Experts think as many as 800 of them are walking around Idaho. They're walking around with serious wounds. Wounds you cannot necessarily see with the naked eye.

They're called The Invisible Wounded. They're servicemen and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with Traumatic Brain Injuries, or TBI.

"But at first, I was like so angry," DeWayne Mayer says.

DeWayne Mayer of New Plymouth is one of the invisible wounded. He served with the National Guard's 116Th Combat Brigade in Iraq. He says he was in vehicles hit by roadside bombs.

"We hit something," he says. "Some people said that we rolled four times. Some people said twice. I don't know myself."

But, DeWayne survived. And he came back home in 2006.

"When I first got home, it was a pain in the butt," he says. "I was like 'man, I can't even do this.' You know, a lot of things. It was like 'I can't do this.' I couldn't figure out what was wrong."

DeWayne realized he could not do simple tasks, like running remembering how to run a dishwasher. It was not until he had been home for a year, that he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

"Thirty-minutes after an event, he doesn't remember half of it," says Jeannette Mayer, DeWayne's wife.

Memory problems is just one of the symptoms of TBI. DeWayne's family says he also gets easily confused and frustrated. His cognitive skills are not what they used to be.

"We have a new motto in our house," Jeannette says. "It's 'What's the new normal today."

Jeannette has had to take over as head of the household, something she does not relish.

"It was pretty rough to come home to find out he couldn't do it," she says. "And it was really even more frustrating when we didn't know why."

"I have a great support system. Can't do it without a support system. You got to have family and friends and a counselor that you can go and vent to. And then, rebuild and move on."

Russ Spearman, senior research associate with Idaho State University's Institute of Rural Health in Meridian, has been studying TBI for more than a decade. He says the number of service men and women coming home with the disability is somewhere between 20 and 30 percent.

"The shear numbers of soldiers that we've had in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, is tremendous compared to Vietnam," Spearman says.

Spearman says TBI is not a wound that's noticed right away on the battlefield. Many soldiers don't know they suffer from it until they're back home.

"And the fact that up until 2007, the military was not even required to screen individuals for brain injuries," Spearman says.

Spearman says educating the public is key. In fact, his work has him working with law enforcement on how to recognize and deal with TBI patients.

Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff says some of his deputies went through special training on how to deal with vets who have TBI and post traumatic stress disorder.

"Some of the questions that the officers are asking will help them determine if maybe there is an issue, and get them some help other than just being incarcerated for a crime."

Many states are setting money aside to help with future costs of treating traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. Spearman says more than 20 states set up trust funds - money that comes from surcharges or traffic ticket fines - money that can help cover treatment and gaps not covered by health insurance plans.

Dr. Dudley Blake with the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Boise says many troops come home not just suffering from traumatic brain injury, but also post traumatic stress disorder. And the two together are a double-whammy.

Symptoms include memory problems, difficulty with reasoning, balance problems and dizziness as well as sleep and anger issues.

Blake says for some TBI patients, the VA will use Wii video games to help veterans get back some of their cognitive abilities.

"There's times I cry myself to sleep because it had been a frustrating day," Jeannette Mayer says.

But remarkably, Jeannette calls herself the lucky one.

"He got to come home to me. And yes, we have challenges, but I'm still the lucky one. His son and our daughter still have a dad."