For Wounded Veterans and Their Families, a Journey Without Maps

[babylonsister]

For Wounded Veterans and Their Families, a Journey Without Maps
By Lawrence Downes
The New York Times

Monday 24 March 2008



How much more can this country keep demanding of Justin Bunce, Daniel Verbeke and Michael McMichael?

The men - a marine, a sailor and a National Guardsman - went to Iraq to fight as ordered, served honorably and suffered grave injuries. When they came home another struggle began, to find the care to make them whole again.

At a recent hearing in Washington before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, the men's families told anguished tales of trips through bureaucratic hell in the transition between the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs. That terrain is notorious for its paperwork mountains and tripwires of red tape, but especially treacherous for those with traumatic brain injuries, the signature affliction of this five-year-old war.

Mr. Bunce lost an eye in a roadside bomb blast that also thrust shrapnel into his frontal lobe. His father, Peter, said his care was so "stovepiped," with nobody knowing what anyone else was doing, that doctors working on his head ignored his broken leg. Technicians nearly did an M.R.I. on his brain, not realizing - because scans had not been done - the danger from the metal in his skull. Nobody tried to coordinate his many medications.

Time and again his parents had to cross the country looking for the right therapies and treatment. Whatever expertise they found they stumbled on; there was no one but them to manage his case. The V.A. relied on the brain-damaged young corporal to evaluate his own mental state, and once sent him a letter threatening to cut off benefits because he could not manage his affairs.

more...

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032408K.shtml

[jody]

1. Not to worry, BO is on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and he will fix everything.

:rofl:

And :cry: for my fellow disabled comrades.