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Horror Of PTSD Puts One Marine Mom On A Mission Of Mercy

CHICAGO (CBS) -- There is this tranquility of life in the suburbs, the hum of summer.

And then there is this.

A memoriam to a fallen Marine.

Wendy Meyers of Plainfield is asked how she is doing on the cloudless, bright morning.

"OK, just OK," she told CBS 2's Brad Edwards. "It's a struggle everyday, knowing that this was his dream since he was six years old to become a Marine."

For Brandon Meyers, a Marine with all the right "Semper Fi" stuff and with two tours of war to his credit, "this whole dream that he had became a nightmare," said Wendy.

For 19 months he toiled in a hell storm in Iraq. From heavy transport to training Iraqi police, he did it.

Then he came home.

"You could see in his eyes, a lot of hurt."

One night, Wendy's husband woke her up.

Their son was on the roof. Brandon told his father he was doing sniper duty at night.

"He never, he never left Iraq," Wendy said.

Brandon Myers

Brandon told his mother, ominously, that when he died, he wanted his dust scattered in Iraq, because he had already died there anyway.

"He wasn't the same when he came home," she said.

Wendy Meyers' heart, she says, is dead. "It's a struggle to breathe every day."

Her son was rated as 70 percent disabled by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The Veterans Administration medicated him and provided counseling via Skype.

In the end, the VA failed him, mom says.

Now she is on a mission to raise funds to provide service dogs who specialize in helping veterans with PTSD.

So far, she has raised $4,750. Her goal is at least $10,000.

It's not a dog-service mission, but rather a life-saving mission.

"Yes, it saves lives," she said.

Last summer, Wendy Meyers texted her son that she and his sister were going to the Blackhawks Stanley Cup victory parade.

On a day the region celebrated, one of their biggest fans, Corporal Brandon Meyers, didn't answer his mother's text.

"I knew, I knew that day something wasn't right," said. "He promised, he promised he wouldn't do that.

"Marines are taught to suck it up, don't show pain and don't ask for help. And that's what he did.

"It was a gunshot to the head."

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