Doctors have prescribed every painkiller imaginable with little success. He currently takes about 40 pills a day to not only regulate his pain but his mood, stomach and bowels. He has a dorsal column stimulator implanted at the base of his spine to manage the pain, but he said it doesn't work even at the maximum setting. Surgeons have gone in several times to adjust it.

Bridges considers an hour a good night's sleep. Most nights restlessness forces him to the living room, remote control in hand.

"I tried to stay up with him," Roxanne Bridges said. "But we're no good together if I stay up that late."

Besides constant pain, Bridges has bouts of depression and night terrors. He also has partial hearing loss from military training inside a tank. He battles post-traumatic stress disorder coupled with guilt for not fulfilling his military mission. At his lowest points, he's thought about suicide.

His wife has watched him become more withdrawn.

"He's not the same as he used to be. He doesn't socially interact really anymore. It's hard to get him out of bed. He prefers to stay in bed most of the day," Roxanne Bridges said.

Russell Bridges can't get down to play with his children Arianna, now 9, Cassie, 6, or Gage, 4. He can't teach them to play soccer and baseball like they want him to.

"It's extremely hard," he said. "That's stuff I just can't do."

A heavy equipment operator by trade, he'll never get back on a bulldozer or a scraper. He might never work again. Roxanne juggles two and sometimes three jobs to keep the family afloat. She plans to start nursing classes in January, although that schooling will require a 145-mile round trip to Richfield.

"Oh, we're getting by, barely," she said. "We've learned to live on a very limited budget."

The VA provides vocational rehab, but because of Bridges' PTSD they won't allow him to take courses in gunsmithing, a trade he'd really like to learn. The local Lions Club and American Legion post, however, teamed up to pay for it.

Dell Smith, the former command sergeant major of the Utah National Guard, took special interest in Bridges. Through him, the Guard's charitable trust donated some $40,000 to cover house and car payments, bills and groceries.

"If it wasn't for him, we would have lost everything," Roxanne Bridges said.

Now retired from the Guard, Smith still keeps tabs on Bridges. Smith, recently hired as Utah congressman-elect Jason Chaffetz's deputy district director, has little confidence in the military tending to his needs.

"Basically, these guys get home, get lost and they get forgotten," he said. "Russ is one of the biggest travesties there is."