The private scars of war

TOM WALLACE, Star Tribune

Maj. Eduardo Suarez, who has been married for 18 years to his wife, Jennifer, has done two tours in Iraq with the Minnesota Guard.

The private scars of war
Injured troops return home to deal not only with physical and mental wounds but also with problems in the bedroom.

By GAIL ROSENBLUM, Star Tribune

Last update: August 22, 2008 - 11:32 PM

Mike Mills didn't look in a mirror for two months after a land mine blew him out of his truck near Kirkuk, Iraq, in June 2005, cracking his clavicle, shattering his hip "like a jigsaw puzzle" and burning off half of his face. When he did, only one word came to him: "Freak."

Recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Mills worried about his two kids in Freeport, Minn. He worried about making a living. Mostly, he worried about Suhanna -- Suki -- his wife of nearly 20 years, who would surely leave him.

"How can I expect her to stay with me anymore?" said Mills, 43, a member of the Minnesota Army National Guard for 18 years. "She's not going to want to be intimate with a freak. Elephant Man. That's the way I saw myself."

Suki, 43, didn't leave.

"I'm too old to train in another one," she joked.
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I think that is being said in almost every house with a veteran in it. When my daughter was getting ready to go away to college a few years ago, she thought my husband and I would get a divorce. I told her after all these years, I'm too old to train a new one. When they come home wounded, marriages are hard. Marriages are hard as it is but when they are dealing with either wounds of the body or the mind, it takes looking deep inside at what really matters to us. Some of us can't stay. We're just not built with that kind of sacrifice inside of us. Others, well, leaving would be the hardest thing to do. Click above to read the rest of this and know what a lot of us go through. Doesn't matter that we come from different wars, in the end, the results are the same.