One Veteran's Search for Help

Warren Hardy struggled to find help for his TBI after returning from Iraq.

ByABC News via logo
February 6, 2009, 8:26 PM

March 7, 2007 — -- Warren and Gina Hardy are American patriots.

Warren came to California from England 12 years ago for a job in Silicon Valley. He fell in love -- with his wife, Gina, and with America. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, both Hardys decided to enlist in the Army. Warren became a U.S. citizen before leaving for Iraq.

A few months into his tour, Warren's armored vehicle rolled over a bomb, whipping him violently around the inside of the car.

"We actually went up in the air about 10 feet," he said.

He sustained injuries to his knees and back, but he also had a traumatic brain injury that wasn't discovered until two years later.

"I fell through a whole bunch of cracks, all the way from the time I hit the combat hospital in Tikrit, all the way until I got into the VA system," he said.

Back home, Warren couldn't concentrate and experienced unprovoked outbursts. His memory was failing, and he was unable to work.

"Every time I was trying to do something complicated, I would just, just nothing ever sunk in," he told ABC's Bob Woodruff. "I used to be a software engineer. I had an incredible memory. And now I am struggling."

In the midst of the scandal surrounding the mismanagement of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and reports of similar situations in regional VA hospitals across the country, countless veterans are also slipping through the cracks with unseen wounds suffered in the Iraq War.

Traumatic brain injuries, sustained after an IED attack, have affected thousands of veterans, and have gone undiagnosed at VA hospitals across the country.

"I sometimes wish that I lost a leg or something, because my whole medical treatment would have been completely different," Warren said. "It's not that they have left you behind, it's that they don't know that they've left you behind."

Only recently, after nearly three years of experience handling injuries sustained from IED attacks, have government doctors begun to understand what happened to Warren and other soldiers who have been exposed to these blasts.