. "I prefer to be optimistic."
That optimism plays into his motivation to become a personal trainer when he leaves the Army; he said that he loves weight training and finds that he can get lost in it.
"I really just want to help people out, because helping people out makes me happy," said Truong, who hopes to move back to where his family lives in Castro Valley, Calif.
His nurse has high hopes for him as he leaves the Army.
"There are comeback kids, and to me he's one of them," said Fontenot.
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