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.
read more here

Veterans Long to Reclaim the Name ‘Swift Boat’

John Kerry, hands on hips, and Roy F. Hoffmann, kneeling, in Vietnam. Mr. Hoffman helped start the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which criticized Mr. Kerry in his 2004 presidential bid.

Veterans Long to Reclaim the Name ‘Swift Boat’

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: June 30, 2008
Years ago, when William Miller talked about being in the Vietnam War — if he talked about being in the Vietnam War — he would tell people he served on a Swift boat.

At least now they have heard of it. But not in the way he would like.

“I was proud of what I did, and all the guys I was with,” Mr. Miller said. “Now somebody says ‘Swift boat’ and it’s a whole different meaning. They don’t associate it with the guys we lost. That’s a shame.”

“Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated.

Swift boat veterans — especially those who had nothing to do with the group that attacked Senator John Kerry’s military record in the 2004 election — want their good name back, and the good names of the men not lucky enough to come home alive.

“You would not hear the word ‘Swift boat’ and think of people that served their country and fought in Vietnam,” said Jim Newell, who spent a year as an officer in charge on one of the small Navy vessels in An Thoi and Qui Nhon. “You think about someone who was involved in a political attack on a member of a different party. It just comes across as negative. Everyone who is associated with a Swift boat is involved in political chicanery.”
click post title for more
linked from RawStory