Personal dealings with the Veterans Administration and exacerbation of my PTSD symptoms.
Submitted by DrEvil569 on 18 July 2008 - 5:40pm.
I am a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I served as a Combat Medic in a field hospital and on the ground in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. Upon my return I encountered the same difficulties most soldiers experience returning to my everyday life. My personal symptoms persisted long after other soldiers symptoms had subsided. I found my inability to cope with stress and my “Zero Tolerance” for what I considered “Idiotic Behavior” would erupt into fits of anger. Then came the nightmares and flashbacks.
In the past I had often regarded veterans who claimed to have flashbacks to be either crazy or faking it. That was until the day I actually had one. I never knew the severity of a life where your mind traps you and makes you see things that aren’t there. The mind can be a cruel adversary. It doesn’t care if your are in the middle of something or in a particular setting. It controls you without mercy.
In 2005 I attempted suicide. After my unsuccessful attempt, I checked myself into the Veterans Administration Hospital. What I sought was help, what I got was heavily medicated. I never got to speak with an actual doctor. I spoke with a staff member who regarded the questions he had to ask me as a stupid waste of his time. Day after day, I would be medicated and then taken to the day room where I would play checkers with myself, try to assemble a model car they gave me without the glue and set and watch the other heavily medicated vets setting there, looking out the window, rocking back and forth with blank looks on their faces. These images would last until my meds kicked in and I became the same kind of vegetable blankly staring into space.
I can’t tell you exactly how long I was there because of the medication induced coma I was subjected to.
I was finally able to speak with the doctor. I would have said anything to get out of there. And so, I was released. After my stay in the hospital, I was instructed to continue the medications. I continued my visits with the Mental Hygiene Clinic and my medications. There are still parts of 2005 I don’t remember.
In late 2006, I went back to the VA, this time for an evaluation for disability. I was awarded 30% VA Disability for PTSD and began receiving benefits. Throughout 2006 and 2007 my symptoms persisted. I was unable to hold a job. I was still enlisted in the National Guard and in July of 2007, I had heart problems while training at Fort Sill.
When I got home my military career was over, my social life was non-existent and personal relationships suffered. I felt as though I was at the end of my rope. That is until I met and fell for the most amazing woman who extended her hand and her emotions. Her will is strong and she only wants the best for me. She is my rock and continues to support me through this.
In 2007 after dealing with reoccurring nightmares and extended periods of sleeplessness, anger, agoraphobia and overall anxiety, I again went to the VA for counseling. I was again heavily medicated. I was given a cocktail of medications which made me a total zombie. It seems as though all they wanted to do was throw drugs at me. During the time I was taking these new drugs all I did was sleep and eat. I gained 40 pounds and was a hollow shell with no resemblance of the person I once was.
The VA doctors never looked at my records and prescribed me medications which I found out later were not conducive of someone with a heart condition. After being on the meds for a few months I started noticing changes. Left was right. Up was down. I would go to walk down the steps and take a step up. I would turn on the lights when I left the room. The kicker was when I went to get into my car and climbed in on the passenger side and wondered where the steering wheel was. I could have killed someone. That was the day I stopped taking the meds.
I did not know it at the time but most of the meds I was on required you to be weaned off. Since I quit cold turkey, the following weeks were very painful. To this day, I am still feeling some effects of the medications. I later heard of two veterans who died in their sleep while taking the same medication cocktail I was given.
During this time, my file was reopened and I was awarded 100% VA Disability for my PTSD. Only this time there is a question as to my competency. I am still receiving the original $512.00 per month previously awarded, but the VA is withholding the additional money pending a decision as to whether I am competent enough to handle my own finances. Not being able to work and trying to live on little more than $500 a month is impossible. And now it seems as though the VA wants to withhold my benefits in order for me to become completely destitute.
I can not afford to put my old Jeep on the road, therefore I am stuck depending on others for a ride. Even if it were on the road, I couldn’t afford gas. I can barely afford food, rent is out of the question and my clothing is beginning to deteriorate. I never wanted to be a homeless vet, but I fear that if something doesn’t break soon, very soon, I will be.
I was competent enough to go to war. Competent enough to identify that I had a problem and needed help from the VA. I was competent enough to fill out all the forms and read the publications in order to file for a claim. I am competent enough not to get into any trouble with the authorities. Yet I am not competent enough to handle my own money? It truly boggles the mind. The simple act of writing this proves that I retain at least a minute amount of competency.
Why is it that no one ever questioned the competency of the doctors prescribing drugs that conflict with a heart condition to a patient with one?
Now I find my days, hours and minutes consumed with the fact that the VA seems to be acting as an antagonist. In the months I have been dealing with this my dreams are more frequent, I have had reoccurring flashbacks and my mood suffers. I set all day worried about money and how to make ends meet and find it hard to carry on. I sometimes feel like the VA wants me to either quit or die so they wont have to award my benefits.
This has been a very taxing experience. Every time I call the VA for information I am either given the run around of false information.
Once again, I can’t sleep and my anxiety level is slowly eating away at me. Everyday I am in pain and I am beginning to lose hope. How much more do I have to lose before help arrives?
I have written to my Congressman and Senator. I have enlisted the help of the American Legion. I also began a letter writing campaign to the VA in reference to my file. And as of today I am no closer to receiving any benefits than I was previously.
All of this and I am so ashamed of having this disorder. It would have been much easier had I lost a limb or been killed in battle. At least people wouldn’t look at me like I am crazy or a fake. Physically, except for my hearing and a hand injury, I came home without a scratch. And I can’t help but feel like I am less for my experiences. However, through all of this, I am still very proud of my service and would, to this day, give my life to defend this great nation. Fore, I believe that beneath the muck that is covering its surface, there is still the beliefs, values and great land that our forefathers saw when they created the United States of America.
Don't give up hope,
Don't give up hope, while the VA moves like molasses, you'll eventually get your due. I have been fighting with the VA for about 6 years over disability, and am finally up to 70% and still fighting.
If the VA doesn't think you're competent, it would probably benefit you to get a lawyer. I know lawyers generally suck, but sometimes you need help to get what's yours. You should be able to find a lawyer who is either pro-soldier or anti-government to take your case for free or at a very low fee.
Keep writing letters to your Congressmen and Senators, keep up the fight, and try to connect with other combat veterans in your area. Sometimes groups like Rolling Thunder http://www.rollingthunder1.com/ or the Patriot Guard http://www.patriotguard.org/ can help with commaraderie with veterans who know what you're going through, and can give you something worthwhile to focus on while you are waiting for the next great phase of your life to begin.
Good luck and Welcome Home. I, for one, am glad you made it through.
- Steve
RE: Don't give up hope,
Thank you so much. And first off, let me thank you for your service.
I won't give up. I apreciate the links and will check them out.
I have never really talked about my condition. My fiancee' put me up to it. She thought it would be cleansing.
It took a lot for me to do this because I generally keep to myself.
Thank you for your kind words and support. I will continue to fight.
-Chris
The 'haints' that come in the night
Chris,
Sad as it is I concur with Steve: hang in there.
My father served in Korea and Nam, he had several brothers in WW II and Korea and his uncle saw WW I.
Gulf I was my war... and even now 17 years later the 'haints' come for me in the night. The waking up in a cold sweat with the sound of gunfire still ringing in my ears, the smell of battle lingering on the air and the sights as real as if I were there just the evening before.
Even sometimes during the day a sound will trigger it, or a smell and *BAM* I'm back in the SandBox Techno-Expo.
I see heads nodding at what I'm writing here and they'll all tell you: it's not possible to describe it to someone who hasn't been there. You get the "yeah right" or the "hey, I saw that movie too" look, or you get dismissed as "another nutjob GI Joe" mental case.
Find others local to you who have been in combat and felt their buddies blood in their hands- THEY know. Find a support group somewhere you can go to and talk yourself through the hell you got sent to, where you can cry without shame, where you can retreat to a corner baseboard heater and be understood.
And please, take up a hobby. Something you get fulfillment out of where you can set it down and see what you've accomplished. There is nothing more spiritually degrading then crawling under the sheets at the end of the day and wondering "and I breathed air today... why?". It eats at the soul and turns you inside out.
Bless the lady who accepted you as you are and loves you anyway, I tip my hat to her for her fortitude and strength of character.
PTSD *IMHO* is, in a nutshell, the lingering memories of what we should never have seen to remember. Hellish memories of war that our brains can't assimilate in a 'cultured society' and put in perspective at moms dinner table. The grisly reality of nerves on edge every second of the day awake or asleep and alert for the slightest signs of death in the next heartbeat that are so prominent in front line combat. In every war, declared or otherwise, until Korea (to a lesser extent) and certainly by Nam... the soldiers took months to return. "Johnny came marching home" etc.
During that long march Johnny had weeks or months, in the company of men who had been through what Johnny went through, and Johnny had time to come to terms with what he ahd been through. In WW I and WW II Johnny sailed home on ships, again in the company of men who had been through what Johnny went through and he had weeks or months to come to terms with the lingering sounds of combat and men screaming as they lay dying.
Now they fly us home from 'there' one day and in our homes the next... before we have time to resolve the disparity in realities and coming to terms with what we left behind.
Before being sat down in front of a dozen screaming fussing kids and a nervous bride and Granny and Aunt Maude and Uncle Ray and mom and dad and etc over fine china and crystal... and trying to calm everyone as we peel ourselves from the ceiling after a niece of nephew slammed a door and came screaming into the room.
Before being expected by everyone in sight to behave and act like a civilized man in a society that glorified his heroics and wanted to hear all about how Johnny saved the day at the battle of bloody ridge... which we so desperately want to forget.
Before being able to separate ourselves from the nightmare still fresh in our soul and calmly yet dramatically recounting that nightmare for everyones entertainment.
Before...
The paradox becomes immediately apparant... yes?
And for whatever merit you care to assign to it- you front line combat medics... you guys are freaking heroes! I owe my life to one of you guys, so let me say THANK YOU!!!
Gunner Retired