"she's nothing like she used to be"

From the Whittier Daily News:

After a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, U.S. Army Pfc. Monica Perales is not the same person she was when she left in March 2003, her family says.

Always sweet and patient, the Whittier resident now snaps at them, at her friends and even at strangers at the slightest provocation, said her mother, Terry Perales.

Monica served with the 8th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, unloading aircraft parts from trucks in a military camp called "Key West" in southern Iraq.

"She was a sweetheart. Now she lashes out at people all the time because she's so short-tempered," Terry Perales said. "She's nothing like she used to be. Now she speaks her mind, not thinking who she's going to hurt.

"And she has no patience with her daughter anymore," she added.

Monica, 23, said she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that more than 30 percent of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars sought treatment for in the first year they returned home, according to a recent study from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

She said she still has nightmares of people trying to kill her and finds herself constantly looking over her shoulder for danger.

Thanks to the war in Iraq, PTSD is going to affect tens of thousands of American men and women over the next fifty or sixty years. The lucky ones will be diagnosed and treated. The unlucky ones won't be.

Many of them will become alcoholics or undergo severe depression. Some, perhaps most, of them will from time to time lash out in anger against their will at strangers and loved ones alike. Some of them will commit suicide.

But hey, look at the bright side. A few Iraqi schools got painted this year. I guess it all evens out in the end.