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 25th 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.
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