Pain in the Neck

Annie you've never been good for me
But I still wanna be wrong
And Annie you've never been true to me
But I still buy your lies
--I Hear Goodnight, Ingram Hill

I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be
you're gonna give your love to me
a love to last a-more than one day
a love that's love - not fade away
--Not Fade Away, Buddy Holly

Precious and fragile things
Need special handling
My God what have we done to You?
--Precious, Depeche Mode

______________

Ranger admits up front he is cranky and self-absorbed, and accepts any criticism (if not graciously.)

My back and neck injuries are service-connected and parachute-related, therefore, combat-related by U.S. law. Still, I'm reluctant to complain as these injuries were not wound-related nor are they as significant and debilitating as those incurred by many veterans.

Ranger will complain anyway, as it is his right to do so.

About three years ago the Department of Veterans Affairs authorized chiropractic and massage therapy on a fee basis, thereby authorizing treatment outside the VA system. This treatment was beneficial and supposed to be long-term. However, December 2009 finds Ranger finding the DVA not supporting this troop.

Our injuries are legitimate, but the VA's response is not. The VA claims it will no longer fund my treatment, although my spine injuries didn't get the message that they are no longer valid problems. My spine injuries will only continue to deteriorate as a result of againg and Ranger's general nasty attitude.

This little vignette gives the lie to the rhetoric that the DVA is a crackerjack health care system. Nuts! If the little things are not STRAC, how can the big things be?

Interestingly, Tricare will not pay for chiropractic or massage, either. Medicare will provide services, but with a co-pay. Some readers will say, "Fair enough!", but is it? Army service injuries should be treated at no cost to me, the veteran; that was the deal. I held up my end of the bargain.

Remember America, you claim you support the troops, and that means even those who aren't bright-shiny-new. Yet too often, older vets are too proud to complain when the system fails them. Many feel that others with more severe injuries deserve the treatment more, but by law, all of us should be treated equally.

Bear in mind this is the same VA which is funded at the discretion of Congress, and the same DVA that claims service-connected amputees will receive $250,000 prosthetic devices for the rest of their lives. That's the promise, anyway.

Ranger doesn't have a crystal ball, but he can see the future. Sometime after he is long dead there will be a paratrooper in the year 2050 writing this very same thing. Assuming there will still be a U.S.A. in 2050.

Back in th U.S.A.

Soon we will be done
Trouble of the world
How soon we will be done
--Trouble of the World,
Mahalia Jackson

Poor souls that live within the past
where sorrow plays all parts,
for a living death is all that's left
for men with broken hearts
--Men With Broken Hearts,
Hank Williams, Jr.
_______________

What happens to seriously wounded soldiers after the Department of Defense (DoD) dumps them on the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) doorstep, like so many newly-orphaned Nebraskan children?

Due to better medical technology, veterans are surviving more serious injuries. "In 2007, the Dole-Shalala Commission said there were 3,000 service members so severely injured that they required full-time clinical- and care-management services" (Veterans Families Seek Aid for Caregiver Role.)

While the DVA provides home health care for 100% disabled veterans, the health care contractors on the government-provided lists can be "awful" according to Tracy Keil, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Matt Keil, was rendered a quadriplegic after being shot in the neck while on patrol in Ramadi. Mrs. Keil quit her $58,000 accounting job to care full-time for her husband. Like many others who have shifted into full-time health care providers for family members, Keil is asking for government remuneration for her services.

It is not that nobody in the chain of command or the DVA cares or that they are callous, but rather the system is just overwhelmed. Vets are just another problem needing to be solved, in a world of problems. The vets most in need are the ones least able to argue for their own care needs.

They are helpless in a world of phony yellow ribbons and little flag lapel pins. Many are not fortunate enough to have family members to whom they may return, and who may or may not be able to take over their care needs.

When Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake said Bob Dole's mother "quit everything she was doing and came to take care of him at the hospital, no questions asked. That’s not the case anymore" -- just so. The care of these severely disabled vets is a governmental, not a family, responsibility.

These vets walk a tightrope of despair as do their families, while we as a nation continue to revel in the distractions of the moment. The issue is money, and if the DVA would compensate contractor care, then they should compensate family members who become de facto caregivers in their stead.

"In the last session of Congress, families and veterans groups persuaded lawmakers to introduce legislation that, among other things, would allow families of soldiers with traumatic brain injury (TBI) to be paid for their caretaking after training and certification by the VA." The VA, however, opposes the legislation it claims due to liability issues.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), thinks the families of veterans "are kind of being taken advantage of” because the government knows they will do the work anyway.

DVA respite care (24-hour institutional care) costs $857 a day, or about $25,700 a month. This is $308,400 per patient per year. If 3,000 wounded veterans need full-time care, the total is $925,200,000. $925 million -- almost one billion dollars for the annual care of 3,000 profoundly wounded service members.

These men will live on for many years. That is a guaranteed yearly tab -- where is that cost factored in to the expense of having national warriors?

Who is talking about this "collateral" cost of war? When is the last time anyone out there visited a DVA long-term care facility and actually talked to a vet? How many politicians talk to vets any time other than when they are posturing for votes?

This country has a moral, legal and financial responsibility to wounded veterans. The tab's coming due.