Female vets face tough road back to life as workers, moms

Chicago Tribune

(KRT)

CHICAGO - Keri Christensen spots an empty pop can on the side of the road in McHenry County, and in a flash she is back at the helm of a heavy-equipment transporter maneuvering along Iraq's treacherous highways.

Her two children are strapped into seats in her mini-van, but Christensen finds herself scrutinizing roadside trash for signs of a makeshift bomb.

"Everything is weird," said Christensen, 33, a Wisconsin National Guard soldier who returned in November to the Chicago area after serving 10 months in Iraq. "I went from a stay-at-home mom to a soldier instantly."

Traveling that path in reverse has been equally tough for Christensen and a rising tide of other female veterans. Since 2003, the number of former soldiers seeking help for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder has grown so much that the North Chicago Veterans Affairs Medical Center has shifted its women's mental health program to respond to combat stress disorders.

Formed in 2001, the program was originally geared to help women suffering trauma from sexual harassment to rape. The program still helps women with what the Armed Forces calls "military sexual trauma." But therapists now are seeing female vets who exhibit the same signs of post-traumatic stress disorder as men who served in infantry units.

"Flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, sleep disorders. They're always on edge," said Katherine Dong, manager of the Women Veterans Health Care Program at the North Chicago facility, who helped form the mental health program. "If somebody drops a book, they hit the floor."

No one knows the number of vets suffering from wartime stress. But a report released this month by the Government Accountability Office found that at least 1 in 20 returning vets surveyed were at risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder; an earlier report by the Journal of the American Medical Association put the number at nearly 1 in 5.

Some data suggest women either experience post-trauma disorders more often than men or are more willing to admit it.

Since women constitute roughly 15 percent of the Armed Forces and the lines of combat in Iraq are blurred, more of them are being exposed to the life-and-death situations that often trigger stress disorders, experts say.

"There are all these roadside bombs," said Barb Wisott, a former social worker at the North Chicago hospital who recently moved to the VA's Eastern Colorado Health Care System in Denver. "Women driving in convoys and delivering supplies are experiencing more combat exposure."

Though the symptoms are similar in both men and women - nightmares, flashbacks, a fear of crowds, irritability - more women than men are coming home to fulfill the role of primary nurturer. A growing number are finding the transition from soldier to mom difficult, vets and veterans administrators say.

"Women are often trying to reintegrate into a family with young children," Dong said. "They're expected to go back to being with the kids."

For Christensen, that part of her homecoming was especially hard. Sobbing at silly things like patriotic songs on a country radio station was frustrating enough. It was worse to do it in front of her children, Madison, 7, and Olivia, 4.

"I'd try to hold it together in front of the kids," she said.

Between 2002 and 2006, about 20,000 men and 6,000 women were diagnosed with mental health issues, including 2,500 women assessed specifically with post-trauma stress, according to VA data.

But officials caution that the numbers likely represent a fraction of those who suffer from the stress disorder, since only about 10 percent of veterans seek medical help at VA hospitals. Some go to private clinics; others may not seek help at all.

Those who seek treatment often need help functioning in day-to-day tasks, such as raising children, going to work, even going to the store. Elaine Rosado of Chicago, a single mom and Army Reserve staff sergeant who drove 18-wheelers across Iraq, needed help keeping her temper under control.

Before her deployment she had been easygoing and happy, she said. When she got home, she found herself snapping easily at her son, Issac, 4. It wasn't until her mother mentioned her behavior that Rosado, 25, realized she was acting out of character.

Talking with a therapist helped. "I'll still snap," she said. "But now I'll catch myself."

Christensen worked tirelessly to keep from feeling like she was slipping. She cleaned obsessively, filling trash bins with old junk from the basement. "I have a totally purged house," she said.

She cried for no apparent reason, considered suicide and once had what seemed to her a real conversation with her husband, Brian, while he was upstairs sleeping.

"I thought, `Oh my God, I'm going crazy. I'm hallucinating,'" Christensen said. "I didn't want to go anywhere. I was afraid to drive with the kids in the car. I'd wait until my husband got home to run errands."

In Iraq, Christensen endured roadside bombs, small-arms fire or grenades on every mission she made. And she was assigned the heartbreaking task of working at a port in Kuwait through which soldiers' caskets passed.

"They'd have the name and date of birth on them," she said. "You'd think, `God, these kids are so young.'"

Since their homecomings, both Christensen and Rosado have slowly reintegrated, recapturing the rhythm of the lives they left behind.

Christensen cries less often now when she sees a flag or hears a song on the radio. But she recently broke down on a family vacation to Disney World, she said, when the sound of a fireworks display reminded her of coming under attack in Iraq.

"I still get startled by things," Christensen said.

---

(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.