Veterans Day: an introduction

Happy Veterans Day, I guess.

Despite all the lip service paid to our men and women in uniform, the current administration behaves as though the only good veteran is a dead veteran, to paraphrase an old saying (remember the Indians, ahem, native Americans?).

Why do I feel this way? Well, one day a year we “honor” living veterans. One day a year we honor dead veterans. But each and every day the nation, and that means all of us, ignores their medical and financial needs.

I hear so much about how everyone supports the troops, even if that speaker is against the war, but who supports those troops when they come home? You know, the people who may have survived the physical ordeal, perhaps with some body pieces missing, the ones whose brains were shaken in bomb attacks and who have psychological, neurological, and cognitive deficits? How about the ones with PTSD? Their numbers are growing daily. Who is helping them? Who cares?

The VA medical system is overburdened and underfinanced. Veterans who need care wait months to receive it, often being shuttled from one specialist to another, always waiting for appropriate treatment that they may never receive. Those with physical problems that aren’t easily diagnosable are often told that their problems are psychological, until their illness is so advanced that they may never recover, and their quality of life sucks. Those with psychological problems may be diagnosed correctly (PTSD), or may be misdiagnosed in an attempt to limit the financial compensation that they may be eligible to receive. Counseling, like medical care, is rationed. Many patients are seen by a counselor once a month or so, by a psychiatrist (for a medication check), once every three months or so. This isn't close to being adequate for the kinds of coping problems many veterans have.

But who cares? We live in a society where depersonalization is the norm. I’m pretty familiar with depersonalization--I have PTSD, and I don’t feel real to myself sometimes (okay, a lot of the time). Depersonalization is when someone doesn’t seem real. They don’t have blood, feelings, friends. They are them. In my case, I am them, and self-destructive behavior comes from that.

If you feel real to yourself, and the soldier doesn’t feel real to you, then it’s easy for you to hurt him or her, ignore him or her, pretend any of their problems are solely theirs and not your own. After all, many, if not most, of these soldiers are people from small towns, or impoverished areas of cities where their opportunities were so limited that any way out seemed like a step up, even joining the military.

But these soldiers and veterans are real people. I watch and read the news and I don’t hear the number of casualties being reported. I see faces. I see mangled bodies. I see blood on the ground and on the shredded trucks. I see someone’s mother crying and holding a picture her child painted for her in the third grade. I see a person who will never touch anyone again, or make love, or enjoy the feel of the sun on their face on the first day of spring when the birds are singing and the ground smells damp with life, not death.

When I read of the veterans returning home with injuries I realize that some are in hospitals, alone, receiving what medical care is available. They are struggling to regain some mastery over what is left of their bodies, their minds, their lives. The future they had planned or imagined is gone. The pain is constant, both physical and mental. And who cares?

The veterans that come home with psychological problems (PTSD), whether diagnosed or not, face a confusing and out-of-control future. One of the big problems is that the mentally ill (if I can refer to us as that), are expected to realize that we are mentally ill, and to seek help. Okay. We all see our own reality. What sort of reality does a person see who has just returned from a place where danger lurks everywhere and the smell of death is in the air? Where blood is a paint? Where someone may smile at you and then blow you up? Normal is whatever you live with on a daily basis. A person does not come back from this situation and suddenly think okay, the world is safe now.

Here's a news flash: it isn’t safe anyway. Some places may be safer than others. For many of us the solution is isolation. That’s safe. That makes sense. So the VA needs to make an outreach effort. The public needs to be aware of the need and to do their part.

Another problem is the number of veterans who live in poverty, who are homeless, who have needs they don’t even want to admit to.

In theory there is a compensation system for veterans with physical andor psychological problems. That system is unfair and burdensome, and many veterans give up or die before they can receive any help.

Over the next few days I will be sharing with you something that I wrote several years ago. It does not address specifically the needs of today’s new veterans, because it is very personal, and I am not a new veteran. What I hope to do is to put a face on a problem, to reduce the depersonalization.

My life is pretty screwed up. I have PTSD. I have pulmonary hypertension, I have asthma, and I have rheumatoid arthritis. The worst illness by far is the PTSD, and that’s what I want to share with you. I want to take you inside the PTSD. I want to show you how the compensation system works, and how it doesn't work.

Above all, please honor the veterans more than once or twice a year. That requires a little effort beyond simply slapping a metallic ribbon on your bumper and sticking a flag decal on your windshield, but it is worth it.

Try to see a face, not just a number.