Army probe finds failures in care at Fort Knox unit
FORT KNOX, KY. -- When Sgt. Gerald Cassidy died alone from a prescription drug overdose at the Army's Warrior Transition Unit here, at a facility set up expressly to help wounded soldiers, he had more than 600 prescription pills in his room.
LEFT BEHIND: Melissa Cassidy (left) and her mother-in-law, Kay McMullen, want changes in how wounded soldiers are cared for so Sgt. Gerald Cassidy's death while in the Army's care will not be in vain. Abbey, 5, and Isaac, 3, also survive their father, who was 31. - Matt Detrich / The Star
His body was found Sept. 21 in a chair in his room, after he had missed required morning and afternoon check-in for three days.
A sergeant was supposed to have taken attendance and tracked down anyone not present. Instead, the sergeant ignored Cassidy's absence the first afternoon, missed the next daily check-in with car trouble and the following day marked Cassidy present even though he wasn't.
Cassidy was found dead more than eight hours after his wife, Melissa, began calling Fort Knox in an escalating panic on Sept. 21.
Finally, after she called at 6 p.m. and told a sergeant that she was getting ready to drive down from Westfield to look for her husband herself, the sergeant checked Cassidy's room.
Two hours later, Melissa was told over the telephone that her husband had been found dead in his small room. Four hours after that, about midnight, an Army chaplain arrived at Melissa's home.
The Army pronounced Cassidy's death an accidental overdose. The 31-year-old soldier took too many prescription drugs that, in combination, suppressed his respiratory system. In his system were methadone, the antidepressant citalopram, multiple opiates, a tranquilizer and a hypertension drug.
These and other details about how Cassidy lived his last few days and how he died were revealed recently by his wife and mother in an interview with The Indianapolis Star.
Cassidy's family also provided to The Star key documents from the Army's investigation of his death that had not previously been released and shared some notes Cassidy wrote at Fort Knox about his anxiety over loud noises and lack of sleep and his concern for the impact of his illness on his family.
The family says it is speaking out in hopes that greater public awareness will help other soldiers get better treatment.
The family found an ally in Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who is calling for numerous changes in the way the military handles mental health services for wounded soldiers.
"The pain is never going to go away," said Cassidy's mother, Kay McMullen, Carmel. "You've got to do something then to change the outcome for other people."
Failure at Fort Knox
Too little staff, too little training, Army finds
The Army investigation of Fort Knox after Cassidy's death concluded that "the unit was not resourced properly to accomplish its mission" and "failed to provide effective leadership."
The problems included not having enough staff to fill the three key positions -- a squad leader who wounded soldiers are supposed to see daily, a nurse case manager they see weekly and a primary care manager they see monthly.
Army investigators also found the staff didn't have the proper training or appropriate skill levels; there was not a simple and direct chain of command; and soldiers were not properly accounted for.
The unit also did not have controls to track prescriptions and no established process to communicate prescription reactions with alcohol.
Officers told investigators that they had raised concerns about the lack of resources but said no one paid attention -- until Cassidy died.
"We are told that WTU is the Army's priority, and yet we are not receiving the NCOs (non commissioned officers) that we need to get the job done, nor the facilities we need," a captain told investigators. "WTU was set up for failure."
Fort Knox was not the only unit short-staffed last year. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported that in mid-September, fewer than half of the 32 U.S.-based units had enough key personnel.
In an updated report last month, the GAO commended the Army for making substantial progress but said it still faces problems hiring medical staff in a competitive market, replacing temporary borrowed personnel with permanent staff, and getting eligible soldiers into the units.
"Following the Walter Reed controversy, there was a burst of activity, a sense of urgency about making sure that medical care and conditions for our soldiers was improved," said Bayh, who has been demanding answers about Cassidy's care. "But then that dissipated as soon as the spotlight moved on to something else.
"We can't let that happen again. We need to continue to focus on this to make sure that the government not only says the right things but does the right things for our soldiers."
The Army initially called Cassidy's death an isolated incident. But last month, the Army said it was investigating 11 accidental deaths or suicides in its Warrior Transition Units. At least three deaths, including Cassidy's, were accidental overdoses.
A soldier from the start
"The thing that he loved the most was the camaraderie"
Cassidy, or "G.J." as he was known to friends and family, grew up playing soldier, wearing camouflage and toting wooden guns.
He pestered his mother until she let him spend summers at the Culver Military Academy in Northern Indiana, where he became a member of the Black Horse Troop, an elite equestrian detail. By age 17, he was an adjutant commander.
"He was so passionate about being a soldier," his wife, Melissa Cassidy, said. "I think the thing that he loved the most was the camaraderie, knowing that you're standing beside someone who would give their life for you."
His last civilian job was with a landscaping company, although his goal was to get a full-time National Guard job and finish college so he could teach high school or junior high history.
Cassidy enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1992 and joined the Indiana National Guard in 2003. He volunteered in 2004 to go to Iraq, where he served with a Guard unit from Minnesota.
Cassidy decorated his quarters in Iraq with an American flag, its stripes formed by tiny ink handprints made by his daughter, Abbey, and her preschool classmates.
He was escorting a convoy to Camp Scania in Iraq in August 2006 when an improvised explosive device went off about 11 yards from his Humvee, spraying it with shrapnel. Cassidy lost hearing for a few minutes, then had a strong headache that lasted at least six hours. That was the beginning of the migraines that began to plague him every seven to 10 days.
The last days
Soldier's family said
he got worse, not better
When his tour in Iraq was finished in March 2007, seven months after his injury, Cassidy was evaluated at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin where he was diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
He arrived in Fort Knox in April, about two months before the Warrior Transition Unit was up and running.
Soldiers are supposed to be given a job or be taking classes, but that wasn't initially enforced.
Melissa Cassidy said her husband was bored at Fort Knox and filled his room with movies, books and games.
Soldiers are told their main purpose is to heal so they either can return to duty or make the transition back to a productive civilian life.
Cassidy's family, however, thought Cassidy was getting worse, not better, at Fort Knox.
He was still suffering from migraines, which could last from a few hours to nearly a full day. In addition to the narcotics he was prescribed at Fort Knox or during visits to the emergency room in Indiana, he drank beer and rum to dull his pain, although no alcohol was found in his body at the time of his death.
Soldiers in the units are allowed to have beer and a pint of liquor in their rooms.
"I don't think alcohol has a place in a Warrior Transition Unit for folks like G.J.," Melissa Cassidy said. "With all the medications he's on, he doesn't have any business drinking alcohol."
A Fort Knox official said the Army is evaluating whether to ban alcohol from the units.
Cassidy knew his illness was rough on his family, writing in a notepad shortly before he died that, "When I'm there, sometimes I'm still not there."
"I find myself wanting time alone or just wanting to be lazy," he wrote. "I know she needs the help, but sometimes I just can't get motivated to get off the couch."
During his weekend visits and a monthlong convalescent leave over the summer, Melissa Cassidy said it was increasingly difficult for her to get him to go swimming or to a cookout with the children, 5-year-old Abbey and 3-year-old Isaac.
At Fort Knox, Cassidy saw a psychiatrist nine times in July, August and September but made only one visit to the private neurologist in nearby Elizabethtown that the Army contracts with.
He did not agree with the neurologist's therapy plan and told his case manager at Fort Knox that an appointment with a different neurologist was unnecessary because he was taking medication prescribed during visits to Indiana, where he went to an emergency room and saw his family doctor.
Cassidy's psychiatrist, Dr. William Kearney, agreed that the second neurology appointment was unnecessary, according to the case manager's report.
Kearney told The Star that Cassidy pleaded with him to prescribe pain relievers, even though Kearney said he told Cassidy he should be following the neurologist's treatment plan.
"They're the ones that do pain management," Kearney said he told Cassidy.
When Kearney agreed to prescribe methadone at Cassidy's request, Kearney said they had a long discussion about how it should be taken.
If used improperly, methadone can build up in the body to toxic levels because the drug stays in the body long after the pain relief ends, according to the National Drug Intelligence center.
Fort Knox officials said they can't comment on Kearney's care of Cassidy because it is still under review. In a Feb. 12 letter to Bayh, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren said multiple reviews of Cassidy's medical care include an ongoing independent assessment, but the investigations' results are "privileged and confidential" under U.S. law.
Kearney, whose work at the base has been suspended, said he was being set up as a scapegoat.
"This was a clear case of a patient who tragically overdosed on drugs," he said.
Cassidy's family does not think Cassidy was sufficiently instructed on the dangers of methadone.
"He was sitting there with a cornucopia of medications to choose from, and he was the one who had to decide which ones he took," his mother said.
On Sept. 18, Cassidy filled his prescription for 16 methadone tablets, which were supposed to be taken only twice a day. The bottle was empty when his body was discovered Sept. 21.
Death goes unnoticed
Platoon sergeant didn't check
on soldier missing for days
Cassidy spoke with his mother for the last time on Sept. 18, a Tuesday, complaining in a phone call about construction work on his barracks' roof.
He also wrote about it Sept. 17. "As I write this my hand is shaking," Cassidy wrote in a notepad. "The roofers keep throwing down big blocks of shingles on the roof and with me being on the 3rd floor it sounds just like mortars coming in."
A few hours later, Cassidy wrote of taking the antidepressant citalopram and the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin "because of the whole shingle thing earlier" -- some of the more than a dozen prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications he had in his room. Still awake at 3 a.m., Cassidy took the antidepressant Elavil.
"Looks like it's going to be one of those nights," he wrote.
When Melissa Cassidy spoke with him Tuesday, he was happy to be coming home for good soon and looking forward to seeing his family over the weekend. They agreed to talk again that night, but Melissa's call about 11 p.m. went into her husband's voice mail.
She followed up with three messages Wednesday, asking him to call.
"I'm kinda worried about you, hope you're all right," she said Wednesday night.
Calls she left Thursday were not returned, either.
When she still hadn't heard from him Friday morning, Melissa Cassidy accessed his voice mail and was alarmed to discover he hadn't listened to any of his messages, starting with a good night message she'd left Tuesday.
Melissa started calling officials at Fort Knox for help, including her husband's platoon sergeant, the officer responsible for taking attendance at the daily formations.
The sergeant later told investigators that he last saw Cassidy on Wednesday morning, outside of one of the barracks. He said Cassidy told him he had a migraine and wanted to rest. Cassidy did not show up for the afternoon formation.
On Thursday, the sergeant wasn't there for the morning accountability check because his car had broken down.
When Cassidy was not in formation Friday morning, the sergeant said, he assumed Cassidy was being processed for his weekend trip home and marked him down as being present on the daily status report, even though he hadn't seen or spoken with him for two days.
When the sergeant heard Cassidy's wife was looking for him, he left a message for Cassidy on his cell phone Friday afternoon but didn't check Cassidy's room.
"I wish I would've done things differently," the sergeant later told investigators.
After being put off all day, Melissa Cassidy told a different sergeant shortly before 6 p.m. that she would come down herself. That sergeant said he would get a key and enter Cassidy's room. When she called the sergeant back about an hour later, his voice was quavering, she said.
" 'I haven't got in there yet. I haven't got in there yet. Let me call you back, sweetie, let me call you back,' " Melissa recalls him saying. "That was all he said, and I knew something was terribly wrong."
Cassidy's body was found seated, head tilted back, in front of the computer he used to play games.
Chances missed?
Pathologist says soldier was alive, unconscious, for hours
The Army's autopsy report does not include an estimated time of death.
"It's virtually impossible to determine a time of death because there are just too many variables involved," said Paul Stone, spokesman for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
Dr. Stephen Radentz, a forensic pathologist Cassidy's family hired to do a second autopsy, agreed that time estimates are difficult. But he said the condition of the body and other evidence, such as when Cassidy was last seen and last used his cell phone and computer, enabled him to estimate that he had been dead about 24 hours when found, though it could have been as much as 36 hours or as little as 12.
Radentz said the depression of Cassidy's respiratory system "basically knocked him out of commission" so he wasn't awake but in a comalike state before he stopped breathing.
"There's certainly a good possibility that if they had found him when he was still breathing, he would have come out OK," Radentz said.
When she thinks back about what happened at Fort Knox, Melissa Cassidy said, it's "very clear that there was no system that was working there."
What's worse is how many times she believes tragedy could've been avoided, starting with her husband getting better care in Iraq and ending with someone checking up on him in his final days.
"There are so many things," she said. "If one of those things had changed, he might be alive today."
Contact Star Washington Bureau reporter Maureen Groppe at (202) 906-8118 or at mgroppe@gns.gannett.com.
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I am a disabled veteran who has many medical problems PTSD is just one of them, the VA medical center throws so many pills at veterans hoping that some of them help, many times they don't even check to see if they conflict with each other, I have ended up hospitalized due to reactions to over medication 600 pills, heck I must have thousands of pills here in the house.
Monday, March 17, 2008
A soldier's death, a family's fight
Sunday, March 16, 2008
JP Morgan to Buy Bear for $2 a Share
JPMorgan to Buy Bear for $2 a Share
Bear Stearns's headquarters overlooks the flag for neighboring JP Morgan Chase headquarters in New York on Friday, March 14, 2008. The Federal Reserve invoked a rarely used Depression-era procedure Friday to bolster troubled Bear Stearns Cos. and said it will provide even more help to combat a serious credit crisis. JPMorgan Chase is providing an undisclosed amount of secured funding to Bear for 28 days, backstopped by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) (Mark Lennihan - AP)
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By JOE BEL BRUNO and MADLEN READ
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 16, 2008; 7:58 PM
NEW YORK -- JPMorgan Chase said Sunday it will acquire rival Bear Stearns in a deal valued at $236.2 million _ or $2 a share _ a stunning collapse for one of the world's largest and most venerable investment banks.
The last-minute buyout was aimed at averting a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system.
The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock deal, showing the urgency of completing the deal before world markets opened.
Bear Stearns shares close Friday at $30 a share. At their peak, the shares traded at $159.36.
The Fed will provide special financing to JPMorgan Chase for the deal, JPMorgan Chase said. The central bank has agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns' less liquid assets. Risky bets on securities tied to subprime mortgages _ loans given to customers with poor credit history _ crippled Bear Stearns, the nations' fifth-largest investment bank.
At almost the same time as the deal for control of Bear Stearns was announced, the Federal Reserve said it approved a cut in its lending rate to banks to 3.25 percent from 3.50 percent and created another lending facility for big investment banks. The central bank's official meeting is on Tuesday. Before the emergency move to lower the discount rate, which is the rate at which banks lend each other money, the Fed was widely expected to again cut its headline rate by as much as a full point to 2 percent.
The announcements from both the Fed and JPMorgan come ahead of what some analysts expected to be a brutal day for global stocks. Already, before the announcements, New Zealand's markets opened drastically lower _ then began to recover after the deal was unveiled.
"This is going to go down in very historic terms," said Peter Dunay, chief investment strategist for New York-based Meridian Equity Partners. "This is about credit being overextended, and how bad it is for major financial institutions and for individuals. This is why we're probably heading into a recession."
A collapse of Bear Stearns could have created a further crisis of confidence in world financial markets amid a deepening credit crunch. JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago.
The deal marked a 93.3 percent discount to Bear Stearns' market capitalization as of Friday, and roughly a 98.8 percent discount to its book value as of Feb. 29.
"The past week has been an incredibly difficult time for Bear Stearns," said Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz in a statement. "This represents the best outcome for all of our constituencies based upon the current circumstances."
Wall Street analysts say the bid to rescue Bear Stearns was more than just saving one of the world's largest investments bank _ it was a prop for the U.S. economy and the global financial system. An outright collapse could cause huge losses for banks, hedge funds and other investors to which Bear Stearns is connected.
The government, led by the Treasury Department and the Fed, was reported to have closely monitored the talks between JPMorgan and Bear Stearns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., "has been in nearly continuous consultations all weekend," said Brookly McLaughlin, a Treasury Department spokeswoman.
After days of denials that it had liquidity problems, Bear was forced into a JPMorgan-led, government-backed bailout on Friday. The arrangement, the first of its kind since the 1930s, resulted in Bear getting a 28-day loan from JPMorgan with the government's guarantee that JPMorgan would not suffer any losses on the deal.
This is not the first time Bear Stearns has earned a place in Wall Street history. A decade ago, Bear Stearns refused to help bail out a hedge fund that was deemed "too big to fail." On Friday, the tables had turned, with the now-struggling investment bank in need of the same kind of aid.
Bear Stearns was founded in 1923 and in recent years was best known for its aggressive investing in mortgage-backed securities _ and what was once a cash cow turned into the investment bank's undoing.
In June, two Bear-managed hedge funds worth billions of dollars collapsed. The funds were heavily invested in securities backed by subprime mortgages. Until that point, subprime mortgage-backed securities were immensely popular with investors because of their profitability.
The funds' collapse and subsequent problems in the credit markets called into question Bear Stearns' ability to manage its own risk and the leadership ability of then-Chief Executive James Cayne. Critics of the company said Cayne spent too much time away from the office last year playing golf and bridge as the problems unfolded.
Cayne is the same executive who refused to let Bear Stearns provide support as part of a Federal Reserve-led plan to rescue Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. His reticence was said to deeply anger some of his fellow Wall Street CEOs, and the episode came up every time Bear was reported to be in trouble in recent months.
Cayne took over from the legendary Alan "Ace" Greenberg in 1993. Greenberg joined Bear Stearns as a clerk, working his way up through the ranks to eventually take over as CEO in 1978. Greenberg was known for his irreverent style, and his regular memos to employees were turned into a book called "Memos from the Chairman."
Before Greenberg's ascendancy to CEO, Bear Stearns began to expand from its New York roots throughout the 1950s and 1960s, opening international offices and expanding its U.S. operations.
The company was opened in 1923 as an equity trading shop. Today, it has subsidiaries providing a wide array of financial services products for individuals, corporations, institutions and governments. Generally, it provides capital markets, wealth management and global clearing services to its customers.
____
JP Morgan buys Bear Stearns for 2 bucks a share
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Should be an interesting week on Wall Street if this is the start of it......
Editorial: Through Bush-Colored Glasses
our fiscal mess
President Bush admitted on Friday that times are tough. So much for the straight talk.
Bush went on to paint a false picture of the economy. He dismissed virtually every proposal Congress is working on to alleviate the mortgage crisis, sticking to his administration’s inadequate ideas. And despite the rush of serious problems — frozen credit markets, millions of impending mortgage defaults, solvency issues at banks, a plunging dollar — he said that a major source of uncertainty today is whether his tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2010, would be extended.
This was too far afield of reality to be dismissed as simple cheerleading. It points to the pressing need for a coherent plan to steer through what some economists are now predicting could be a severe downturn. Mr. Bush’s denial of the economic truth underscores the need for Congress to push forward with solutions to the mortgage crisis — especially bankruptcy reform to help defaulting homeowners. Lawmakers also must prepare to execute, in case it is needed, a government rescue of people whose homes are now worth less than they borrowed to buy them.
Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.
Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.
Mr. Bush also talked approvingly of the recent unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. A low rate is good news when it indicates a robust job market. The unemployment rate ticked down last month because hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the work force altogether. Worse, long-term unemployment, of six months or more, hit 17.5 percent. We’d expect that in the depths of a recession. It is unprecedented at the onset of one.
Mr. Bush was wrong to say wages are rising. On Friday morning, the day he spoke, the government reported that wages failed to outpace inflation in February, for the fifth straight month. Productivity growth has also weakened markedly in the past two years, a harbinger of a lower overall standard of living for Americans.
Exports have surged of late, but largely on the back of a falling dollar. The weaker dollar makes American exports cheaper, but it also pushes up oil prices. Potentially far more serious, a weakening dollar also reduces the Federal Reserve’s flexibility to steady the economy.
Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.
The fiscal stimulus passed by Congress, and touted by Mr. Bush on Friday, could juice growth for a quarter or two later this year. But the economy’s fundamental weaknesses indicate that Americans are ill-prepared for hard times. That makes the need for clear-eyed policies all the more urgent. We need them from the president, Congress and the contenders for the White House.
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I will grant that I am not an economist, but I live on Main Street USA, I pay for gas that goes in my car, I buy groceries, I have a mortgage, insurance etc. The realities of life. I bought my home in May 2006 on one of those 2/28 ARM loans because we needed the cash we had on hand to put in new floors add a new laundry room and pantry off the kitchen and upgrade the house. But we knew going in that we were going to refinance a 30 year fixed rate mortgage before the 2 years were up and the ARM kicked in, yes we paid more for this, the initial loan was 8.5% but we did the refinancing and got a 30 year 6.5% loan so now we have an updated larger home worth more money because we added square footage. We had a plan. Right now I am not even sure we would qualify for a new loan as bad as things have gotten, the area we live in does not have escalated home prices, we are not in a resort area, or an area where home prices rose because of speculators like Southern Calif or Las Vegas or even Myrtle Beach.
Groceries are getting expensive but we have a daughter and her 2 kids (our grand kids) that live with us, of course they have to eat, we don't eat out as often and we have learned to shop at stores like ALDI's and Save-alot, or Walmart super stores, and less Krogers, we buy coffee when it's on sale for 4.99 a can and we get 6at a time, better than 7.99 a can, it's not like we are going to quit drinking coffee. Vacations are a 3 day weekend at the beach now instead of a cruise, or a week at Disney World, but times are tough, something our politicians aren't seeing. Not all of us can give 2300 for their campaigns, or go to Ruth Chris weekly for dinner, we are not all lawyers and doctors or hedge fund managers, some of us are normal Americans, disabled veterans, mailmen, store managers, clerks, hospital workers and trash collectors.
Making the Bush tax cuts permanent are the last things we think of, we are worried about who is going to pay for MR Bush's war, our kids or our great grand kids, what about Medicare and Social security? Not all of us have 100 million in the European stock market like Tricky Dick 2, or will make 10 million for our book rights like Bush 43, or get 250,000 for a public appearance, most of us just try and feed our families, the economy has been bad for a long time, millions of Americans quit looking for work about the same time the government claimed the unemployment rate dropped to less than 5% there just aren't any jobs and when the unemployment checks ran out, these people just dropped off the government employment rolls altogether. This is the reality. By the way COLA checks for SSD and SS and VA are NOT keeping pace with reality.
Brain-Injured Veterans Fighting to Recover and Win Disability Payments
TBI and Bob Woodruff
By BOB WOODRUFF and JAIME HENNESSEY
Feb. 18, 2008
It has been one year since we met so many injured veterans and got to know their families. Today, it is heartening to see they are all still recovering and making strides — both large and small.
But in addition to attending rehab and doctors' visits, some of these veterans are digging through paperwork and trying to fight for larger disability payments.
'I Feel Way Lucky'
ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff first met Army Sgt. Will Glass and his wife, Amelia, at the Bethesda Naval Hospital a year and a half ago.
Glass had been in a coma for two weeks and part of his skull had been removed. His hands were crushed and his left eye was gone.
But today in northern California, there is some normalcy returning to the Glasses' lives.
Glass has a new glass eye that moves almost like his right eye. Although one of his fingers was lost, his grip is improving and he is even taking auto repair courses.
His confidence is up and he says people "don't stare anymore. It's just like I'm a normal person to them."
The military has not yet determined Glass' disability or his future payments.
Glass recently received military photographs from the bloody scene of the roadside attack that injured him. "I feel way lucky," Glass said, looking at the photograph.
"Some people would look at that and can't imagine that you would consider yourself lucky," Woodruff said.
"Yeah, but I am happy to be alive," Glass said.
Glass now can perform daily tasks like dressing himself and feeding himself, giving his wife, she says, "a chance to get my life back."
When Woodruff asked what advice they would give other couples, the Glasses agreed.
"Time heals all wounds," Amelia said.
"You just got to be a champ and just tough it out. I got injured in September 2006 and it's now 2008 and I am still going through it, and it just takes time and effort," Glass said.
'Slowly but Surely'
A year ago, Marine Sgt. Shurvon Philip of Cleveland could not speak and could hardly move.
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PLEASE GO TO THE WEB SITE AND READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AND WATCH THE VIDEO'S
Bob Woodruff and his wife are inspirations to all veterana and their spouses, disabled or not, the nation and veterans are better off because of them, they care and they really do help, they will forever have my admiration.
Injured Vets Struggle to Get Disability Help
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Survivors Reflect 40 Years After My Lai
My Lai 40 years later
Filed at 11:08 a.m. ET
MY LAI, Vietnam (AP) -- Forty years after rampaging American soldiers slaughtered her family, Do Thi Tuyet returned to the place where her childhood was shattered.
''Everyone in my family was killed in the My Lai massacre -- my mother, my father, my brother and three sisters,'' said Tuyet, who was 8 years old at the time. ''They threw me into a ditch full of dead bodies. I was covered with blood and brains.''
More than a thousand people turned out Sunday to remember the victims of one of the most notorious chapters of the Vietnam War. On March 16, 1968, members of Charlie Company killed as many as 504 villagers, nearly all of them unarmed children, women and elderly.
When the unprovoked attack was uncovered, it horrified Americans, prompted military investigations and badly undermined support for the war.
Sunday's memorial drew the families of the victims, returning U.S. war veterans, peace activists and a delegation of atomic bombing survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
''We are not harboring hatred,'' said Nguyen Hoang Son, vice governor of Quang Ngai, the central Vietnamese province where the incident occurred. ''We are calling for solidarity to defend peace, to defend life and to remind the world that it must never forget the massacre at My Lai.''
Although the occasion was somber, many visitors said they drew hope from it.
''So much positive energy has come from such a negative event,'' said Richard Chamberlin, 63, a returning veteran from Madison, Wisconsin. ''The people here have amazing resilience. I'm grateful that they've treated us as friends, not enemies.''
Chamberlin was part of a delegation called the Madison Quakers, a Wisconsin group that has built a peace park and three schools in My Lai, including a new one that was dedicated Sunday. The group's leader, war veteran Mike Boehm, honored the dead by playing a mournful fiddle tune.
Boehm also arranged for a group of atomic bombing survivors from Japan to join his delegation.
Among them was Fujio Shimoharu, who was playing in a Nagasaki schoolyard on Aug. 9, 1945, when the earth shook, a strong wind howled and the sky went dark as a mushroom cloud rose over the city.
''I'm very angry about the indiscriminate killing both here in My Lai and in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,'' said Shimoharu, 74. ''I came here to send a message of peace to the world.''
Shimoharu feels connected to My Lai survivors such as Tuyet, who returned to a replica of her home and wept after Sunday's service ended. U.S. troops torched the original thatch-roofed house; the new one is part of a museum dedicated to the victims.
On that morning 40 years ago, Tuyet and her family were getting ready to go to work in the fields when members of Charlie Company burst into their house and herded them outside at gunpoint.
They were pushed into a ditch where more than 100 people were sprayed with bullets, one of which hit Tuyet in the back, paralyzing the right side of her body.
Her parents, three sisters and a brother were slaughtered. The oldest child was 10, the youngest just 4.
''I was here when the shooting started,'' Tuyet said, sitting by a family altar in the replica of her simple two-room home. ''The troops rounded us up and took us to the ditch.''
Her 4-year-old brother, who was eating breakfast when the troops came, died with his mouth full of rice, Tuyet said.
Four decades later, she is still overcome by grief. But Tuyet has managed to build a life for herself. She became a pharmacist, married and had two children.
When they arrived in the hamlet 40 years ago, the frustrated and angry members of Charlie Company were on a ''search and destroy'' mission, trying to track down elusive Vietcong guerrillas whose tactics had depleted the company's ranks.
The soldiers began shooting in My Lai that day even though they hadn't come under attack. The violence quickly escalated into an orgy of killing.
The young troops had found themselves in a bewildering war where it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe, said Stanley Karnow, an American historian who wrote ''Vietnam: A History.''
Their actions shocked the American public, who had preferred to think of U.S. troops as heroes making the world safe for democracy, Karnow said.
''But there is a human capacity for committing atrocities,'' Karnow said.
Do Ba, another My Lai survivor, lost his mother, his brother and his sister in the massacre. But he, too, has managed to build a new life for himself.
He now lives Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, with his new wife and their 14-month-old daughter. He has a job in an electronics factory.
Ba had a chance reunion this weekend with Larry Colburn, who saved him from the rampaging American troops 40 years ago. Colburn was a member of a three-man U.S. Army helicopter crew that landed in the midst of the massacre and intervened to stop the killing.
Colburn returned for this year's ceremony, as he did 10 years ago for the 30th. He came the first time with Hugh Thompson, the pilot who landed their helicopter, who has since died.
''Today I see Do Ba with a wife and a baby,'' Colburn said. ''He's transformed himself from being a broken, lonely man. Now he's complete. He's a perfect example of the human spirit, of the will to survive.''
Boehm, whose Wisconsin group helped plan Sunday's ceremony, takes solace from such stories.
''If hope can rise from the ashes of My Lai,'' he said, ''it can rise from anywhere.''
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A friend of mine was a 2lt in Charlie Company he got a bad conduct discharge because of this, it took him 30 years to get his paperwork upgraded to a general discharge making him eligible for VA medical care, many men paid a price for what went wrong that day, very few people realize the first officer to write a after action report on the My Lai incident was a Major named Colin Powell for General Westmoreland.The rest they say is history.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Mental health care hit and miss, troops say
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Mar 14, 2008 20:23:28 EDT
Service members told Congress Friday that mental health care for post-traumatic stress disorder is good — if they can get it.
In one case, a suicidal soldier asked for help and got it. In another, a soldier deployed to Iraq asked for help, and when he didn’t get it, he killed himself.
While military surgeons general told the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee about new programs designed to provide a safety net to catch troops with mental disorders, they also talked about issues that still must be addressed — recruiting and retaining mental health providers, ensuring leaders understand suicide, and finding proper treatment for PTSD.
“I think we are grappling with this about as hard as we can,” said S. Ward Casscells, assistant defense secretary for health affairs. He said the Defense Department is working to improve screening, implementing more resiliency training — teaching troops to be mentally strong as well as physically strong — and figuring out how to define and treat PTSD.
“Treatment is a struggle,” Casscells said. “We don’t know very well what treatments work.”
But they have — or will have by May — implemented most of the recommendations of the Defense Department’s Task Force on Mental Health.
Casscells said early intervention, before symptoms develop into a full-blown disorder, could save the Defense Department 80 percent of their mental health care costs.
“We are making progress, and we do have a ways to go,” he said, a theme that re-emerged in the testimony of the service surgeons general.
Service members and family members who appeared before the subcommittee had their own recommendations.
Army Pfc. Jason Scheuerman, 20, started acting differently when he was in Iraq, his father, Chris Scheuerman Sr., said.
Jason sat slumped on his cot with his head banging into the butt of his rifle. Some saw him put the barrel in his mouth. He slept in the fetal position. He sent his family an e-mail saying he wanted to kill himself. A chaplain noticed the behavior and reported it to the brigade psychologist.
“[The chaplain] said in a sworn statement that he believed Jason to be possessed by demons and obsessed with suicide,” Chris Scheuerman said.
Soon after, Jason took his own life.
The elder Scheuerman said he had to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get copies of the Army’s investigation of the incident, and what he saw infuriated him.
“Jason’s psychologist stated that he was capable of feigning mental illness in order to manipulate his command,” Scheuerman said. “Jason’s chaplain clearly believed him to be extremely troubled and told Jason’s mother in a conversation after his death that they had been watching Jason for some time.”
After the diagnosis, Jason was counseled that he could ask for a second opinion at his own expense — a virtually useless option as long as he was in Iraq. His father asked that service members have the opportunity for a second opinion, as well as better communication between leaders who know when their troops are troubled and the mental health workers who can help them.
Army Maj. Bruce Gannaway lost his left foot Dec. 22, 2007, when a bomb exploded while he was on patrol. Upon arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he said he was immediately evaluated for mental health issues — while he was heavily medicated.
He called it a quick “Q&A” session and said it determined his mental health care for the rest of his stay. Because he’s a midlevel officer, he said he was able to work as his own advocate to get the care he needed, but he suggested providing follow-up mental health consultations for people who seem fine in the first cursory check. He also said mental health workers should make rounds the same way chaplains do.
His wife, Sarah Gannaway, is an occupational therapist. She asked that civilian mental health workers within the Tricare system be better reimbursed so they feel it is worth the effort to help service members. The system is “overwhelmed,” she said, and she never sees the same doctor twice — and neither does her husband. She also asked that some of the bureaucratic rules be looked at, such as requiring an office visit to renew prescriptions — even for prenatal vitamins.
Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Richard Gutteridge said he returned from his second tour in Iraq in February 2007 just fine and wanted to go on leave, so he quickly made his way through his redeployment sessions.
Then he began having nightmares, feeling angry and withdrawing from his family. His doctor said he had chronic PTSD and combat stress, so he began therapy in August. But when he needed to readjust one of his medications because of a bad reaction to it, he was told he couldn’t be seen for 20 days. He called the Wounded Warrior Hotline and said he needed help immediately.
“If this was how I was being treated, how would a young infantry guy be handled?” he said.
A doctor called him and worked with him on his medication, and he began feeling better. But autumn brought the anniversaries of violence he experienced in Iraq, and he started drinking alcohol and having suicidal thoughts.
“I’m not proud of this ... it’s difficult to admit,” he said. “I felt as if my condition would never change.”
He called a nurse, but said he “knew my career would be over.” The next day, he met with the nurse, but she had called his brigade commander and chaplain to have him admitted to the mental health ward at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany on New Year’s Day. Then he was sent to the mental health ward at Walter Reed. There, he heard about a special program for people with PTSD.
“I had hope for the first time,” he said.
But he had to wait. Only nine people were in the program when he went through. In the meantime, he attended group therapy with a bunch of newbie troops dealing with “adjustment issues” and complaining about why they didn’t get along with their drill sergeants, Gutteridge said.
Finally, on Feb. 4, he began the three-week intensive program, which he called “awesome.”
He requested that substance abuse programs be incorporated into PTSD therapy, not “in a distant, separate building.” He also asked that mental health workers be embedded at least at the battalion level with the troops in Iraq. Taking the time to visit the rotating team of people nobody knows that passes through occasionally is “setting yourself up to be ostracized,” he said.
And Scheuerman, Gannaway and Gutteridge all said they thought the military, as it has in the past with racial and sexual integration, could work harder to get rid of the stigma that surrounds mental health and set a standard for civilian care.
Gutteridge suggested replacing “behavioral health” with “combat stress” units.
“Everybody likes the word ‘combat,’ ” he said. “It’s manly. It’s OK. Something as simple as changing the wording could help.”
Scheuerman, who retired from the Army after a 20-year career, took the suggestion a step further. “The Army has gone through a lot of cultural change,” he said. “Stigma exists in the Army today because we allow it to exist.”
Drunk driving used to result in 14 days of extra duty, he said — until the military took on a zero-tolerance policy and offenses went down significantly. Sexual harassment and racism were addressed the same way, he added.
Gutteridge said the military could use its values-based culture to address the problem. “The Army can lead society down the correct path of taking away the stigma,” he said.
Suddenly, the hearing had become a brainstorming session with Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general and his staff leaning forward and taking notes: Maybe a PTSD support group, similar to bereavement groups? No tolerating supervisors telling a subordinate to tough it out rather than seek help?
“The only thing I want to say is, this is a problem we have to get to grips with, because as our kids come home, it’s only going to get worse,” Scheuerman said. “We have to find a way to make this better.”
Air Force Times
War's legacy: Its human toll
Congressman Filner on Iraq war veterans benefits
By Philip Dine
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/16/2008
MARCH 13, 2008 --Brad Trower of High Ridge (center) displays the pain he suffered in his arm to Polytrauma Occupational Therapist Tracy Beardsley during a therapy session.
(Erik Lunsford/P-D)
WASHINGTON --As the Iraq war ends its fifth year, a dominant legacy of the conflict has turned out to be the human toll on those who have fought it.
The nature and sheer extent of American casualties — officially in the tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands have sought medical help — has caught the U.S. government off guard.
From wounded soldiers who faced dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to troops whose mental problems have been overlooked, Iraq veterans have paid the price.
"The government was not ready for the casualties to come home," says Brad Trower, 29, a Marine Corps veteran from High Ridge who was injured twice in his tour in Iraq.
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When Trower returned to St. Louis in 2005, suffering from traumatic brain injury after two vehicles he was riding in were blown up within a month of his arrival, he got "zero response" initially from local Veterans Affairs officials, though he is now doing well.
Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says the nation has failed to heed the lessons of Vietnam, a war whose veterans constitute half of the 400,000 people sleeping on America's streets tonight.
Though the number of veterans today is smaller, the percentage of veterans who become homeless, commit suicide or face other social problems, partly because of a lack of treatment, is similar to that of the Vietnam era, Filner says.
"We know how to deal with it," he says, "but we apparently don't want to deal with it."
Many of today's veterans, especially reservists, are married, complicating the situation.
"The Vietnam conflict was primarily a single soldier's conflict, but the impacts now are greater because you have entire families that are impacted by how this gets handled," says Matthew Cary, president of Veterans & Military Families for Progress.
The backlog of disability claims has jumped to 600,000 from 300,000 with the surge of Iraq injuries, Carey says. And the Army says suicides are at their highest since it began keeping figures in 1980.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
The Pentagon's "shock and awe" doctrine featuring hi-tech precision bombs was supposed to stun the Iraqis into quick submission while limiting the toll on American soldiers. The confidence only grew after Saddam Hussein's regime fell with little resistance.
In the war's early months, President George W. Bush was so confident that American forces faced little danger that he famously dared Iraqi insurgents to "bring it on."
They did, with suicide bombings and improvised roadside explosives that killed or maimed thousands, extended the U.S. occupation and frustrated U.S. and Iraqi attempts to establish a stable replacement for Saddam.
Five years later, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, says she's seeing "particularly severe and complicated injuries" among returning soldiers. Murray spoke at a news briefing late last week featuring a handful of legislators who want to raise public awareness.
Officials have begun, if in fragmented fashion, to acknowledge the need for change. Recent steps already are helping some Iraq veterans and may mean better treatment for veterans of the next battle in the war on terrorism.
"There have been shameful lessons learned over the treatment of our military," says Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Regardless of how you feel about the war in Iraq, progress we have made in the treatment of those heroes has to be embraced as positive."
A Pentagon official adds, "As much a tragedy as Walter Reed was, it's spawned debate and action, and helped us cut the red tape for soldiers."
WHY THE PROBLEMS?
Three factors are generally viewed as having combined to produce problems in care for U.S. veterans of Iraq:
— Strategic mistakes that made the war longer and more lethal, including sending too few troops, not sealing Iraq's borders or arms depots, failing to recognize the insurgency early on and not planning how to secure the peace.
— The nature of the war. The lack of front lines made everyone vulnerable at any time, increasing the danger and stress. The insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices has produced devastating injuries. Multiple deployments and the unprecedented use of the National Guard and Reserves increased the risks, especially of stress-related problems.
— A lack of preparedness for the volume of casualties, which overwhelmed the system. Additionally, the military missed many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury by relying on soldiers to come forward. Of the 1.7 million service members with recent combat experience, some 800,000 are now veterans entitled to VA health care and benefits. Of those, 300,000 have had treatment; 40 percent were diagnosed with a mental health problem, more than half with PTSD, according to Veterans Affairs figures released as a result of a lawsuit by Veterans for Common Sense, a nonpartisan veterans advocacy group.
Paul Sullivan, the group's executive director, says the patient figure could eventually reach 700,000.
Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, a top Pentagon official overseeing care for combat troops, says that by helping reduce the stigma associated with mental problems, the military has increased the number of cases to handle. In terms of physical wounds, Kilpatrick says the military was prepared for the initial acute care but less so for the long-term rehabilitation of soldiers to return to service while dealing with family issues and spouses' lost incomes.
Thirty-one percent of the veterans have filed disability claims, waiting on the average more than six months for them to be processed. Delays are pronounced for those who returned to small towns or rural areas in the Midwest or South far from VA facilities, as happens with many reserve troops.
A recent Harvard University study says taxpayers' cost for the care of injured veterans will run up to $700 billion.
"Unfortunately, we are too often falling short in meeting our duty to our warriors here at home," says Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., who has pushed for improved treatment of mental health injuries.
The military is paying the price, a Pentagon official contends, for being "so good" in saving lives that would have been lost in previous wars. In Iraq, if a wounded soldier gets medical attention within a few minutes, the survival rate is 97 percent, he says. But he concedes that mental health care remains "in its infancy. If we're moving slowly in treatment, it's because we're just starting to have the technology to understand how to treat PTSD and especially TBI."
Critics contend that officials have compounded the situation. Among the most egregious actions, Filner asserts, has been diagnosing 22,000 veterans with "pre-existing personality disorders," as reported late last year by the Post-Dispatch.
"We mess them up, then we say, 'We didn't mess you up, it's your fault,' and we hand them a bill," Filner says.
Trower, who spent four years on active duty in the Marines before rejoining in 2004 to go to Iraq, was injured on his first day of action, when his light-armored vehicle ran over a land mine.
A month later, an explosive device hit the 14-ton vehicle he was commanding and threw it 20 feet. Trower awoke with smoke all around and men badly hurt. He was hospitalized for a week with a concussion.
He finished his tour and headed back to St. Louis. It wasn't until 18 months later, after news stories critical of the treatment given veterans, that he began to get phone calls from officials offering help, "because they realized I hadn't been seen by anyone."
Now working as an EMT for a private ambulance company and serving as a volunteer firefighter, Trower hopes to become a professional firefighter.
LOOKING AHEAD
After what many experts describe as a chaotic few years marked by too few resources — though Walter Reed and other institutions have done remarkable work in areas such as prosthetics — the past year or so has seen some progress. Congressional legislation, pressure from veterans advocacy groups, continued efforts by veterans services groups and greater urgency by officials in the VA and Pentagon have moved things along.
Since August, military officials have encouraged soldiers who were near an explosion to get checked for traumatic brain injury, and Illinois and some other states have filled gaps for their own veterans. The transition between the Pentagon and VA is smoother, with record transfers being done electronically, and VA care has been extended for combat veterans.
A handful of key bills passed last year. They include efforts to prevent suicides, give wounded veterans cost-of-living adjustments, unify the disability rating system between the Pentagon and the VA and compel the military to examine personality-disorder discharges.
Much remains to be done to get mental health treatment to rural veterans or provide home care for disabled veterans, Cary says. More generally, what's needed is a comprehensive approach to treating veterans and families, as well as better funding mechanisms. One idea, he says, would be to sell war bonds to fund care, so the public could help.
Assessments vary as to where things stand. American Legion spokeswoman Ramona Joyce says that the unconventional nature of the war led to early problems but that officials are doing better now.
"I think you learn from your mistakes as time goes on," she says. "Yes, as far as PTSD and TBI, they didn't catch it in the first couple of years of the war, but better late than never."
Filner is less optimistic.
He cites a small program in his home district of San Diego, in which 30 wounded Marines were taught moviemaking. "They say, 'Now I have a life. I was sitting around doing nothing, thinking of committing suicide.'" But it took two years to get the program approved, he says. Now he's seeking support for a "de-boot camp" to help troops re-adjust to civilian life, but "nobody at DOD wants to talk about it."
"It doesn't seem like we've learned the lesson," Filner says.
And Cary worries that financial concerns could impede the current progress, given the mounting war costs and the looming recession.
pdine@post-dispatch.com | 202-298-6880
