Krendra Harralson: Driven by Purpose and Honor

Krendra Harralson of San Antonio, Texas, weighed less than 100 pounds most of her life, but that didn’t stop her from going into the family business. Just like her grandfather and her father as well as her stepfather, aunts, uncles and cousins, she lived for a life of military service. She could parachute out of planes, rappel down walls and haul a rucksack heavier than her for 12 miles — until her back could no longer stand the burden.

Arthritis pain interrupted her ascension in the Army, throwing her for a loop after 21 years of service.

“The military had been a family tradition,” Harralson explains. “My grandfather used to have this big drill sergeant hat on the wall. We would sit and watch M*A*S*H together. As an artilleryman, he knew what was going on in each episode and would explain it to me.”

Soon, Harralson developed a deep love for the military. “At 7 years old, I didn’t have Johnny Gill or Keith Sweat posters on my wall or Boyz II Men, I had Army Nursing Corps posters on my wall. I was literally at basic training 90 days after my 17th birthday.”

Harralson committed early to a regimented schedule of hard work and fitness. A top track and basketball athlete and JROTC cadet in high school in Tacoma, Washington, she felt she was the perfect candidate for the Army National Guard. But her recruiters helped her to bulk up to meet the weight requirements.

“I was so skinny, I was almost invisible,” she recalls. “I weighed 89 pounds. My recruiters used to bring me chicken teriyaki and juice to school to fatten me up. It took me four tries until they finally issued a weight waiver to get into the service.”

And then, when Harralson got to basic training, she discovered she was the youngest in her class, but was still looked up to as a “big sister.”

“Most people were scared; it was new for them,” Harralson recalled. “I felt like I was just hanging out. I already knew how to march and do proper push-ups. It was fun. The drill sergeant put me in a leadership position in two weeks.”

Harralson’s body was conditioned but she began to feel pain. By the time she finished basic training, she was still underweight at 101 pounds and was mostly muscle. “Oftentimes your rucksack is anywhere from 35 to 50 pounds as a newbie,” Harralson explains. “As I advanced in rank in different units as a ground ambulance and air ambulance (supporter) in my 30s, I was maybe 110 pounds.”

Her gear had doubled in weight, though. “I was easily 100 pounds in on just gear alone, but you have to get used to it,” she says. “Because I was one of the only females or the only female, I had to prove myself often. Having the guys have to carry my [tactical vest] or my ruck wasn’t a good look.”

Sometimes, during deployments, Harralson would ask a male colleague to help her to hoist the bags on her back. But that’s it. “I would always tell them, ‘I packed it; I’ll carry it.’ I didn’t want to have to deal with the rumors that ‘Doc can’t carry her own.’”

Harralson began to feel the wear and tear on her knee joints in her 20s. “Getting low on your knees to running five or six miles every other day, being in awkward positions to do vehicle maintenance takes its toll after a while,” she says. “Your joints are always at one extreme or the other.”

She was nearly 26 when she had her first knee surgery, and 31 when she had the second. “They talked about other knee surgeries, and I said I’m done,” she says. “My doc began to talk to me about arthritis. I thought he had to be wrong because that was something for old people.”

At first, Harralson tried topical ointments and the RICE method — rest, ice, compression and elevation — to try to relieve her pain. It was only temporary. By age 33, the pain had spread to her neck and back. “I felt like my neck wasn’t going to support holding my head anymore.”

Soon she was diagnosed with degenerative disc disorder. “They told me that being in the military, neck, back and knee pain is some-thing that everybody suffers from. They prescribed me some muscle relaxers and inflammatory medication, and it was like, ‘Take the medicine as needed, step it up and drive.’ I continued to have pain but stopped going back to the doctor until I was 36.”

Harralson qualified for modified duty that allowed her to sit or rest when necessary. By age 38, a fibromyalgia diagnosis was added to her list of ailments. She knew it was time to retire.

“It was challenging to leave the military. I hadn’t hit 20 active-duty years yet,” Harralson says. “I didn’t see myself as seriously broken. I saw myself as untreated. I was blaming military medicine for not understanding my condition.”

It wasn’t until she had to recertify as an EMT that she fully understood how her disability could affect her unit. “I had always prided myself on being tiny, but I could move my patients out of the line of fire when I needed to,” she says. But pain from arthritis and fibromyalgia made the task far less easy.

Harralson had trouble rolling a mannequin and putting dressings on his wounds so that he could be moved to safety. It took her twice the time that it once did. “I couldn’t do what the Army needed me to do fast enough,” she recalls. “I didn’t ever want to be deployed and be a liability to my unit and patients.”

Harralson received a medical discharge and went into a deep depression. “I cried. I was upset because I hadn’t hit some of my goals. In my mind, I was supposed to be the first female star major of the Army,” she said. “My career was gone, my daily purpose was gone and I was in astronomical amounts of pain.”

As a wife and a busy mother of three sons, “Something hurt every day,” Harralson says. “I could go to a pain level of 3 to 7 just because I cleaned my house. I stayed in bed for eight months because of the pain. I thought, ‘How did I go from being a superstar to an understar?’”

It took her family’s help to reach her when medicine alone wasn’t enough. “I felt dismissed by the VA, so I began journaling,” she says. “I would do research about my symptoms and write the things that worked to relieve pain when I had it. I began to write my own prescription. When something hurt, I would go back to my journal.”

Eventually, Harralson went back to school to earn her Bachelor of Science degree in medical technology. She attended St. Mary’s School of Law to study health care compliance law. She credits her husband, Phillip, for urging her to try something new.

Someday, Harralson plans to write a book about her arthritis journey. But for now, she posts self-help videos on social media to guide others facing similar diagnoses. She urges active duty service members, retired military and veterans to go to the doctor, so surgery won’t be their only recourse for wellness.

Additionally, Harralson has found a job that fills her with the sense of purpose and honor she experienced in the military. She is working for a private home health care company in pediatrics. “I love being a health care compliance auditor. I look forward to the day that I start a doctoral [degree], so that I can write health care legislation for the United States. I am still in service to my country.”