Homeless Army Veteran and Wife Have New Home

U.S. Army veteran and wife look to keep homelessness behind them

KTBS News

Sierra Pizarro

October 24, 2017

Rhonda and her husband work at Overton Brooks VA Medical Center.

The two bedroom one bathroom home sits on the 600 block of Yarbrough Street in Bossier City, La.

(Bossier City, La.) -- From homeless to homeowners: a U.S. Army veteran and his wife are handed the keys to their first home - a freshly built, bright blue house.

It is the Fuller Center's 57th home, dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Sterling Combs, in honor of Melissa Rose Maggio and Molly Reed - two young women, both killed in car accidents.

To give back, Mrs. Combs tells KTBS-3 News the first thing she wants to do after moving in is create a garden in Molly's name.

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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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Vietnam Veterans Shut Out of Support Group in Miami

This story has my blood pressure to the boiling point! The VA says they're moving to evidence based therapy. "Evidence based" in this case doesn't seem to include the fact this support is working for Vietnam veterans. WTF! Does it no longer matter that this is exactly what these veterans need to survive?

I've spent over 30 years with these veterans and the evidence came in a long time ago peer support from other veterans is vital to not just surviving but healing. They need the support to keep going but yet time after time Vietnam veterans are being shut out of the very thing that helps them the most.

When you read stories about veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and their struggles with PTSD, it is easier to think this is all new but even as they received support and help faster than Vietnam veterans did, their problems are not different. Vietnam veterans we for decades without any help at all yet they are responsible for all the help that is available to the newer veterans.

What they lacked was the massive news coverage of what they were dealing with coming home. They didn't have reporters talking to them. They didn't have the internet, Facebook or the resources to discover what was happening all over the country. These veterans eventually found others to give and receive support the rest of the population would not even consider.

There are thousands of charities and support groups for the younger veterans because they are getting the attention and people want to help. So what about the older veterans still waiting for what they fought for? What about the older veterans shut out of the benefits they spent decades fighting for while the rest of the country ignored them?

They were forced into suffering in silence for decades. Taking away from these veterans is not just wrong, it is repulsive!

Vets decry counseling changes
Miami Herald
BY DALTON NARINE
SPECIAL TO THE MIAMI HERALD
11/08/2014

“Group solves problems of the day,” he says, “keeping the illness and suicidal thoughts at bay. Without it we don’t have that lifeline.”

Group therapy, a salve for the mentally wounded, is in trouble at the Miami VA. And Vietnam veterans like me are losing it.

True, as the saying goes, we don’t know what we've got until it’s gone. The VA has touted the psychotherapy unit to which I belong as the most successful at the downtown hospital. Yet, it’s being taken away.

The popular treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will no longer be available to those of us who served in Southeast Asia and still grapple with anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, isolation, numbness, depression and, worse-case scenario, suicidal thoughts.

Forty years after the war, according to a Department of Veteran Affairs-funded study released in August, 11 percent of Vietnam veterans exposed to combat — more than 283,000 — continue to have symptoms of PTSD.

When the psychotherapy unit disbands within the next year, members will have the option to invest in a new program. We could find ourselves staring at our reflection through a different mirror of horror. The VA has paraded a 12-session alternative treatment, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), that claims an easier route to coping with traumatic events so we could get back to living a consummate lifestyle. Back to our pre-warrior innocence?

With tension heavy enough on the brain, our group isn’t buying such intensive, in-your-face therapeutics. We believe in our capacity to sort out bedeviling issues through comradeship that had served us well in the war.

Yet, though I share a protective stance with my brothers, I’m the only one in the group to sign up for CPT, having tired of medication for this and that, even riveting ghostly nightmares and flashbacks that occasionally send up a wail through the fumes of the jungle in War Zone C.
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Fayetteville VA Hospital Closed Emergency Room Over No Doctors?

PROTESTERS DEMAND VETERANS AFFAIRS EMERGENCY ROOM REOPEN IN FAYETTEVILLE
ABC 11 News
By Andrea Blanford
Thursday, October 30, 2014

FAYETTEVILLE (WTVD) -- A few dozen protesters, made up of Veterans Affairs workers and union members representing employees of the Fayetteville VA Medical Center, carried signs and chanted at the VA's entrance on Ramsey St. Thursday afternoon. They demanded the VA's emergency room reopen after administrators closed its doors in September.

But VA officials said the ER was closed for good reasons.

"I would hope that, much like me, their first concern would be the safety of our veteran patients," said Jeff Melvin, Fayetteville VA Medical Center Spokesperson.

The VA told veterans and employees in September, the closure was due to contractors failing to provide enough qualified ER doctors to properly staff Fayetteville's Emergency Dept. A 12-hour urgent care clinic was opened in its place, but many veterans say it's not enough.
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New VA mental health center puts veterans and families under one roof

New VA mental health center puts veterans and families under one roof
By Megan McCloskey
Stars and Stripes
Published: April 14, 2013

BAY SHORE, NY — At a new VA mental health facility here, veterans go to the right, their families to the left — and their doctors meet in the middle.

The Unified Behavioral Health Center for Military Veterans and Their Families is a first-of-its-kind partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs and private health care that will treat veterans and their families holistically under one roof.

One side of the small center houses VA psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and counselors, and the other side has counterparts from North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System, which provides care to veteran families at no cost.

The heart of the novel concept, the clinicians say, is their shared conference room.

With the patient’s consent, the clinicians from both divisions will “come together as a team and talk about the issues,” allowing them to coordinate treatment plans based on what’s happening with the entire family, said Charlene Thomesen, director of the VA side of the center.

“For example, we can better treat the wife because we’re informed of what’s happening to veteran,”said Mayer Bellehsen, a psychologist and Thomesen’s counterpart on the family side of the center.

At the center’s grand opening in December, Robert Petzel, the VA’s under secretary for health, spoke about how the VA wasn’t here “just to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression, or substance abuse. We’re here to treat complex human beings.

“And bringing the families into the treatment equation is something we should have started doing years ago. It’s long overdue.”
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All I can say is it's about time!

PTSD Veterans finding healing with strings

LOMA LINDA: Guitars provide path to health
Guitar lessons at the VA center can help veterans cope with the emotional scars of their service
Press-Enterprise
BY MARK MUCKENFUSS
STAFF WRITER
Published: 04 November 2012

Terry Moorer said playing the guitar is the only therapy that has made her feel better. Jeff Allen said his memory has improved.

And for Ben Juarez, the faces that haunt him disappear only when he is focused on the guitar, making music.

All three veterans are students in Guitars for Vets at the VA Medical Center in Loma Linda. The program, started a year ago, provides guitars and music instruction for veterans who have been referred by the center’s behavioral health department. Students get 10 individual half-hour lessons over 10 weeks. If they complete the course, they receive a guitar of their own and can participate in group sessions with other graduates.

Music therapy, started in the early 20th century, is used widely in mental health settings.
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For many war veterans, blindness becomes a bitter legacy

Sgt. David Kinney uses a device to read recently at home near DeLand. He may have lost sight in a delayed reaction to blasts in Afghanistan. (Julie Fletcher, Orlando
Sentinel / April 18, 2008)

For many war veterans, blindness becomes a bitter legacy

Darryl E. Owens Sentinel Staff Writer
May 4, 2008
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Sgt. David Kinney realized he had a problem when he struggled to read the e-mails his wife sent him in Afghanistan.

He suffered headaches and his vision grew steadily worse. Before long, the military shipped him home to DeLand. Now he's considered legally blind.

"I didn't get blown up or knocked out, or have a big piece of my head missing like some of these guys," said Kinney, who served in Orlando's 2nd Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment of the Florida National Guard. "You didn't see it coming."

Kinney, 46, is among an increasing number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans losing their eyesight not because of bullet or bomb wounds but in what doctors suspect is a delayed reaction to the constant pounding of nearby explosives.

His eyes aren't the problem. His brain is.

Studies conducted by the military have estimated that up to 20 percent of the 1.7 million troops who have served and returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mild traumatic brain injury, most often as a result of roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.Bill Wilson, a blindness-rehabilitation specialist at the Orlando VA Medical Center, sees a coming wave of woe."We won't know for months," he said.

"We can see the individuals and they may be perfectly fine, and then down the line they have problems."
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Homeless Veterans and VA Prejudice

122. Homeless Veterans and VA Prejudice




The other day I was hanging around the Seattle, Washington VA Hospital with a few homeless veterans. I was listening around the eligibility check in desk for information. As the homeless veterans were getting checked in, I was listening to the “in-processor” who hands out the books, and folders to including the benefits of what one MIGHT be entitled to etc. and so forth.

As I was watching the homeless veterans looking down with a hangdog expression waiting for their VA identification cards giving their addresses as “none”, and explaining that their incomes from their work, were minimal at best as most did have some form of work, I heard the following… You are eligible for medical only. You are not eligible for dental, or eye glasses unless it is a service rated disability.

One fellow piped in and said he did not need glasses until he was in the service. She said he had to prove it of course. Of course proving things to the VA is nearly impossible in the first place, without two examinations and a rectal check. For some reason, the armed forces and the VA cannot coordinate the transference of the medical records in this modern era as of yet.

As a further example, I have written the National Personnel Records Center, sent in the prescribed forms, followed up with letters to a Senator and a Congressman, for my medical records. This has taken four years and I have yet to receive them or the NPRC to find them or the VA to receive them.

On the other hand, I am wondering if the VA is counting these homeless veterans that showed up on their door step that day at their hospital. If so, why were they not automatically referred to the Homeless Veteran’s Coordinator that is supposed to be assigned to every veteran’s administration hospital? The VA has highly touted these “highly dedicated and trained individuals”. It was not a Federal Holiday again. Undoubtedly, there is a serious lack of training system wide at the VA. What else is new at the VA?
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51 homeless veterans housed at Ignatia House about to be homeless again

Formerly Homeless DC Veterans About to Lose Housing



District Homeless Veteran Program Needs Emergency Assistance



WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Fifty-one formerly
homeless veterans who live at Ignatia House on the grounds of the Armed
Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) in Northwest Washington must find new homes
by the end of next month to make way for a $2 billion redevelopment effort
on the grounds of the current housing site. The men and women of Ignatia
House, some of whom have been living at the House for years while seeking
employment and permanent housing, receive important health care services
from the VA Medical Center which is located across the street.



"Ignatia House helps make the lives of many veterans better," said
Stephanie Buckley, Regional Director of the United States Veterans
Initiative, the national organization that developed the supportive housing
program. "Our house is a community of individuals making progress one day
at a time. We hope there is a way to keep this important program going.
After all, there is such a need in the Washington area for the services we
provide."

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