"Yeff" > wrote in message
...
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2014 11:06:24 -0600, graham wrote:
>
>> If a Vet is disabled or needs help because of service to his country,
>> THE GOVERNMENT should look after him!
>
> The government *should*, but sometimes they make the paperwork to get
> help so daunting the Vet gives up.
>
> I've got an Internet friend who had his Humvee flipped over by an IED
> while serving in Iraq. He suffers from PTSD and started the paperwork
> to get a VA rating. Eventually he became disgusted at the amount of
> paperwork they wanted him to file to prove his claim that he just gave
> up. Next thing you know he's threatening suicide and we're sending the
> police to his house.
>
> Luckily, once he was in the hospital he hooked up with a Service Rep who
> took over the paperwork and the hassle that went with it.
>
> For me it was a 12 year odyssey of going from 0% service connected (yes,
> that's possible), to 40%, to 60% to 100%. For many of those years I
> just gave up and didn't try to advance my claim.

It is terrible and you would not believe the wait times. This map shows
where the wait times are the worst. And it's only getting worse!

http://cironline.org/reports/map-whe...log-worst-3792

At the time that my husband applied for his disability, there were only
three large circles on the map. The largest being in the Bay area of CA
which is where he was living when he applied. Now as you can see, the
Seattle area is worse.

He finally did start getting monthly payments but to do this involved many
trips to many Drs. and filling out tons of paperwork. Also many phone
calls. I got huge amounts of paperwork sent to the house on this about the
various decisions, some of which I couldn't understand. Which meant more
phone calls.

And forget about whatever dates they put on there. I think it was over a
year later before he got his first payment and it even came a month later
than the date he was told that it would.

Now we are waiting for the retroactive. Every time he tries to check, they
just send him a letter stating that they got his message and they are
looking into it. And from what I have read on online forums, that could
come in 6 years to never. He may well die and not have gotten it.

It's just not right. What do they expect people to live on? We are lucky
in that my husband can work. And that he finally did get a good job. Not
everyone can work and even if they can, they might not get a good job. He
could not find one here so had to move to NY for work until he did find one
here.

I also know just how very bad PTSD can be.

When we lived in CA, we had neighbors with a son who was a year younger than
my daughter. The wife worked long hours as a buyer for a department store
and her job often had her going out of town.

Because the weather was always nice where we lived, the kids always played
outside. One day the dad approached me and gave me some story about his
wife leaving a chicken in fridge and that he was roasting it but that their
son didn't really like it and how he didn't know how to cook anything else.
Turns out that it was a bogus story. He asked me if I could feed the child
that day. I did. And then I did for many days after that. In turn, he and
his wife would take my daughter out to eat once in a while. I do remember
asking both parents about cooking because they were Jewish and I know that
the mother kept kosher. Apparently they didn't care so much what the kid
ate in terms of that but they did eat healthy food as we did so they had no
issues about what I fed him. But I digress.

When we were getting ready to move, the dad came to me and confessed that I
had really helped him out by feeding his son. He said he had been suffering
from PTSD and by the time he got home he was such a mess that all he could
do was immerse himself in the bathtub and try to calm himself down until his
wife got home. But he wasn't able to do that when he had to watch his son.
So my watching him and feeding him dinner had really helped.

A lot of people who are suffering from this do not want to admit it to other
people. Particularly males. And even though he was in the Army, he wasn't
in a combat position. He actually did payroll. But when you are in the
military you still see and hear stuff.

When we were living on Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island in the Coast Guard
housing, we were almost constantly told to be on high alert. Although the
kids did play outside a lot there too, we were always on the lookout for
something bad to happen. They had gotten many bomb threats to the Verrazano
bridge that ran almost right over where we lived. And this was the year
after 9/11. So all of NY was probably really on high alert anyway but
living in military housing only made things worse.

And then there were the times when the spouses would get called in to work
and we wouldn't know why. There were some things they were just not allowed
to speak of. That makes you not feel so well either.