Veterans Day: part one of a series

Note: this was originally written on June 9, 2002. I recently decided to revise it somewhat for this blog. Revisions, additions, comments, and updates are indicated by italics.

I recommend that anyone who has PTSD or who has been sexually assaulted be careful, or even to consider avoid reading this. Some of the content is graphic. Feel free to skip those parts to avoid triggering any symptoms of your own! And as always, your comments are welcome.

VETERANS, PTSD, AND THE VA TREATMENT AND COMPENSATION SYSTEM

PART ONE

by bram

About the author: I am a 46-year-old female veteran.

I am 50 years old now.

I joined the U.S. Army in 1974. That same year, while undergoing AIT training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, I was sexually assaulted by a male soldier. I developed hemorrhagic cystitis and was hospitalized for for 40 days with bacterial meningitis.

What is rape? Many people think of rape as “bad sex.” Consider the concept of bad driving. Bad driving can be looking at your radio, then realizing you are on the berm of the road, and correcting the wheels back onto the road. Or it can be a front-end collision with mangled bodies, broken glass, and twisted metal.

Both are instances of bad driving. One may have been preventable. Both may have been preventable. Who knows? But I guarantee you will have a much harder time recovering from the front-end collision (if you recover at all) than from driving off of the road.

My rape was a front-end collision. It wasn’t just non-consensual sex. It wasn’t just bad sex. It was a sexual attack that led to me bleeding so severe (not part of my period), that I was pissing and leaking blood. I had to wear a maxi pad constantly for days afterwards. The attack was so severe that most of the specific fragments of it didn’t resurface in my mind, and then in a jumbled mass, until I gave birth to children many years later.. The pain of childbirth, the bleeding and ripping of flesh, caused the fragmented memories of the rape to resurface from the jail cells my mind had placed them in. I was confused and frightened.

For years the assault was “bad sex” to me. That way I had some control. And control was what I most desperately wanted. Because without personal control, anything can happen to anybody at any time, and that notion was unbearable to me.

While I was in the hospital, after the rape, I was diagnosed by an Army psychiatrist with "transient situational personality disorder."

I wasn't told what my diagnosis was.

This is a fictitious diagnosis, one not listed in the DSM, that seems to mirror what is today known as acute stress disorder. Untreated, that disorder progressed to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

I was given a discharge from service but I was denied all benefits. I later asked for the record to be corrected, and ultimately received a 10% disability rating for residuals of meningitis.

I received a college education from a well-respected liberal arts college. I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration, and then got my MBA. My GPA in graduate school was 4.0.

Despite my academic success, I have been unable to achieve adequate career, financial, or social adjustment. My life has been a series of failures. No one could ever be more disappointed by my life than I am.

In 1997, I needed medical treatment following the birth of my second son. I received treatment at the Brecksville VA hospital. Through that interventio,n I discovered that I have a mental disorder called PTSD, which I now consider to be a chronic, progressive, systemic disease. I am also diagnosed with migraines, and fibromyalgia, a muscle pain disease activated and aggravated by chronic lack of sleep.

Actually, that diagnosis was wrong, and four years later, after having a continuously high rheumatoid factor and being told I only needed more counseling, I was correctly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and given some medication for it!

An echocardiogram performed by the VA indicated that I also have pulmonary hypertension, which they have chosen not to treat. I believe that my deteriorating health is directly related to wear and tear of my PTSD symptoms on my body.

There is research linking PTSD (which changes neural pathways) with many health problems, primarily cardiac and auto-immune disorders.

I currently have an appeal to service-connect my PTSD before the Board of Veterans Appeals.

My claim was decided in my favor by the BVA in the fall of 2002, at a percentage just low enough to not warrant 100% compensation.

In the VA system, a disability is rated between 0 and 100%, in 10% increments. A claim to increase the percentage is pending.

I lost my BVA claim to increase my percentage, and my claim is now at the U.S. Court of Appeals.

I am sharing my story out of caring and wanting the world to be a better place. I hope that increased understanding can improve the treatment and lives of all of our veterans who suffer with this disorder. It is a very painful disease.

Click here to read part two.