A little more than a year after she married, Tiffany Smiley walked into a hospital room to tell her husband he was blind.

A car bomb in Mosul, Iraq, had sent shrapnel into Army Maj. Scott Smiley's eyes as he was serving as an infantry platoon leader and ultimately led him to this bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had been deployed six months — six months that Tiffany endured catching glimpses of him in reports from an embedded Fox News journalist. She'd watch and wonder what reality she'd fallen into as explosions boomed in the background of the shots.

When she wasn't watching the news, Tiffany was working as a nurse. But as she went about life in the US, it felt like no one else was paying attention.

"At the time, I was shocked," she told Business Insider. "We are at war — and people don't even know or care."