Utah veteran injured by mortar becomes running inspiration

Utah veteran injured by mortar becomes running inspiration

(Courtesy of Mary Barnett)


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CLINTON — A Clinton woman injured by a mortar while serving in Iraq has since run several marathons and hopes to inspire others to never give up.

Mary Barnett joined the Air Force on June 30, 1999, as an F-16 avionics specialist. During her service, Barnett said she was stationed at a variety of places, including California, Korea, Singapore, Kuwait and Iraq. She was deployed to Iraq in July 2004 for a six-month deployment at Joint Base Balad.

On Sept. 11, 2004, Barnett said she was walking across the base to do laundry on her day off when there was a large explosion.

“There were a lot of alarm reds that day, meaning that there was attacks or possible attacks that were going to happen,” Barnett said. “Everybody said kind of ‘be careful. It’s a special day. Just watch your back.’ And when I was walking to the laundry tent, I just remember a huge explosion and saw a bunch of smoke and fog.”

The blast from the mortar blew Barnett onto her back, but she said she didn’t think she had been injured. She ran over to help an airman who had been seriously injured by the blast. After the airman had been stabilized, she said they all went into a secure aircraft shelter on the base. Then, Barnett passed out.

“Everybody thought that maybe it was just shock, dehydration,” she said. “My heart rate just kept dropping and it just kept doing it. And over the course of the evening, it kept happening. I was just falling and hitting my head on things. … But I was trying to hide it because I was with a bunch of guys and I didn’t want them to think I was a woose.”

However, Barnett said her heart rate continued to drop, averaging only about 20 beats per minute. She was eventually airlifted to Germany where she received medical treatment for a week. The doctors eventually diagnosed her with a traumatic brain injury and bradycardia, a condition that disrupts the normal electrical impulses that control the heart’s pumping.

When she was stable enough, Barnett was flown back to the U.S. in January 2005 and was medically discharged from the Air Force. At 23, she underwent surgery and had a pacemaker put in.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Mary Barnett

“For me, it kept me alive, but I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do,” she said. “I couldn’t get my heart rate up to go exercise. I couldn't do anything still without fear of passing out. … I kind of thought my life was over. I was in a pretty big funk. I was really depressed.”

Six months after her surgery, Barnett signed up for a 5K race with some of her co-workers. She said initially she planned to just walk, but she got “the urge to run.”

“Even though it was painful, I felt so free in my mind that I decided that I was going to keep doing it a little bit more and more,” Barnett said. “I decided that as long as I’m not passing out or dying, I didn’t see how it could hurt me because I felt like I was dying inside already from not being able to do anything.”

Barnett ran several more 5K races, then moved on to 10Ks, half marathons and has now done several marathons. She said she’s run 11 half marathons and has seven more planned for 2015. Barnett also has a goal to do the Spartan Trifecta by running a Spartan race in Utah, Arizona and Colorado within a year.

“Running was like an outlet for me and the more I did it … I felt that it was making me stronger,” she said. “It also helped me cope a little bit because there was some PTSD from the incident. … It just made me feel more alive again and just like a normal human person and not like a … victim. It took away that and made me feel like a survivor, I guess.”

Barnett said she wants to inspire others to realize that anything is possible.

“I like to help people and I want them to realize that I was kind of in that same boat where I thought, ‘I’m done. I give up. It’s impossible ….’ But somehow you can. You can do anything.”

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