http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601788.htmlFighting Walter Reed After Fighting the War
By David Yancey
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page B05
I had a big anniversary last week. April 1 marked the end of two full years I've spent at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Like a lot of outpatients who've been here a long time, I was happy to see the Washington Post report about the lousy conditions and the delays and frustrations soldiers face when they're ready to leave the service. But the bureaucratic obstacles that injured soldiers have to fight through are still a problem, for me and a lot of others. Reforming the disability system that keeps us hanging around for no reason -- a system so complex that it's all but impossible for soldiers to navigate it -- is going to take longer than renovating Building 18.
I was hit while serving in Iraq with the Mississippi National Guard early in the spring of 2005. I was the gunner on a Humvee headed toward Baghdad. A bomb buried in the road exploded and tore our vehicle in half. The driver lost his legs. At the time, I thought I was lucky -- the blast fractured my left femur, and severed the brachial artery and caused major nerve damage in my right arm. It also broke several ribs, collapsed a lung and caused traumatic brain injury. Three days later, I was in a place I'd never heard of until I woke up there: Walter Reed.
For the first year, through several surgeries, I felt that the medical staffers knew what they were doing, even though they did seem eager to move soldiers out of the hospital. Living in Mologne House, the Army's hotel at Walter Reed, I tried to cope with a manual wheelchair that I could barely move. I nearly lost my arm a second time when it got caught in the door to my room, rupturing my brachial artery again. My arm filled with blood, but the doctors were able to save it. Over time, with the help of physical therapists, I graduated from a wheelchair to crutches to a cane. Now, with a titanium rod in my leg, I walk with a limp.
I still can't make it more than a few blocks without needing to rest. I've lost strength in my right arm. I suffer from migraines, memory loss and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
As my medical condition has stabilized, I have waited month after month for the disability system to decide whether I can retire and under what circumstances. As a soldier, if your degree of disability is rated at 30 percent, you receive monthly checks, health insurance and other privileges. If not, you get a single severance check. And when you turn to Veterans Affairs for benefits, you have to pay back the severance.
At this time a year ago, I thought I would be heading home after my orthopedist wrote a narrative summary of my injuries, a step that's supposed to trigger the disability evaluation process. The Defense Department says soldiers should go before a medical evaluation board 30 days after that. Instead it took seven months.
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