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08-13-08, 08:13 AM
Last modified Tuesday, August 12, 2008 9:17 PM PDT
MILITARY: When the war comes home
By MARK WALKER - Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO ---- Michelle Carter Waddell is an unlikely casualty of the war in Iraq.
See related story
She's never deployed, she's strong in her faith and she's surrounded by friends and family.
Yet Waddell struggles with the emotional baggage of a combat veteran, sees a counselor on a regular basis and relies on prayer and a support network to make sense of the war.
Waddell's journey into darkness was not of her own doing; it was the result of her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder.
A former Navy SEAL, an elite warrior, Cmdr. Mark Waddell was diagnosed in 2005 following multiple tours of duty in Iraq and numerous covert operations around the world, she said. In their first decade of marriage, 19 of her husband's comrades were killed, she said.
Her husband's demons first emerged during a Fourth of July celebration on a Virginia beach in 2003, she said. Mark Waddell had just returned from the invasion of Iraq. When the fireworks were set off, he fled her side. She later found him standing alone in a dark and quiet spot far from the pyrotechnics.
"He just asked if we could go home," she recalled Tuesday.
Her account of her husband's illness and its impact on her and their three children came during the opening day of a three-day Marine Corps conference on combat stress, traumatic brain injuries and the effects those illnesses have on family members.
More than 850 Marines, Navy officials and medical specialists are attending the conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, more than double the number that attended an inaugural conference in Washington last year.
The theme on the opening day was consistent: Post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries are rising, and the Marine Corps has a duty to honor as well as treat injured troops and restore them to health.
"For two years, he denied needing help and put his family through silent suffering," she said, stressing that she loves and honors her husband and stands by him during his recovery.
Mark Waddell would face three more combat assignments in Iraq before he would be diagnosed and begin to get help. In the interim, he withdrew from his family, had trouble sleeping, was quick to anger and the intimacy of their relationship deteriorated. Conversations about divorce, once considered unthinkable, occurred regularly, she said.
Her path to healing began, she said, when she sought help on her own, confiding first to family members and then a counselor. It was the counselor who told her that what her husband was facing was not uncommon, nor were its effects on her and their children.
Her efforts now are aimed at helping spouses understand, recognize and deal with their loved ones' war-born emotional suffering.
"Spouses and families who live with these veterans are fighting from unfamiliar foxholes which no one has prepared them for," she said. "The aftermath of war is a battle that is fought at home."
In order for families to cope and survive, Waddell said spouses and children need to "understand a soldier's heart if they are going to be able to weather the storm."
Surviving a spouse's post-traumatic stress also requires "wait training," said Waddell, who has written two books about the issues military wives confront and has a third due for release next month.
"PTSD is like any other severe wound," she said. "Time is part of the prescription."
She and her husband each see their own counselors and they also see a third as a couple.
"It is a journey that we're still on," she said.
Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.
Ellie
MILITARY: When the war comes home
By MARK WALKER - Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO ---- Michelle Carter Waddell is an unlikely casualty of the war in Iraq.
See related story
She's never deployed, she's strong in her faith and she's surrounded by friends and family.
Yet Waddell struggles with the emotional baggage of a combat veteran, sees a counselor on a regular basis and relies on prayer and a support network to make sense of the war.
Waddell's journey into darkness was not of her own doing; it was the result of her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder.
A former Navy SEAL, an elite warrior, Cmdr. Mark Waddell was diagnosed in 2005 following multiple tours of duty in Iraq and numerous covert operations around the world, she said. In their first decade of marriage, 19 of her husband's comrades were killed, she said.
Her husband's demons first emerged during a Fourth of July celebration on a Virginia beach in 2003, she said. Mark Waddell had just returned from the invasion of Iraq. When the fireworks were set off, he fled her side. She later found him standing alone in a dark and quiet spot far from the pyrotechnics.
"He just asked if we could go home," she recalled Tuesday.
Her account of her husband's illness and its impact on her and their three children came during the opening day of a three-day Marine Corps conference on combat stress, traumatic brain injuries and the effects those illnesses have on family members.
More than 850 Marines, Navy officials and medical specialists are attending the conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, more than double the number that attended an inaugural conference in Washington last year.
The theme on the opening day was consistent: Post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries are rising, and the Marine Corps has a duty to honor as well as treat injured troops and restore them to health.
"For two years, he denied needing help and put his family through silent suffering," she said, stressing that she loves and honors her husband and stands by him during his recovery.
Mark Waddell would face three more combat assignments in Iraq before he would be diagnosed and begin to get help. In the interim, he withdrew from his family, had trouble sleeping, was quick to anger and the intimacy of their relationship deteriorated. Conversations about divorce, once considered unthinkable, occurred regularly, she said.
Her path to healing began, she said, when she sought help on her own, confiding first to family members and then a counselor. It was the counselor who told her that what her husband was facing was not uncommon, nor were its effects on her and their children.
Her efforts now are aimed at helping spouses understand, recognize and deal with their loved ones' war-born emotional suffering.
"Spouses and families who live with these veterans are fighting from unfamiliar foxholes which no one has prepared them for," she said. "The aftermath of war is a battle that is fought at home."
In order for families to cope and survive, Waddell said spouses and children need to "understand a soldier's heart if they are going to be able to weather the storm."
Surviving a spouse's post-traumatic stress also requires "wait training," said Waddell, who has written two books about the issues military wives confront and has a third due for release next month.
"PTSD is like any other severe wound," she said. "Time is part of the prescription."
She and her husband each see their own counselors and they also see a third as a couple.
"It is a journey that we're still on," she said.
Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.
Ellie