This President and his entire administration makes me ill, mentally ill, seriously! Just to give a perspective of what vets go through to get their benefits, let me give you, dear readers, a little insight.
I served in the Army as a paratrooper then later as a weapons sergeant in 7th Special Forces Group. Our area focus was/is Latin America. This was during late Reagan years; early Bush I years. I served on many deployments during that time including the invasion of Panama. During that time I suffered several compressed disc fractures and afterwards started to feel really funny inside. I began to have really strange nightmares. During the day my chest felt tight and very strong sensations of butterflies in my chest. I am very jumpy as well.
I left active duty and attended UMich while staying in 19th Special Forces Group National Guard to help pay. It was at this time that I was diagnosed with spinal injury and degenerative bone condition in the lumbar. Somehow, when I graduated, I got permission and a medical waiver to switch to the Navy to attend OCS and become an intelligence officer. During this time I began to drink even more heavily to sleep at night.
Up to current day. Out of the service and recieved 60% disability. But here are the problems. I had to pay for my own sleep study (sleep apnea) and orthopedic exams beyond the regular VA exam. After the war started I got worse with these funny feelings inside and drinking even more heavily. I went to a shrink at my grad school and was finally diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Interpersonality Disorder, and PTSD.
Though I have all my paperwork in order (medical diagnosis, CIB, stressor letter, buddy letters, failed marraige, etc.) and the VVA is helping me, the VA says that I need to go to therapy to help back up my claim. But guess what, they won’t send me to therapy because it isn’t service connected yet and I have no health insurance to go to therapy. Catch 22. Vietnam Veteran’s Association says this is common place in that the VA hopes the veteran will eventually give up and save the government money because this asshat administration is gutting VA funding.
My claim has been in since March 2002 and is still pending the appeals process. Will I eventually win? I believe so, my ducks are in order. But how much taxpayer money and resources are they wasting by keeping me in appeals when thos sources could be going to other vets?
Yes folks, this might be a personal bitch, but I thought I’d give you some food for thought on this wonderful veteran’s day about just ONE person’s struggle against the government and how they treat us once we’re all used up and broken.
The good side is that I’ve taken a road to recovery to get out of the alcoholism.
As I stated in my x-post at Kos, God help my brothers and sisters coming back from this madness and help them get the help that they deserve.
HI JD, didn’t mean to ignore your diary here but after being up early and reading some of the diaries on and by veterans I had to take a long break and didn’t get back here till today.
I hope to hell your case will be settled soon, it’s about gd time. Keep hanging in there seem a bit of a meaningless phrase but about all I can do to convey the fact that we don’t want to lose your voice here.
Thanks ink, but it isn’t just my case. It’s thousands just like mine and the budget is getting gutted. Before I moved overseas, my file was in Roanoke, VA. AMVETS told me there had been a couple of deaths and many retirments at the regional center, yet they have been on a 4 year hiring freeze. Less people to process claims yet thousands of more claims coming in. It’s horrible and I really don’t blame the VA, their hands are tied, I blame this warmongering administration who supports the troops – while they’re in desert uniform at least, and even that is sketchy.
Much the same with the back log at SS for trying to get disability…I was ‘lucky’ and it only took me a year and a half-although by that time from being on partial work, etc etc and than not being able to work at all I lost everything I had and had to go live with relative and hope I would get disability so I wasn’t a drag on them.. As you said it’s not so much the organization itself it’s that they aren’t funded enough and do not have enough people working in these organizations to expedite claims for people who so badly need help-like yesterday.
Wow, Ink,
I’m sure your story is similiar to mine. I hope you got what you deserve and didn’t get short-changed.
I’m not a vet but had long standing problems that continued to be ignored or told were all in my head(of course)by lazy, stupid doctors. Trying to work was always a chore and since doctors kept saying nothing was wrong people started thinking I was a hypochondriac…very very long story(stretching over 30 years really) but not particularly anything that hasn’t happened to way to many others also I believe.
Well I did get on disability(have a hereditary neuro-muscular disease) but at about 535 a month that’s almost the same as being homeless unless you’re lucky enough to have family to help you out as I have.
Even though I am on disability believe it or not I still don’t have a doctor after 7 years and another incredibly long story.
and try some of the exercises. You are probably more in tune with what your body will tolerate than anybody so just do what feels good and stop when it doesn’t. That will help with the muscles that have to support your spine. I am taking some pilates from a teacher who really really enjoys going slow. It is such a pleasure working with her. Feel free to go slow. When you do the exercises breath into the places you feel are stretching. That gives a sense of space and support to those areas. If you like it at all it can lead you to a lot of different areas to explore – meditation for instance.
Do some mental exercises – send love, warmth, healing images to the parts that hurt. Imagine that your blood has little healing engines (which it does) that can go in there and repair by giving nourishment and encouragement to both the blood and the cells at the site to become healthy.
If there is a massage school, see if they have fairly cheap massape sessions. Be sure and tell them to be gentle in the areas that are painful. But it will help the rest of the body feel good enough to support the painful part. At any rate, touch is healing and we never get enough of it.
These are some more things that you can do. You do not have to be at the mercy of bureaucrats and doctors and your pain totally. You have already begun to take charge dealing with the alcoholism. (And the alcoholism started because you WERE trying to take care of yourself, alcohol is just a bad tool.) And you now know more about your problems than you did.
Good luck to you. Feel free to do more diaries. It is good for us to know what we are doing to folks with our war like tendencies and we do not get the real truth from anybody except those that have been there.
That’s a good idea for many people but I can’t do any kind of stretching exercises due to the fact that I could cause much more severe nerve damage….exercise is not my friend(last time I did a stretching exercise I ended up having surgery-nother long story) Stretching, even putting hands over head causes numbness and repetition is also not my friend…
My neuro disease is kinda like having carpel tunnel on whole body which means you have to rest your muscles not exert them or you cause more muscle damage which in turn causes the nerve damage which is permanent..I have almost completely numb feet and parts of leg.(which means I worry about amputation of toes eventually) I’m probably not explaining this well but exercize causes more damage and a difficult concept for lots of people to understand but it’s just a fact of the way this neuro-muscular disease effects me. And that said it really pisses me off that I can’t do any kind of exercise that’s for sure.
any stretching. Have they been able to recommend any physical therapy at all? Floating in water maybe?
Some people can do certain kinds of physical therapy with this but they have to be extremely careful because if it starts to hurt in the very slightest than that means nerve/muscle damage is happening. The only way I can explain it as I said is to imagine if someone with carpel tunnel was told that instead of resting hand/arm they were forced to use it twice as much to supposedly build it up which of course would cause instead much much more damage.
Anyway I don’t have a doctor and most doctors haven’t even heard of this particular neuro disease(or least the one of several that I might have-medicare won’t pay for dna testing to find out which one of several this is)but all seemed quite willing even if they’ve never heard of it to tell me it couldn’t be causing my problems. Even when my sister had to almost carry me into doctors offices and they saw the tests which showed extremely severe nerve damage..instead I was still being told I just must have low pain threshold or some such shit. My medical records are a disaster-you wouldn’t believe what doctors write in them about you-one doctor wrote forget the neuro disease and life long numbness in body parts and that instead I probably wasn’t smart enough I guess to realize that I probably slept on a table the night before with my arm under my head-to make my hand and arm go numb for several days..yeah right stupid me I forgot all about sleeping on a table and hysterically rushed to the doctor cause my hand and arm were numb for days-that’s me alright hysterical low iq moron according to doctors and some of my records.
Guess I need to quit writing or I’ll be here all night writing about this crap.
Been having my own troubles w/vocational rehabilitation/voc rehab. Or as I call it joke rehab.
Talk about a nightmare!!!!
any sort of disability needing assistance of any kind that “the church” can’t provide is being gunned for. I feel it with my disabled son to.
Yeah, they just want you to pray it away! If there is no solution, it is God’s will! Right!
That’s just it. Mine is only one case, your’s is only one case, but it is unforgivable that there are thousands of us.
You got that right!
Yes, because of the bureaucratic mess due to not enough funding and people they take what sometimes can be very managed problems and put people in limbo for years and make their quality of life hell and for what? Besides being inhumane it’s also incredibly cost-ineffective.
Hang in there, Jeff Dem. That you are actively staying sober is a huge win for you.
well, guess we are in this together. I am by your side, always, as you alrady know.
My hand is out to you, and if you need someone always, know that I am here for you. That is the way we are, dont ya just know.
7th, huh??!! well, well….now I have more friends than that of the 5th…;o) hugs.
Thanks Brenda, ya’know I thought about working for the VA just to make sure people got what they deserved, being idealistic and everything, but as I posted above, they’re on a hiring freeze and I had second thoughts on what ideals could actually accomplish in a bureaucratic monster. I would probably have a stroke trying to fight the system.
Ya need to hang around us 7th Group guys, those 5th Groups guys…pffft! <grins – professional rivalry snark>
It is the stories like this one that make some days very difficult for me during these dark times, so I have been taking breaks. I have always had an affinity for your words and I am so grateful for your obvious strength in taking care of yourself. Thank God for that! We all must work to turn this VA bullshit around ASAP. The numbness to the plight of our soldiers while we have soldiers in the field this very minute not only baffles me but leaves me feeling victimized also. We have paid out of pocket for my husband at times since he has come home from Iraq…..he is too precious for me to allow them to fuck with him too much. You are also precious to me, nobody else I know knows so much about Jefferson and his take on this Democracy he helped bring about.
Vietnam Veteran’s Association says this is common place in that the VA hopes the veteran will eventually give up and save the government money because this asshat administration is gutting VA funding.
Yes, yes and yes. It’s not everyone in the VA–the people actually trying to help. But you know how it is … those decisions made by people above your pay grade.
I can’t say that I know how you feel, but let’s just say I’m more familiar with this than I have ever wanted to be.
Say, how did this turn out?
Thanks Auntie, and thanks for the link. I am cautiously optomistic. I was caught in that denial of claims from last year. Unfortunately, it took a suicide from a veteran for the VA to turn that around. I’m hoping that my claim will come around, but God that was so tragic and so unnecessary.
You’re welcome.
Honestly, this hits home. You fight for this country and then have to turn around and fight for the benefits owed to you. It is just morally repugnant and unacceptable, and something, frankly, that I just cannot fucking stand.