Headline on veteran's care did not match story

Great headline. It got my blood pressure up just reading the headline and that is the biggest problem of all. When there are so many reports of veterans in crisis turning to the VA and being turned away, hospital staff at the VA did the right thing when a veteran talked about ending his pain "even if forced to find some way to end it myself." He was under observation for a few hours and then released. The title of this article is intended to add to the real problems the VA needs to explain but the truth on this one is they did their jobs.

Veteran gets locked up instead of lifesaving care
First Coast News
Anne Schindler
July 21, 2014

"I drew a line in the sand," says the 67-year-old, absentmindedly rubbing his useless leg. "I said, 'If I go home and I can't take the pain, I might have to be forced to find some way to end it myself.'"

KEYSTONE HEIGHTS, Fla. – James Ponder knows about pain. He was just 21 when his knee was blown off by a 51-caliber machine gun round that shattered his right femur and left a gaping hole that he compares to a bite from a "big ol' shark."

A swiftboat gunner patrolling the southernmost tip of the Mekong Delta in November 1968, Ponder had been in country just four months when he went from being Vietnam conscript to medically discharged Vietnam Vet.

But Ponder – who has since suffered ailments including a ruptured colon, heart attack and abdominal hernia -- is philosophical about pain. "Pain is pain," says the 67-year-old Keystone Heights resident. "I feel I come out a better person for having experienced things in life that have brought me pain."

That said, Ponder describes a recent eight-week abdominal illness as a period of indescribable agony. "It was a pain I've never felt before," Ponder says. "It was very excruciating -- an extreme type of pain. There was just no way to escape it."

Three times Ponder went to the emergency room of the closest Veterans Administration hospital – twice in Gainesville and once in Live Oak. All three times, doctors misdiagnosed his pain as hernia-related.

Ponder was sure they were mistaken. "I genuinely felt like I was dying from within." He was so certain, he told his wife, Rebecca, to seek an independent autopsy in the event he died – simply to determine his true cause of death.

Doctors were reluctant to prescribe pain medicine, believing it would cause constipation and only aggravate his symptoms. Instead, they offered him a temporary painkiller – a shot of morphine – and sent him home to rest. Twice, he went home to "climb the walls" in pain. The third time, he refused to leave.
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