Transcript
My name is Roger Rodriguez
and I spent 26 years
in military service.
(soft music)
[Rodriguez] I was a flight
medical technician
and then I became
a flight nurse.
The number that I came
up with in therapy
was 2,117 patients that
I had been involved with
in transporting
back to the U.S.,
and on the last tour,
when I came home,
I realized that I
needed to get some help
or something bad
was gonna happen.
- My old dad was funny.
He was in everybody's business,
whether you wanted
him to or not.
He was there and
ready for action.
He was our number one
supporter with Alex in soccer
and with me with dance.
- He would always hug us,
he would always laugh
with us and it was just,
he was my best friend.
- People would say to me,
"Gosh, he must make you
laugh every single day,"
and I'm like, "He does,
"and that's part of the reason
I fell in love with him."
(soft music)
- When he came home, it
just wasn't the same.
He didn't wanna spend
any time with me,
any time with my sister.
It was just, "Hey, I'm tired,
I'm gonna go up to sleep,"
so it was like I never
saw him any more.
- Our family's very close.
We're very close with my
parents and my brothers,
so we would always
do dinner together,
and Roger never wanted to come
downstairs for the dinners.
- I just wanted to be left alone
and that included my family.
- Yeah, his moods changed,
he got, like, a shorter fuse.
Like I couldn't talk very
loud or play music loud
'cause he would get very angry.
And I remember
just this one time
where I looked at him wrong.
I didn't mean to.
It was just, I guess, my face,
and he went off, and that
wasn't like him normally.
He yelled at me in a very
public place, I remember,
and I knew that wasn't my dad.
This was like a
whole new person.
- When he told me, he was like,
"I don't think I'm gonna be
able to go back to work."
And I was like, "What?"
"What do you mean you're
not gonna be able
"to go back to work?"
In a matter of, like, a month,
all of our dreams
were shattered.
The man I married
wasn't there any more.
You know, the plans we had
for living our life together
and having a long,
wonderful life -
him as an RN, me as
a physical therapist,
all of sudden that was all gone,
and I had a hard time
dealing with that.
- There were times
where I thought
that my wife would leave
with the kids and be done.
- And I finally told him,
I said, "I think you
need to go see somebody,
or I think we are
not gonna last."
(soft music)
- I remember my first
meeting with Roger.
He came in with his wife.
He was really struggling.
He was having trouble sleeping.
He was just not his normal self.
He was very emotionally
numb one minute
and very all over the place
with his emotions other times.
Really struggling with
some intrusive memories
of a veteran that he had
treated who had been burned,
and of a couple of incidences
where the plane that he
was in was under fire.
- Valerie, my therapist,
we have been on a
long road together.
When I first went to her,
I was at my lowest point.
She is that one person that
was there and said to me,
"We're gonna get through this.
"We'll work through it.
"You gotta trust me."
- She was very, very
warm, very inviting,
and really just kind of gave
me an educational session
on what PTSD was, you know,
and what the stages were that
Roger would have to go through
in order to get better.
Told me it wouldn't
be a quick fix.
The Roger, with that
old personality,
might not come back.
You're gonna get a new Roger
and you just need to
learn to love that Roger,
just like you loved the old one.
- He was very motivated
to get better.
He really wanted to recover.
- We were scheduling
a thing for dance
and my mom was like, "Nope,
we can't go that day,
"'cause Dad has therapy,"
and then from that point on,
we had to schedule things around
my dad's therapy sessions,
because I came to know
those were important.
Those were Dad's times
and he needed that.
(soft music)
- One thing about recovery
that most people don't expect,
if you think about a graph
and a straight line up,
recovery is never
a straight line up.
It's always a jagged,
so they'll be up here and
they'll come down here,
and they think,
"Oh, no, I've never,
"I've made no progress,"
but really, they
started down here.
So, as that goes,
there's ups and downs
within recovery.
That's a natural part of how
human beings grow and develop.
- It's hard to explain that
mental exhaustion that you feel
walking out of a
therapy session.
You're working hard for an hour
to sort things out,
to process them,
and then leave the
office, go home,
and return to a
semi-normal family life.
When I would leave therapy,
I would just be so mentally
tired, and physically tired,
of the emotion of it all.
I would have to go home and
just take a nap or lay down,
but there were some days
where I couldn't do that.
- And I think his
family started to notice
some softening of his, and
improving, of his mood.
- The lady would always
give him goals like,
"Hey, let's try to smile today.
"Let's spend half an hour
just playing with your kids
"or half an hour just
spending time with them,"
and even though it
was part of his
exercises to do this,
it was a big boost for
me, because I was like,
"Wow, me and Dad are
finally gonna go outside
and throw a football."
- I do remember one day
we were at the studio.
I was in the middle of
a five-hour rehearsal.
I was getting tired
and he would always bring
the girls and I lunch.
And he hadn't done
that in a while,
so when I walk out into
the lobby of the studio
and I see him sitting there
with a little ShopRite bag
and our names on it, I was
like, "That's my old Dad."
He had brought us
lunch, even my director.
He brought her a couple
bottles of water,
and I was like,
"That's my old Dad."
- I could notice things
getting better and better.
I started doing more things.
We started going to places.
We started to have more fun.
- You would see a glimmer
of Roger come out.
You know, he would start
to feel comfortable
being in front of
everybody again,
and as time went on, he's like,
"I think I'm gonna go back.
"I think I'm
gonna try to work."
And then slowly, over time,
he picked up more hours there.
He seemed to be doing well.
Been working now
full-time for four years
and he seems
to be doing great.
Something where he
gets up every morning,
feels like he
makes a difference,
and can come home and
be a great husband
and a great dad at
the end of the day.
(soft music)
[Valerie] I think, in Roger's
case, in all cases,
family support is really
very, very important.
They were very patient with
him and very committed to him,
and that gave him kind
of a stable foundation
to stick with things
and to have hope,
and to not feel abandoned.
I think the family
support is crucial.
- I definitely felt relief
through his therapy process.
I felt so much relief.
I felt like the weight of the
world was off of my shoulders.
I could breathe,
and I was happy.
- My dad going through
therapy has 100%,
without a doubt, brought
all of us closer together.
Before he did this,
it was just him,
and then it was me, and
my mom, and my sister.
It was like two separate groups,
and now, after everything
he's done with getting help,
getting treatment, it just,
it brought our two
groups back together,
like it was the old family.
- Their support was everything.
As I was going through therapy,
I had the ups, I had the downs,
I had good days, I had bad days.
But no matter what
type of day I had,
they were always
right there beside me.
Did we argue?
Yes.
Did we have moments
when we just didn't like
each other at the moment?
Yes.
Did we work through that?
Yes.
Is there still
lots of love there?
Yes.
So it takes work, and if
everybody's willing to work
and stick with it,
there is a rainbow,
a pot of gold,
which was my family, at
the end of the rainbow.
- I tell everybody
Roger's my hero.
He went over there and
helped a lot of people
that got injured really bad
and Roger was the
one to keep them
alive until they got to
come back to maybe Germany
to see their families
before they passed away.
So I'm super proud
of what Roger did,
and what he does
every single day.
He was willing to
put the work in
to get to the other side
to save our marriage
and save our family.
You know, my kids are proud
that we're both veterans.
You know, they always
love to tell everybody
that their daddy
was in the military.
We used to tell the kids that,
when they would miss Daddy,
"Well, Daddy can't be here
'cause he's gotta be over there
"helping the people get better
that need to get better."
Yeah, he's my hero.
(soft music)
(chuckling)
- [Photographer]
Look at each other.
(laughing)