Should the VA Compensate over quality of life? Yes!

VA not ready to back disabled pay
Tuesday, Aug 4 2009, 6:23 pm
By Tom Philpott: Military update
Monthly compensation the Department of Veterans Affairs pays to veterans with service-connected disabilities is intended to replace average earnings loss due to injuries or ailments.

But should VA also pay disabled veterans something extra for diminished quality of life?

Two prominent commissions in 2007 said it should. Last week, however, a senior VA official told senators the department isn’t prepared yet to endorse a qualify-of-life payment, or to make any other significant change to disability compensation.

“There’s more information that’s needed, and … more discussion that needs to take place with many experts, before we are prepared to say yes or no on any of those recommendations,” said Patrick W. Dunne, under secretary for benefits in VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, ranking Republican on the veterans’ affairs committee, raised the issue in a hearing on a different topic: What VA is doing to speed the processing of a rising number of disability claims.

Burr noted that VA just last year commissioned a study, by Economic Systems Inc., of Falls Church, Va., on appropriate levels of disability pay to compensate for loss of earning capacity and quality of life as a result of service-related disabilities.
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VA not ready to back disabled pay

Should the VA Compensate over quality of life? Yes! Aside from lost income, there is much that is not talked about at all. When it's PTSD, every part of life changes.

I do what I do because I live with this everyday. I do this because I know as hard as it has been for my husband and my family, it's harder for others because they do not understand what they need to know. The "quality" of our lives ended a long time ago when everything we expect out of being married ended according to what the rest of society views as a "successful marriage."

Next month were celebrating our 25th anniversary. PTSD changed what I thought our lives would be but it didn't destroy us. We found what worked for us but what works does not replace what was lost.

We lost a lot of income when my husband could no longer work. We lost friends when the couldn't understand what he was going through. We lost a lot of good years. What we lost as a family cannot be replaced because we lost parts of my husband.

PTSD causes short term memory loss, so the spouse has to make sure they remember things for the both of them. From bills to pay to medication to take, appointments to keep and the frustration of having to repeat things over and over and over again because they cannot remember or remember they just said the same thing ten minutes before.

PTSD causes mood swings and angry outbursts the spouse has to keep controlled 24/7.

PTSD causes paranoia and overblown reactions that drive family members into their own mental health issues. Children often pay the price when they grow up with this in the home even when they do understand what it is. Turmoil is a constant condition. Bad days, especially around an anniversary date connected to combat leaves the veteran in a deeper state of depression and anger. Like Dr. Jeckle Mr Hyde they transform from being within their character into a stranger.

The list of what they go through with nightmares draining them, flashbacks taking them away, medications with side affects and quality of life with everything else involving their whole family is a price paid that does not end. It's not impossible to live with it, adapt to it so we can cope, but the emotional toll is hard.

I've walked away from conversations when others complain about simple problems in their own lives because I know they could not understand mine. I've spent years trying to calm things down while my husband was bouncing off the walls out of control and most of the time, I had to do this while I was at work torn between my family needing me and my job. So many days of being totally upset about what was going on at home while trying to focus on work left me driving home at the end of the day dreading it.

Yes, I worked in the "normal world" for a paycheck while I was volunteering helping veterans and their families going through the same things we were. I had bills to pay just like everyone else and still do. The stress of working full time, plus PTSD at home, did so much damage to me physically that my hair was falling out, I was losing too much weight too fast and I lost too much sleep. Granted some of the stress I had was part of helping other families and veterans but that part of my life was also healing to me. I knew something had to change.

We moved from Massachusetts to Florida where I thought I could work part-time and do this full time, plus be home for my husband and daughter. This helped to calm him down and lessen his stress, plus mine. I had a great part time job working for a church as Administrator of Christian Education, which was a wonderful job, ten minutes away from our house in case of emergencies at home, which happened often. I lost my job because the economy cut out the job. Yes, more stress but PTSD got so bad all over the country, I do this 70 hours a week leaving very little time to work for a paycheck again.

When I have to travel, my cell phone is a lifeline to my husband. The added stress on him has me limiting how much travel I do and how long I'm gone. If I'm gone more than a couple of days, he is in a constant state of worry and increase in his stress level.

There is so much that comes with PTSD that hits every part of the veteran's life. Emotional disconnect, intimacy, regret, bad memories of times when PTSD was out of control, so many things to deal with, live with and try to overcome, that no one seems to come close to understanding unless they are living with it too. When it's PTSD, the whole family pays for it.