WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — After high school, Troy Carroll joined the Navy as a corpsman, specializing in emergency medical care.
He went on to serve two tours in Iraq with the Marines.
"The stuff you run into, you train and practice so hard, it's muscle memory," he said.
Back on American soil though, Carroll felt less comfortable.
"I started showing signs of depression and irritability," he said.
A back injury and Post-traumatic stress disorder forced him to medically retire from the military in 2012. Unsure of what his future would look like, Carroll began healing the physical and emotional scars from his past through medical treatments and counseling with the Wounded Warriors Project.
"You feel like you've lost a part of yourself, because you're not doing what you were meant to do," he said. "I knew I had to work on myself to get to where I'm at now."
Now Carroll is a student at Middle Georgia State University, pursuing his lifelong goal of becoming a nurse.
"My mom was a nurse, and I wanted to get in the medical field, but we couldn't afford to put me through college."
Carroll says he still goes through challenges with his back problems and PTSD, but he is determined to move forward for himself, his family, and fellow veterans.
"For the ones who have seen combat, you are changed. You are not the same person you went into it as. You have to find your new self," he said. "You are resilient, and you do matter."
He'll graduate with his Bachelor's in two years. Carroll says he plans to eventually pursue a master's degree to become a nurse practitioner and hopes his ambition will serve as an inspiration to other veterans.
"Even though I'm disabled, there's ways that you can still follow your dreams," he said.
Carroll says Veterans Day is actually one of his favorite days of the year, because it's a time he gets together with other veterans to share their experiences.
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