Carolyn Kroot was an energetic and ambitious National Guard member when she was deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991. Serving in a maintenance unit in the six-week campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, she was never on the front lines and suffered no physical injuries. But when she returned home to Maine, she felt exhausted all the time. She started getting severe migraines, and she struggled to focus, to the point where she asked to forgo promotions. “Every day was a struggle,” she says. “It was very scary and disappointing.” She was only 33.
Like many other Gulf War veterans with similar symptoms, Kroot was told her problems were due to mental stress and best treated with an antidepressant.
She was sure it was more than that. “Numerous medical professionals didn’t believe me,” she says. “They thought I was a malingerer.” So when she heard in 2010 that James Baraniuk at Georgetown University was looking for veterans with symptoms like hers to participate in brain-scan studies, she jumped at the chance.
