Air Force Veteran Alone in ICU Needs Help Getting to VA Hospital

Young Air Force veteran alone in ICU at VA hospital in San Antonio
KENS 5 News
Priya Sridhar
June 01, 2017

SAN ANTONIO - A 22 year old Air Force veteran is fighting for his life in the ICU at the Audie Murphy Memorial Veterans Affairs Hospital in San Antonio.

Jacob Mitchell is in critical condition after his lung collapsed last week. He was three hours away in Del Rio when it happened. He says that he doesn't have health insurance so his only option was to make the three hour drive to San Antonio to get to the closest VA hospital.

"I told them I had chest pain and they immediately got me back to the ER and started running tests," he said.

Mitchell's girlfriend, who is from Del Rio, came with him to San Antonio but she had to leave on Memorial Day to go back to work. Now Mitchell is alone and scared.

"I'm a little nervous about it just because anything could happen," he said.
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This may help

Enhanced Eligibility For Health Care Benefits

Veterans who served in a theater of combat operations after November 11, 1998 are eligible for an extended period of eligibility for health care for 5 years post discharge.

Under the "Combat Veteran" authority, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides health care services and community living care for any condition possibly related to the Veterans’s service in the theater of operations and enrollment in Priority Group 6, unless eligible for enrollment in a higher priority group to:

Combat Veterans who were discharged or released from active service on or after January 28, 2003, are eligible to enroll in the VA health care system for 5 years from the date of discharge or release.

The 5-year enrollment period begins on the discharge or separation date of the service member from active duty military service, or in the case of multiple call-ups, the most recent discharge date.

Combat Veterans, while not required to disclose their income information, may do so to determine their eligibility for a higher priority status, beneficiary travel benefits, and exemption of copays for care unrelated to their military service.

Benefits and Services to Enjoy

• Eligible combat Veterans will have free medical care and medications for any condition that may be related to their service in theater.
• Immediate benefits of health care coverage.
• No enrollment fee, monthly premiums or deductibles.
• Low or no out-of-pocket costs.  During the five-year post discharge timeframe, there may be small medical care or prescription drug copayments for medical care for any condition not related to combat theater.   See our Copayment page for more information. (Copayment page)
• Once enrolled, the Veteran will remain enrolled.
• Enrollment with VA satisfies the health care law’s requirement to have health care coverage. 
• Medical care rated among the best in the United States.
• More than 1,700 places available to get health care.
• Choice Card Program eligibility.Click here for more information
• VA health care can be used along with Medicare and any other health insurance coverage.

How Many Lives Were Saved By Stunts?

How is making veterans aware they are killing themselves preventing them from doing it? 
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 1, 2017

If you have been doing anything to support "suicide awareness" understand the reasons why most people think you are oblivious.

These stunts, walks, talks, interviews with reporters without a clue, have done nothing for the veterans.

It is time they actually mattered enough for you to realize that this should have mattered enough for the "raisers" to have actually read the reports they base their slogans on.

Here is the link to the VA report from 2012 with the "22" that came from limited data of veterans committing suicide from just 21 states. Look for the part where it says the majority of the veterans are over the age of 50.

Here is the link to the VA report from 2016 and yet again, notice the numbers.

Then add in the fact that all this "prevention" and "awareness" has produced worse results. Same number as 1999 but there were over 5 million more veterans living in the country back then.

22 Pushups is a stunt. What is worse is that as more and more veterans, along with First Responders and current military members, take their own lives, this stunt has gotten more attention than the truth.

The TXDPS Recruit School accepts the "Kill 22" Pushup Challenge as part of an ongoing North American effort to raise awareness of Veteran suicides.

22 Pushup Challenge? Not in uniform or on duty, says Air Force

A nonprofit group called 22Kill has adopted the challenge, and the related hashtags #22pushups and #22kill, to help raise awareness of veteran suicide and raise money to sponsor veterans in programs that help them manage wounds such as depression, brain injuries and post-traumatic stress. The number refers to a commonly cited statistical estimate of how many veterans kill themselves each day, although a recent Department of Veterans Affairs study stated that the actual number is closer to 20 a day.

How is making veterans aware they are killing themselves preventing them from doing it? 

The Lifelock commercial with someone saying that they are not there to do the job but to just alert people about a problem, pretty much sums it up.

While it may feel good to think you are doing something, it should make you sick to your stomach to discover you have done nothing to help veterans find a reason to stay alive. And that is after they survived combat but they can't survive ignorance.

Homeless Veterans Growing in LA

LA County sees ‘staggering’ rise in homeless count

"Even the homeless veteran population jumped in 2017, marking a backsliding of the gains made last year by city, state and federal programs that slashed the number of homeless veterans by a third. With the number of veterans placed into housing slightly down, the count of 4,825 homeless veterans was up 57 percent."

Click the link to read more of this and then ask yourself if it ok to go back on the promise to get homeless veterans off the streets. 

Air Force Contaminated Portsmouth But Won't Fund Study?

Air Force Won't Fund Former Pease Air Force Base Health Study
Portsmouth Herald, N.H.
by Jeff Mcmenemy
31 May 2017

Air Force and health officials believe the well was contaminated by the use of firefighting foam at the base.

PORTSMOUTH -- The director of a federal agency studying the PFC exposure at the former Pease Air Force Base believes there should be a national health study done on the chemical's health effects.

Unfortunately for the children and adults who were exposed to the chemicals in contaminated Portsmouth drinking water, the agency doesn't have the money to pay for the study and the Air Force -- which contaminated the well -- says it can't.

Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Constantino told the crowd gathered at Tuesday night's meeting of the Pease Community Assistance Panel that they had received a request from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to pay for the health studies.

But the Air Force's legal team told them "we can't fund that study," Constantino told the crowd at the CAP meeting, which was hosted by the ATSDR.

Portsmouth resident and CAP member Andrea Amico said she was "terribly disappointed" by the Air Force's decision.
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People Caught Doing Good For Homeless Veteran

Eugene police officer, local business owners honored for helping homeless, ailing veteran
The Register-Guard
By Chelsea Gorrow
MAY 31, 2017

“I’m just thankful; very, very thankful that God sent someone like Shawn to me and put him in my life as my friend,” Grotzky said Tuesday. “I’m thankful for people like Tom and (Eugene) Catholic Worker, and all of Eugene police. … I am so thankful for Shawn and for all of the other officers he’s brought to me, introduced me to. They’ve changed my whole life and my outlook on city cops 100,000 percent.”

Officer Shawn Trotter, second from right, and Dr. Daran deCalesta of Rainbow Optics, second from left, were honored at the Eugene Police Department's annual awards by Chief Pete Kerns, left, for helping homeless veteran Dean Grotzky get back on his feet after a mugging last August. (Submitted photo)

When a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps found himself homeless and the victim of a pickpocket late last August, a local restaurant owner, an optometrist and a Eugene police officer came together to help.

The veteran, Dean Grotzky, 53, had been living on the streets of Eugene since March 2016 after losing his job as a commercial truck driver.

Grotzky said he suffers from fibromyalgia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis and post-­traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD stems both from childhood and six years in the Marines in the 1980s, he said.

When he couldn’t pass a Department of Transportation physical last year, he said, he lost his job.

Grotzky then lost his housing.

His first night on the streets last March, he recalled, was cold. “I was in pain. I didn’t have any of my meds, so I was in a lot of pain. I was a big grown man hiding in the corner crying in pain. It was a living hell.”

But he wasn’t scared, Grotzky added.

“I’ve never been scared. I don’t get scared of anything. Life’s too short to be scared.”
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