Disabled veterans get legal help

27 years of saying been there done that and I'm still not there yet. I am determined more than ever to make sure the claims on file with the VA reach the level where they finally understand what a tsunami looks like!

The American people let out a shriek when they heard about the Rand Study declaring 300,000 with PTSD. They thought this would be catastrophic especially considering the VA had not been able to take care of the relatively few seeking treatment and compensation for PTSD. "You ain't seen nothin yet!"

We've already seen what an uninvolved populace coupled with an unresponsive government did when Vietnam veterans came home. We've seen the results in them, their spouses but more in the generation that came after them. We saw the incarcerations. We saw the drug overdoses. We saw the divorces, the homelessness and all that came with what Vietnam veterans brought home with them but we also saw funerals because casualties of PTSD had to end their suffering their own way with suicide. We watched them die as we made mistakes. We watched them suffer as we studied them. We asked all the wrong questions and heard what we wanted to hear. Been there and done that too many years ago.

By the time the first set of boots came back from Afghanistan, we knew what needed to be done but did not do it. Some of us were screaming before they were even sent but no one would listen. They are still not listening as hope slips away and so do their lives.

There are about a hundred other things I could be doing instead of this. I can tell you they would be a lot more fun and far more financially rewarding. The issue I have is that I know what hope looks like. I know what miracles look like. I know what is possible when they have the help they need and their families find the support they need. I know what it's like to hear a veteran, long estranged from family and friends finding that connection again as they restore relationships and bad feelings are laid to rest. To hear the sound of happy tears rejoicing because they found out how much they are loved by God and He had not abandoned them. What it's like for a father to once again hold his child and the look of love beams from his eyes.

While I've seen the devastation and heartbreak, I've also seen how the human spirit of these men and women can come out on the other side, changed but more alive than they were before. This is what I want to flood the VA with. This is the tsunami they have been trying to hold off with a beach shovel. I'm not greedy. I want to share and spread the love. I want every family to have what I ended up having. I want every veteran with PTSD to end up wanting to be alive instead of wanting to die. We've all heard the expression of the "I got mine screw you club" when people feel as if only they are entitled to be happy but since I have mine, I want everyone else to have their's. If I didn't feel this way, I never would have become a Chaplain because there would have been no reason to be doing any of what I do.

Now please read the following and know that along with the hundreds of others stories on this blog, there are armies gearing up to take on this fight and will not give up until we finally get this all right!

Disabled veterans get legal help
Sunday, March 22, 2009
BY CHRIS STURGIS
Special to the Times
Three lawyers, two of whom are disabled, are joining forces to help veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars get what is due them from the Veterans Administration.

To that end, Lawyers C. Patterson McKenna, Melissa A. Gertz and Lisa A. Turowski last week held an open house at the Community Justice


"There is a backlog of 750,000 cases before the VA of people seeking disability benefits, primarily for post traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury," said McKenna, who has been blind since age 5.

And the problem is likely to grow, McKenna said.

Gertz said post-traumatic stress disorder cases are complicated by the fact that seeking treatment carries a stigma in the military.

"Patients don't want to seek treatment for fear of the stigma in case they want to re-enlist," she said.

Often they apply after several years have passed and they have had trouble functioning in civilian life, she said.

More veterans are surviving traumatic brain injuries than ever before because of life-saving advances in medicine, she said. However, they need assistance in living with the resulting disabilities, she said.
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