Military spouses learn to cope with unexpected

The Unknown Soldiers: Military spouses learn to cope with unexpected
By Tom Sileo
Leavenworth Times
Posted Aug 23, 2012

Leavenworth, Kan
When Spc. Austin Monk deployed to Iraq in August 2009, the soldier's wife expected the worst.

"When your loved one deploys to Iraq, you expect them to come home injured ... (physically or emotionally) wounded, or you expect them to come back dead," Laura Monk told "The Unknown Soldiers."

She never thought her 20-year-old husband's combat deployment would end with a shocking diagnosis of leukemia.

"You never expect them to come back with cancer," she said.

"This is what I signed up to do," Austin said to his wife. Austin first complained about a terrible headache during one of the couple's Skype conversations. Then, on Halloween 2009, Austin wrote Laura a MySpace message saying he had a 104-degree fever.

"Don't worry about me," Austin added.

A few weeks later, fellow soldiers found Austin lying on the floor of his barracks. The ordeal that followed, which took the soldier from hospitals in Iraq to Germany, left Laura feeling helpless as she agonized over her husband's condition from thousands of miles away.

"They initially thought he had mono or tuberculosis and that the headache could have been from his wisdom teeth," Austin's wife said.

When Laura was informed her husband was suffering from leukemia, all she wanted was to be by his side.

"I'll be there soon," she said.
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