Wounded veterans battle for treatment at home
By BYRON HARRIS / WFAA-TV
Video December 31st, 2008Byron Harris reports. View larger E-mail clip More video Search Video:
For tens of thousands of American families, the holidays this year are not the same as they were five years ago.
They are the families of men and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For many, when the war ended for their military loved ones, it only began again when they came home.
Painfully, families are learning that it’s up to them to support the former warriors, and to wrestle with the system to get the benefits their loved ones deserve.
Jeffrey Taggart of The Colony fought in Iraq.
Now his parents are fighting the war’s aftermath in their home. Sitting at a kitchen counter with a stack of paperwork in front of her, Jeffrey’s mom sums up her frustration.
“It’s totally, totally wrong,” she says. “I think it’s time that someone woke up and realized the way vets are being treated today. And the harassment that they’re being given.”
Jeffrey is a compact man, now who now sports a red goatee since his discharge from the Army two years ago. His wounds are physical and financial: a traumatic brain injury, a stroke, the consuming terror of post traumatic stress disorder, and just trying to get by.
He says society doesn’t have a clue of what wounded veterans are going through. “They worry more about saving the banks and the big three unions,” he says, “than saving soldiers that are suffering."
Jeffrey was a medic during his six years in the Army. He served a year in Iraq, and potentially more stressful as a medic, nearly two years at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany, where the most severely injured servicemen and women from Iraq and Afghanistan are brought for treatment.
In Iraq, Taggart was usually the first on the scene after a mortar strike, firefight, or roadside bomb, trying to keep his comrades alive. Tough duty. But Landstuhl, he says, was worse. “The first time I walked into and ICU room and saw one of my former medics as a double amputee with an open head injury, I went weak in the knees and passed out,” he says. “No words can describe how that feels.”
It was a roadside bomb, northeast of Baghdad, that blew Taggart from the hatch of his armored personnel carrier. When he hit the ground a hundred feet away, he suffered a traumatic brain injury, VA doctors say. That led to a small stroke. The post traumatic stress disorder came from all he saw in the war’s aftermath. Thirty per cent of all people who experience combat suffer from PTSD, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Taggart experiences survivor’s guilt, fear of crowds, depression and withdrawal. In months past, he’s had bouts of alcohol abuse. At age 29, the paralytic mental state has forced him to move into his parents’ home. He’s been able to hold one job—for three months—since his discharge.
He’s not pleased to have to live with his parents, but with his disability check from the Veterans Administration amounting to just $500 a month, he has little choice. He takes 16 prescription drugs just to function. But in 36 months, the VA will cease supplying them, unless he can convince the VA to increase his disability rating. Although the agency agrees that he has PTSD, it says he must prove that his traumatic head injury and stroke were caused by combat.
All this makes even sleep a chore for Taggart. “I have an honest fear of dreams,” he says.
“It’s been a living hell,” says his dad Jeff. “There have been some mornings that we’ve been afraid to open his bedroom door for fear that he’d hurt himself.”
Mary Taggart, Jeffrey’s mother, helps manage his paperwork. She was just notified by the VA that more paperwork is needed for the case, even though he’s applied four times. “If I’m reading this crap coming in the mail,” she says, "then I know there are many, many others. And it’s just time that somebody spoke up.”
A report by the Government Accountability Office this year says there are 392,000 pending appeals. The average takes 657 days, according to the GAO. Jeffrey Taggart’s has taken more than two years.
The Taggarts don’t expect their war to end soon.
E-mail bharris@wfaa.com.
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The average is 657 days mine will be over 6 years old when I go for my BVA hearing on Feb 4, 2009 I filed my claim in November 2002.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Wounded veterans battle for treatment at home
