VA Nurse Gave Disabled Vietnam Veteran Shoes Off Own Feet

Nurse at Salisbury VA hospital gives veteran the shoes off his feet
News and Observer
BY MARTHA QUILLIN
January 27, 2015

Most of his family had given up on him, he told Maulden, but his nephew still cared enough to bring him to the hospital that night for treatment.

Homelessness remains a major issue for veterans, and the Salisbury VA hospital serves its share – 4,227 last year, said Jennifer Herb, director of health care for homeless veterans at the Salisbury VA. Often, Herb said, those veterans have multiple issues, including medical problems, mental health conditions and substance addictions.

One quality that makes Chuck Maulden a caring emergency department nurse is his ability to put himself in someone else’s shoes.

Recently, he’s been lauded for putting someone else in his.

Maulden, 33, had been working in the emergency department at the Salisbury Veterans Affairs Medical Center for a just a couple of months when a patient came in near the end of his shift one night in November.

The man appeared to be in his mid-60s, Maulden said, and he was there because his feet were causing him such pain he could hardly walk.

“He kept talking about being in bad water in Vietnam,” Maulden said, though Maulden doesn’t know if the man served there during the war. Many soldiers who did suffered from trench foot, caused by long exposure to cold, damp conditions.

The man took off his tattered tennis shoes, and Maulden could see the soles were worn through and coming unglued. The balls of his feet were covered in huge blisters, and his compression stockings had matted to the skin where the blisters had drained. A doctor instructed Maulden to bandage his feet and give him fresh stockings.
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