Doing "For" Some Veterans Does Something "Not Good" To Them

Stop, Look Around and Think of What We're Doing to Most Veterans
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 26, 2017

This hangs on the wall right behind my computer to remind me of how long this has all been going on. It is faded, old and worn out, much like my patience over the last decade.

It seems as if everyone has pulled their head out of their...whatever-wherever, and discovered that veterans have a problem that they have the only solution for. It is almost as if they just woke up one day and decided they were the Messier of PTSD.

After all, if they had not heard of it before, it must be something totally new. (Gee, safe bet the folks thinking the earth was flat were stunned to find out suddenly it got round when they were sleeping.) Well, PTSD has been called that a lot longer than I've been doing this. 

How did you think I learned it almost 35 years ago? I learned reading clinical books with a huge dictionary because at least one word in every sentence was cringe worthy.

I learned from experts. One of them was this guy. What I want you to notice are the title and the date.

Forgotten Warrior Project: Identity, Ideology and Crisis - The Vietnam Veteran in Transition Paperback – 1977

The date is important because the pamphlet is something the DAV funded based on the work from John Wilson PhD and put together by Jim Goodwin PhD but all that work was pretty much forgotten about, ironically.

There is a commercial I hear on a daily basis while I'm at work, trying to enjoy the music, when I hear a guy talk about how bad it is to be forgotten about right after he lists all the things PTSD used to be called. He says "now it is called" at the same time he talks about OEF and OIF veterans. And that ladies and gentlemen is the basis for my rant being held in control while the vein pops out of my head.

The problem is, most of the charities out there have not just forgotten about the majority of veterans in this country THEY FORGOT THEY WAITED LONGER FOR SOMEONE TO REMEMBER THEY WERE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

S. 1963 later became P.L. 111-163, the Caregivers and
Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 (hereinafter,
``the Caregivers law''), on May 5, 2010. 

At the same hearing, Rick Weidman of Vietnam Veterans of America observed: "Many Vietnam veterans are alive today because their wives, or sisters, or other relatives have been taking care of them for decades. Heretofore there was never any recognition of the fact that these veterans would either have had to enter into long term care or would have been on the street if not for the extraordinary efforts of these family caregivers. Either way the additional cost to American society would have been extremely large, whether in fiscal cost or the societal cost of having many additional veterans among the homeless."

And Weidman was absolutely correct! Right now some in Congress are trying to do the right thing while others are saying the government just can't afford to do it for all families. So far no one has explained why they found the money to do it for the smallest population of those giving care to some of our veterans.

Gee do you think it may be a good time to actually think of what we should do for veterans instead of letting so many get away with doing it to them?