EAST TEXAS (KYTX) -- "I hear explosions, just a peaceful, quiet time like this, just random explosions."
Sandon Presley, tough, and ready to fight -- went to Mosul, Iraq as a teenage soldier and jumped into his job as a combat engineer .
If you don't know what that is... he took apart live bombs.
"We found so many bombs it was ridiculous," he said. "But the bad part is sometimes you don't find the bombs. You don't see them. So you're going five miles an hour looking and boom. I mean you get blown up bad. "
The war took more from Sandon, than most of us will ever experience.
"There were other guys who took twice as many hits as me, and we did lose one guy."
He avoided getting physically hurt -- he thought.
When he got home, doctors told Sandon he had post traumatic stress disorder, and that was bad enough.
Like homes on a neighborhood street people with PTSD blend into society like everyone else. But when you look inside, you see a world of problems.
When doctors took a closer look at Sandon's brain they found something else.
"I have a tear now down my right frontal lobe," Sandon said. "Just because of getting blown up so much."
That's the portion of the brain that controls emotion.
On top of mood changes, Sandon has trouble learning, remembering and sleeping. Sandon battled drug addiction, depression and then another blow that almost crushed him.
"My best friend [Tate] committed suicide; the one I went to Iraq with," Sandon said. "He couldn't deal with it. I knew what he was going through, I was there I felt that."
Belle Shepard, Sandon's grandmother, said the best thing you can do with Sandon sometimes is not say anything. The best thing you can do is love. Cook his favorite food, let him sleep in. Let him do what he feels like to make it through the day.
Sandon stays with his Shepard to help her recover from a recent heart procedure.
Her family is one filled with military service -- one that understands sacrifice -- but it hurts her to see her grandson suffer.
"You deal with it every single day," she said. "It's not something that you come back and it goes away, it stays there."
Doctor Martin Holland is a neurosurgeon at Mother Frances hospital in Tyler. He said the effects of traumatic brain injury are different for everyone; depending on where in the brain you get hurt.
Brain injuries can effect personality, vision, sleeping, memory loss and injury to the brain stem can kill.
But Dr. Holland, who joined the military to help people with TBI, has a message for victims.
"At first it's bad but then it gets better," he said. "Whether it's through surgery, medication or therapy. Doctors are learning more all the time."
And now, Sandon's studying politics at TJC.
"I fought for my country there," he said. "I kind of want to fight for my country here."
But as he works toward that goal, like other warriors, Sandon keeps fighting a battle inside. Every single day.
"It's not how hard you hit, it's how hard you can get hit," he said. "It's knowing that everyone struggles with this and I have to make it through this. I have to, there's no other option."
The Texas Wounded Warriors Program helps veterans find therapy and deal with financial struggles.
