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.
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