HOUSTON – Registered nurse and Air Force veteran, Jeff Mellenthin, has only been climbing a rock wall for a year, and he’s already 8th in the world in his paraclimbing category.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that he’s been able to surpass limitations from his time serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Jeff served as a combat flight nurse and injured his back and leg while airlifting injured servicemembers to safety. The emotional and physical toll of that experience was severe.
“All of the missile attacks, you know, the alerts, the alarms, you never knew what was gonna land, what was gonna hit, what wasn’t,” he says. “Our job, being combat air evac, if somebody’s injured, no matter where they’re at, no matter the situation, ya know, we bring ‘em home. And when that mission gets challenged because you’re hurt, your brain does some weird things.”
Jeff’s path to healing has been greatly helped by the nonprofit, Semper Fi and America’s Fund, which sponsored training for his service dog, Enzo, and helped him find pathways to therapy as his family grappled with all he was dealing with.
“One of the comments I’ll always remember is my wife describing me to one of the providers one time, because he asked, what’s wrong, what’s not working? She said the best way she could describe it was, I’m just not the same person who left.”
It’s something that Semper Fi case manager, Jennifer Williams, says is all too common.
“Coming home is a change. They’ve lived a certain way for a few months to a couple of years. Coming home is a huge transition, nothing’s the same,” she says. “You’re not the same. Reintegration into your old way of life doesn’t always happen. And you need help sometimes getting back to a place where you’re comfortable.”
Jeff says in addition to traditional therapy and putting in lots of emotional work, being on this wall four days a week and competing at an international level, has helped him tremendously.
“There’s a huge mental challenge, problem solving, analytic aspect to it. To figure out a way to get up the wall. And then you have to figure out how to make your body do it because our bodies don’t work the way everybody else’s does. It makes me feel good to be able to do those things, especially when I had such a long period of both bad emotions and not being able to feel things.”
And let’s not forget about Enzo. His dedicated service dog is a huge part of his family and a huge part of his recovery from old wounds he never thought would heal.
“This guy, through the help of Semper Fi & America’s Fund, has made a huge difference. The issues that would normally cause me a lot of problems, don’t happen as often. And I’m grateful for that. It’s a life I didn’t think I could have again.”
To learn more about Semper Fi & America’s Fund, visit thefund.org.
To help Jeff in his mission to train in the 2025 paraclimbing season, you can find his GoFundMe page here.
