help is a phone call away? not so much

Is help for veterans a phone call away? Ask Jonathan Schulze. Oh, I guess you can’t.

He committed suicide in New Prague, Minnesota on January 16th this year. He was a veteran of the Iraq War. He had called two separate VA facilities for mental health help just days before he killed himself. According to his mother, he told officials that he was suicidal.

There was a waiting list for care. Gee, I bet there wasn’t a waiting list when he enlisted. But when the service is done with you, good luck getting help with medical or mental problems.

The system is underfunded and the staff is overwhelmed. Unfortunately so are the patients. So people die. Some dramatically, like Jonathan Schulze. Some less dramatically, of medical neglect. You know, the patients who can’t get appointments, the patients who get out dated treatments, or can’t get diagnosed at all.

It’s a nightmare, trying to get help in the VA system. And to those folks who say, well, just get treatment in the community, I say: with whose money? Medical care is expensive, and for former soldiers who are out of work, unable to work, there is no insurance. The VA becomes the only medical provider available. Except they aren’t.

I know whereof I speak. I am a veteran. I have been struggling with long commutes to the nearest VA hospital, which is an hour and a half away from where I live. After years of appointments with specialists, the docs finally admit that I am sick, but still have not given me a diagnosis. Or rather, I have a diagnosis, but it changes regularly. Some sort of autoimmune disease. Oh, and I need a heart catheterization because I have, or probably have, pulmonary hypertension, and some day they will schedule that.

After the test they may treat the life-threatening condition. Maybe. In the meantime, I have more fatigue, more pain, am less able to function, and am living on $900 and some dollars a month disability pay. A lot of days I don’t care about the test. I don’t care about the outdated and ineffective treatments, I just want the pain to end. Physical and mental. I have PTSD too, so I know about the nightmares, the cynicism, the disillusionment.

Oh, but there is going to be a team of federal investigators at the Minnesota VA facilities. Too little, too late, and will anyone care?