After Laurie Fueston got the news that her 19-year-old son Josh was never coming home

Laurie Fueston had to bury her 19 year old soldier son. He wasn't killed by enemy hands but he was, nonetheless dead because of them. She is grieving but she is trying to make sure less Moms have to know what it feels like to bury a child after they survived combat, but not being back home.

“The military was such a small part of his life,” Fueston said. “Such a smaller part of who he was.” Laurie Fueston

What Fueston had to say about the military being such a small part of her son's life hit home. It is the one thing that got me involved in working with veterans afflicted by PTSD. For me, it was my then boyfriend, a Vietnam Vet, showed clear signs of what my Dad called "shell shock."

I couldn't understand how just one year of his life had caused so much damage to him when I grew up surrounded by war veterans. My Dad was a Korean War veteran and my uncles survived WWII. I had no idea, so I began to study the Vietnam War and that's when I began reading reports of the psychological issues caused by it.

There are many people arguing about when the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was first used. The common belief is that it began in the 80's but that is not true. Studies were already being done in the early 70's and by 1978 the DAV published a study with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the title. A copy of this hangs on my wall in my office, just above my desk to remind me of how long we've known about PTSD and the repercussions of ignoring it.

It is stunning to read reports about survivors of traumatic events around the country suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after one event in their whole lives and then consider the fact that men and women, usually under the age of 25, being exposed to a long list of events and then discover how little is being done for their sake to help them heal and overcome them.

We were married in 1984 and it has been one very long roller coaster ride with more downs than ups for a very long time. I had the luxury of understanding what I was dealing with but it was still nearly impossible to be able to be unemotional in response to all he was going through. This all left me wondering "If it's so hard for me, how hard is it on people with no understanding?"

Over the years I've talked to many wives living with a combat PTSD spouse for 30 to 40 years with no outside help or support. The only thing they had was a commitment to their marriage and love. For a spouse who couldn't stay, they are left with a lot of questions but once they begin to finally understand PTSD, the knowledge comes with guilt. They wish someone had told them while they were still married. With this generation we are seeing what other generations of families had to go through but we have the Internet to turn to for understanding as well as support. The problem is, not enough of the new spouses are using it. Parents are not using it to prepare themselves for their children coming home from war. They have few tools to use at a time when the DOD and VA are overwhelmed causing even more stress on the combat veterans while adding doubt into the minds of the families they depend on.

There is an unspoken residual effect on families when claims are turned down, aside from the extra financial burden when the veteran cannot work. The idea the VA or the DOD would not approve a claim causes doubt that the changes in the veteran are of their own making and not part of their service to this nation. Average people tend to trust these two to do the right thing right from the beginning so if there is a denial of claim, it has to be the fault of the veteran. While they know the veteran has changed, they are just no longer sure of why.

If they have knowledge of what PTSD is, what it does and the fact the VA and the DOD are letting thousands of veterans fall through the chasm, then they will fight on behalf of the veteran as an advocate for them instead of fighting against them and blaming them.

When you read a story like the following, you'll understand how much needs to be done for them as well as what can be done for their sake to reduce the number of Moms having to bury a son that did not have to die.

'I could never let go. I still can’t and I won’t:' swim in Bellingham Bay honors troops with PTSD

Submitted by Kera Wanielista, KOMO Communities Reporter
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011, 2:02pm

It was 6 a.m. on a Monday morning when Laurie Fueston got the news that her 19-year-old son Josh was never coming home.

It had been February since Josh had been home in Bellingham. February since Laurie had last fixed him the large breakfast he was playfully teased about as a kid. February since he sat across from his mother in the living room and said he didn't want to go back to Iraq.

February when things in the Fueston's lives started going horribly wrong.

“He sat in that chair, and his hands were almost black from lack of circulation and I knew he was in trouble,” Laurie Fueston said. “He was gone. He was emotionally gone.”

Josh, a private first class in the Army, had served a five-month tour in Iraq before health concerns sent him home. Josh suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) his mother said, and his body was beginning to feel the toll.

During his flight back across the Atlantic, after his brief visit home, Josh began convulsing on the airplane, which was then diverted back to Dover Air Force Base. Josh was transported to the nearest hospital, Laurie said, where he spent one week before being transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Josh was just one of the estimated more than 300,000 troops serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to develop symptoms of PTSD. And on September 13, 2009, he also became just one of the growing numbers of service members to commit suicide.

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