Hannah Cvancara is a Spokane emergency room nurse who has tried to join the military for years.
You may have read about her fight to serve in the New York Times. Or, in the Inlander, which is when I first got to meet Hannah.
As a staff writer for the weekly paper, I got to write about Cvancara's passion for nursing military members back to health.
And how, up til now, that’s been thwarted.
But there’s a new chapter to that story, complete with an unexpected plot twist.
Hannah agreed to come into the studio to pick up where the previous cliffhanger left off.
But we’ll start back at the beginning, for those who don’t know Hannah yet.
Eliza Billingham: Could we start by you introducing yourself and talking about your desire to be in the military and why that's complicated?
Hannah Cvancara: Yeah, so my name is Hannah Cvancara. I'm a nurse here in Spokane. I've been wanting to serve in the military as a flight nurse for four years now and I started that process back in 2021.
But it's been complicated to try to join because I'm missing a leg. Below the knee. It's from a congenital birth defect called fibular hemimelia. So I had a lot of surgeries as a kid and even though I pass all the fitness tests required to join and I'm extremely active, the military had a disqualification for civilian amputees trying to join.
So, I fought back on that and I went to my congresswoman after being denied accession into service. We started a bill in Congress together to try to change those standards for amputees trying to join–if they can pass all the fitness tests required.
EB: Can you talk a little bit about the fitness tests and the waiver process for people who aren't familiar?
HC: When you try to join, whether it's officer or enlisted, and in my case it would have been as an officer, as a nurse, you have to go through the MEPS [Military Entrance Processing Stations] process.
You have to complete this physical with one of the military doctors and they review all your medical history. And it's not like the good old days where you can just show up with your packet of paper describing all your medical conditions. They look through everything.
It's all electronic medical records now. So they will collect all of your surgeries, pass medical history, and they'll review that and they'll generate waivers based off of the things that aren't currently accepted in the military.
What I found out with having an amputation though, is that that was absolutely disqualifying. There wasn't even a waiver available to progress and actually commission as an officer.
So back in 2021 when I was facing this barrier trying to join, I went to my congresswoman. I talked about the issue and that's when we decided to move forward with a bill.
It was called the Hannah Cvancara Service Act and it basically stated and proposed that anyone with an amputation should be allowed to serve as long as they pass all standard military fitness requirements without accommodation.
That bill went to national congress. Over the past three years, I went to DC twice to lobby for this bill.
It passed the House twice as part of the National Defense Authorization Act and went to the Senate. The Senate ultimately deferred it to the DOD or Department of War, excuse me, for their decision.
Going to the House and Senate, I talked to both senators and reps and discussed here's the challenges we're facing with military recruitment in general. Here's me, in person, trying to join. And yes, I am missing a leg, but I want them to know that what they see on paper is not reality.
I'm very proud that I think I got very far with that because in the three to four years of advocating for this bill, so many people, I would say hundreds of people, came out from under the rocks all over the country saying, Hey, I have this issue, too…XYZ. It may not have been an amputation, but they were denied for another reason. They never felt like they had the chance to serve.
So what happened ultimately was this year, earlier this year, I'm happy to announce that Congress issued the first explicit recognition that amputees do get a fair pathway and a chance into military service and Congress is now officially encouraging the Department of War to expand waiver consideration for amputees.
That wasn't an option before. It just needed addressing. Amputees now get a chance to serve, which wasn't possible under the old accession rules.
I take joy in fighting for others, especially those who are misrepresented. As I mentioned earlier, I am a nurse and I care for others who can't care for themselves.
And I love fighting for people who are able to do things and to make sure they know that they're not broken. People who just need a fair shot.
So seeing this change happen is proof that persistence matters, and now Congress and the Department of War know that this problem exists and they're trying to do something to change that.
EB: Because you weren't trying to lower standards, right? You were just trying to draw attention to a group of people that that meet the standards?
HC: Correct. Yeah, I want to be clear. I'm not asking the military to lower standards just for the sake of inclusivity. In fact, I believe the opposite. A strong military needs strong standards, and I'm proud of the improvements we've seen over the past year, but the problem was never the standards itself.
It was an outdated rule in the military medical standards for service that excluded civilian amputees without considering what modern prosthetic technology can actually do.
Today's prosthetics are remarkable. In many cases, people using them are stronger physically and even emotionally because they've lived their whole lives adapting and pushing through that adversity.
So I don't think the military was factoring in that consideration before with modern prosthetic technology. They were allowing people to stay in who lost limbs while in service, but they didn't want to take on the liability of letting people join who were already amputees.
EB: So what does this rule change mean for you?
HC: I started this journey to try to get in myself, and it's morphed and changed into this journey that has supported so many other people, and I never expected the amount of support the people that I was able to help, and I couldn't ask for a better outcome.
It's people who want to serve but face medical barriers, so now they have a path forward that didn't exist before. So to me, that's pretty life-changing.
However, now that this change has been made and the opportunity exists, I am choosing not to pursue joining the military as a nurse right now.
I'm getting married next year to an active duty service member. His name is Ben, and supporting Ben's journey as a pilot is now my priority for our family.
This wasn't about me getting a slot in the military. It was about creating a pathway for every capable amputee and every capable person in general who dreams of serving, and those who want to serve should be able to do so, and that's enough for me.
I'll continue serving as an ER nurse and eventually flight nursing in the civilian world, but I'm kind of dropping the mic on this for myself, and I'm hoping that someone else takes up the reins and continues moving forward.
