Mercy Services nurse back from yearlong Army stint in Texas
by Lindsay Hoeppner · November 24, 2009

Roger Barillas is back and open for appointments.

By trade, Barillas is an advanced registered nurse practitioner at Mercy Services in West Liberty. That hasn’t been his only venture into the medical field, though.

When Barillas was 17 years old, he was accepted to attend California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.

“I wanted to be an architect, but I did not have any money, and my family was very poor,” he said. “We were hispanic immigrants, so we did not have any cash.”

But, Barillas, a native of Guatemala, was connected with an Army recruiter, and eventually offered a Montgomery G.I. Bill, a version of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, that allows soldiers to use their benefits to pursue an undergraduate or graduate degree at a college or university, a cooperative training program or an accredited independent study program leading to a degree. Despite Barillas’ desire to become an architect, the recruiter, an X-ray tech, advised him to consider a different profession.

“My ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) scores were high enough that I could go into something in the medical field, intelligence or electronics, so I picked the medical field, and that’s how I ended up with my training,” Barillas said.

Initially, Barillas trained as a combat medic, but then became an X-ray technician and eventually an emergency room nurse.

Now, Barillas juggles his day job with his duties as a captain in the 4224th U.S. Army Hospital in Cedar Rapids.

Barillas’ first issuance of service came in 2003, when he was ordered to be mobilized with the 101st Air Division at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was then assigned to Fort Campbell, located between Clarksville, Tenn. and Hopkinsville, Ky., but within 24 hours of when he was supposed to depart, Barillas was reassigned to Fort Knox in Fort Knox, Ky., so he could run the emergency room at the local hospital.

“This time, actually, my orders were to go to Kosovo, but at the last minute, they switched them to Fort Sam Houston,” Barillas said. “Call it luck or whatever, I don’t know.”

Barillas’ first day of orders at Fort Sam Houston was Oct. 2, 2008.

“The first couple of days, I had to live out of my car because the base was playing a lot of roles and they didn’t have enough housing,” he said. “Then, they put us in hotels, and eventually, we did really well, because we ended up in a better housing setup.”

While on base, Barillas had three main assignments — taking care of soldiers that were going to and coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, taking care of dependent and retired soldiers and performing outpatient care treatment for combat medic students.

If Barillas’ on-base duties weren’t enough, an H1N1 outbreak also erupted during his mobilization.

“We ended up with a pandemic in the base,” he said. “We had the highest number of H1N1 infections compared to all the other bases within the continental U.S. And overseas, so there were a lot of people sick, and at the time, we had to treat it, but we did not know who was going to become more ill and who was going to be OK. Initially, we sort of overwhelmed the hospital — we had to admit quite a few people, but then we realized that H1N1 was not as virulent as we thought, so we became more selective as to who was admitted and who was not. Part of my job was to figure that out.”

Barillas’ last day of duty at Fort Sam Houston was Oct. 2, 2009. He had some of his leave saved up, so he took that at the end of his mobilization so he could spend time with his wife, Diana, and two children — 10-year-old Lucas and 17-year-old Gabrielle. He came back to Mercy Services on Oct. 26.

And, Barillas is more than happy to be home.

“It feels great,” he said. “I think you don’t learn to appreciate what you have unless it’s gone. It has been a wonderful opportunity to spend a lot more time with my family. We’re appreciating every little thing now. Just sitting in the back of the house on the porch looking at the cornfield is very relaxing to me, believe it or not, where before, I didn’t really pay much attention to it.”

Barillas’ intent is to continue the services he has offered at Mercy Services since joining the medical team in 2005.

“I’m officially back working in the same role I played before, and I’m open for appointments,” he said.

However, that doesn’t mean another mobilization will not play a role in Barillas’ future.

“Another provider and I volunteered to go to the desert when the war started because we felt compelled to do so, but they told us our assignment was to remain in the continental U.S. to replace people that were going to the sand,” he said. “But, the way the cycling is happening with my reserves unit, we may end up going there sooner or later.”