Dealing with the Veterans Administration Part 2-The recovery

Ok, I lied, got bored and wrote some more, here you go.

 So I had the surgery and it took them a lot longer than they original thought it would, about 4 ½ hours. They said that they had to chip away a lot of bone material and then had to re-attach my tendon to my heel by way of driving a screw anchor into my heel and wiring my tendon to it. I was in and out of casts and splints for five and half months’ then sprinkle in a whole lot of physical therapy and I was not a happy camper. By September of 2011 I thought the process was done although my foot was still not in great shape and was giving me problems at least I was able to walk without crutches which in and of itself was awesome. The unit’s deployment to Afghanistan had been pushed back to September-October 2011 and for about two months’ I was convinced that I would be able to go, if not on the original departure date then at least as a follow on after they had left, nope not happening. Bottom line, after the surgery I was left unable to run and I could not walk over a mile without being in extreme pain.

 And it pretty much continued that way up until March of 2012 when the doctor decided to put me back into a cast for 6 weeks which was awesome news without any warning and having to drive my car home with a new cast on my foot. After the cast they put me into a custom form fitted plastic splint, for six more weeks, that was horribly uncomfortable and made it even more painful to walk than it normally was. When I told them that the splint did not fit into any of the shoes that I owned, they told me that I had to buy shoes that would fit it and at that point I may or may not have had a complete meltdown yelling fit about it all. Once again I was saved by an employee who snuck me out 2 right footed shoes to use so that I would not have to buy a new set of shoes 2 sizes too big for me just so that I could fit that damn splint into one of them.

I continued on with physical therapy for several months’ but the foot just was not getting much better. The main problem was/is getting my Achilles to stretch out and stay stretched out. The suggestion was made to me to consider more surgery which I was absolutely not interested in. The two surgical options they discussed with me were 1) cut my calf muscle to relieve tension on my Achilles, but if I did that on one leg I would then have to do it on the other, no thanks and 2) cut out the tendon that goes to my big toe and attach it to my Achilles to strengthen it, the problem here being that that would basically remove all my push off abilities with my foot and really cripple me, so once again no thanks. Besides the fact that my original surgery did not go as well as planned, the thought of being bed ridden and back on crutches for any length of time was unimaginable.

Fast forward to the present. I am still unable to run; I cannot crouch down all the way, can’t jump off of anything higher than about 2 feet, have difficulty walking on uneven surfaces, have difficulty walking on angled surfaces up and down, can’t stand for long periods of time and still have difficulty walking long distances. Although I will say I have really been working on that and went for a 3 mile walk last week. Of course the next day my leg was on fire so there was a lot of limping going on. So where does this leave me, well for one thing I cannot really do construction anymore, which actually is not bad on a personal level as I was tired of doing that type of work anyways. But on a financial level it makes me poor as hell. Also all this puts me into a bind with the Michigan National Guard as I cannot really do my M.O.S. (Military occupational skill), Infantry, anymore as it requires running and lots and lots of walking with heavy stuff. So now I have a packet in front of the medical review board and I may be removed from service.

Now we get to the fun part. I never filed a claim with the VA for my foot because 1) when we initially got back they told us we had 5 years to do that after our release from active duty which is true for the most part and 2) I was originally told that after surgery I would be all fixed. This was a major mistake on my part and a total failure on the VA’s part. What no one felt the need to mention to me was a little thing called convalescent pay. Convalescent pay is rated at 100% disability for any time that you spend recovering from medical treatment from a service connected injury. One hundred percent disability is about $2,300.00 dollars a month and is given to you as a living stipend while you recover. The kicker is you only have one year after starting treatment to put in for it. So when it became clear to me that my foot was screwed and that it was not really going to get significantly better I went and filed a claim in May of 2012 and that is when I found out about convalescent pay and that I had missed the deadline to file for it. See the thing is, that whole time I was recovering from surgery and doing all that physical therapy I was living off of my savings from Iraq, oh you know somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000.00, all gone, bye bye.

I would like to add to all this by saying that my problem/problems with the Veterans Administration are 99% with the administration portion of the organization. Except for two people I have had nothing but positive interactions with all the doctors, nurses and physical therapists. And let me tell you they work their asses off. My doctor would literally have to run from room to room to see all his patients, speed walking is a must for all those people. And as far as my surgeon goes, I hold no ill will towards him at all. He did they best he could, there are no certainties in the world of medicine and sometimes things work out great and sometimes they do not. Medicine is not an exact science and probably never will be due to the complexities of the human body. And since we are on the subject of the medical staff, here is my opinion on how to cure the financial worries of the VA. Cut your administration workers by half and hire medical professionals to take their place. The VA is like many governmental agencies, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

For my next installment I will cover the claims process and try not to get so angry while writing it that I smash my computer and anything within reach to pieces.

Dealing with the Veterans Administration Part 1-The Injury

My friends on Facebook  always see me posting rants about my dealings with the VA so I thought that I would write a blog post on how the system works, or in many cases does not work. Once again this is from my perspective and my personal dealings with them. After all these years I am still not totally clear on how the system is supposed to work but I will try and explain what I have figured out so far.

The VA has a system in which if you are injured during your time in service, whether that is just regular duty or serving in a war that you can file a claim for compensation from the VA. Compensation is basically the same thing as workman’s compensation like you get from a civilian job. It is a monthly stipend they send to you to compensate the veteran if they incur an injury or condition that ultimately affects their way of life in the long run. For the purposes of this blog post I will use the injury to my foot as an example.

While serving in Iraq at some point I injured my Achilles tendon on my right foot. I do not remember a specific instance of injuring it but instead a basic timeline of when I really started to notice it. After about 5 months in country, around October-November 2009, my foot started to ache all the time and when I would walk or run it felt as if someone was stabbing me in the heel with an icepick. This went on for several months until one of the sergeants got tired of seeing me limping around and told me to go to sick call, which I eventually did. My company medics were not sure what the problem was so I got sent to the battalion aid station. The battalion surgeon took one look at my foot and said, “Yeah you’re probably going to have to have surgery on that when you get back to the states”.

Basically at some point I partially tore my Achilles tendon and it never got a chance to heal so I kept getting what they call micro tears in the tendon where it inserts into the back of my heel bone. The body’s reaction to that was to calcify around the injury and in so doing created a large bone lump on the back of my heel. Basically it looked like someone had put half a golf ball under the skin of my heel, that’s how much it stuck out.

So long story short I just dealt with the pain, finished out my tour, and went home.  I tried to go to the VA a couple months after our return but was not able to accomplish anything as all my paperwork had not been completed by the military so I had to wait for that to happen before I was able to start the process of getting my foot fixed. Finally in early November of 2010, we came home in May of 2010, I got my paperwork, essentially a form called a L.O.D. which stands for Line of Duty meaning that I had injured my foot while on active duty.

So I was finally able to go to the VA and have them take a look at my foot, of course it was not that easy. When I finally saw a doctor he absolutely insisted that I had to do physical therapy first, even though I had paperwork showing that it was a surgical issue. But he said according to VA policy he HAD to send me to physical therapy first. Thankfully his assistant was a former Navy medic and as soon as the doctor left he told me he would put me in for a surgical consult instead of an appointment for physical therapy, probably saved me six months’ of wasted time with that simple gesture and I am eternally grateful to him for it. The timeline is important because I wanted to get this all taken care of and healed up because I had volunteered for an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, sadly that would not happen.

Three weeks later I got an appointment at orthopedics and as soon as the doctor saw my foot he told me I would have to have surgery. Really? I never would have guessed. So the date was set, February 25^th of 2011 would be my surgery. You know, only 10 months’ after I got home. And so would begin my journey through the wretched VA healthcare system.

When I had my initial consult with the actual surgeon I explained to him my timeline and how I really wanted to go on the upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. At that point in time the unit was expected to leave around July-August of 2011. The doctor told me that would not be a problem. He said that after the surgery I would be in a plaster cast for 2 weeks, then a fiberglass cast for 6 weeks, than a splint for 6 weeks then some physical therapy and I would be good to go, Liiiiiieeeeeessssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!

Finally February rolls around and it is time for surgery. Let me just say this really quick. Anyone that has known me for any length of time knows that over my lifetime I have been broken and bloodied on more than one occasion so I am no real stranger to pain. I have never in my life been in so much pain as I was after that surgery, holy cow. They gave me Vicoden for the pain and I seriously could not eat enough of those things. I think I went through 120 pills in a month, no joke.  When I woke up at home after surgery and after the general anesthesia had worn off it was such a bone deep, searing, absolutely miserable pain that I would not wish it on anyone, well maybe a couple people but that’s not the point. I don’t remember doing it but I apparently called the on call surgeon and gave him an earful in many colorful terms of endearment.

This will be a multi post blog, this is the first part and I will write more in the next couple of days.

It has been a while since I posted anything up here. Currently in a state of reflection of my life and realized I really missed writing. Now it may be that once I get out of this funk I will abandon it once again, but I hope not. I actually enjoy writing, it can be a nice release at times. Plus in a world that can be so hectic it just feels good to stop every once in a while, slow down and put thoughts down on paper.

A little catch up for you. Did not get to go to Afghanistan which was a pretty big bummer for me. Basically my foot never really healed properly after the surgery. So it wasn't for lack of effort on my part, just was not meant to be. I was in and out of casts and splints for most of the year. Finally that all seems to be behind me. The VA keeps talking about more surgeries but I am really not interested. I told them the only way I was getting back on the operating table is if my Achilles snaps in half.

But now I am back in school in the Automation Technologies program at my local community college. Basically building, programming and repairing robots used in manufacturing. Of course the old doubts have already started to surface, is this the right program for me yadda yadda yadda. I think it is. I would love to make my living as a writer but the simple fact remains that I need to get a skill set that I can actually make money with. Don't get me wrong, you can make money as a writer but thinking that you are going to become J.K Rowlings right off the bat is the same thing as thinking that your rock and roll band will become automatically famous. Plus I really like to write what I want to write when I want to write it, not a good job plan. So I am going to stick with the Robotics program, I can always write on the side.

So there you have it, I actually still have a bunch of stuff to write about concerning my time in Iraq and life in the Army and perhaps a little personal reflection on occasion. I had thought about changing the title of this blog as I had originally created it as more of a war journal. But the more I thought about it the more it still made sense even on a personal level. Not saying much for my psyche I know but hey what can you do. Hell I don't even know if people read this thing anymore, but I am going to keep writing anyways.