Category Archives: Veteran Health Care

A Veteran Speaks to his Son

At the end of 2012 I received an email from a Vietnam veteran,  an ER physician, who had received my book, and wanted to order another one for his son.  Below is the string of emails back and forth.  I am so grateful that my story helped this veteran father share with his son after all these years.

Dear Quynn,

Your book appeared on my desk one day.

I just received treatment for PTSD which I thought I might have
mildly, until I became unable to practice as a physician in July
and suicidal in December, at which I went to the VA and they
secured a spot for me in the Six Week In-patient PTSD program
at the Memphis VA.

Four of the kindest people in the world there helped me see that
I’d actually been carrying a heavy load and I was OK.

I’m getting a divorce, final soon. I was angry all the time, isolated, all
the classic symptoms.  For some reason my ex-wife refuses to accept I
have PTSD, even though I was a rifleman for a full year with the
9th Infantry Division, have a Purple Heart, witnessed children
being killed. She says my deeper problem is a poor relationship
with my mother who admittedly was not a good person.

I tell her watching all your friends die, and children, is worse
than a bad mom but she just walks away.

I can never figure that out. Do you have any idea why she wouldn’t
want to believe I have PTSD?

I’m reading your book in little bits and doses (I already have a
copy, that’s how I knew to write you) because it is so powerful it’s
all I can stand.

Thanks for writing your exceptional book.

R,

Thank you for sharing a bit of your experience, and thank you for your kind words about my book. Maybe someone put the book on your desk because they thought you needed it. I have had books at the Memphis VA I think.
Regarding your wife’s feeling about your situation, I would imagine that there are issues that you might still have with your mother, who doesn’t? I find that all these issues can bundle together into a big knot, but once the PTSD is in the light, it can possibly be easier to see and understand any issues that were created during childhood.  Wives often have a very hard time of it in this situation, the hardest actually.  Just keep moving towards healing. I mentioned this issue (divorce) in my book. “Everyone has a place, even if it isn’t with you.”
I am curious, when did you serve?

Thank you for reaching out,

 

Quynn,

I was with E/6/31st in the 9th Inf. Div. from April 1968 to 12/68,
and then C/4/47th in the Mobile Riverine Force of the 9th 12/68-4/5/69.

I happily give you permission to use any or all of what I said.

I sent a copy of your book to my son and then had a
nearly two hour talk with him last week, first I’ve talked with him since June 2011.
He’s a junior in HS so had a front row seat to see my anger and isolationism and it occurred to me
after reading your book that he probably didn’t know I had five
entrance and exit holes in my helmet or that I witnessed children
being executed by the VC or that I think I’m the only guy from my
squad to survive.

He didn’t. He just knew I’d been wounded.

I told him I didn’t expect him to forgive me but that knowing the
horrific things that happened to me might give him some under-
standing, which sometimes helps a bit.

Oddly enough, seeing those children killed didn’t harden my
heart exactly, although it put me on the other side of a glass wall,
the rest of the world being on the other. But it did make me really
good with caring for children as patients, and various nurses have
told me  I should have been a pediatrician, and as an ER doc I
have saved the lives of a few kids who were in the final stages of
dying which isn’t as easy as it sounds, believe me.

So maybe those awful incidents helped in a way.

I really owe you so much for your book, as I never would have
talked with him had it not been for your book.

Thank you.

Anonymous, MD

Every Day is Veterans Day- Veteran Health Care

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I wanted to wait until the day after Veterans Day this year to write here.  Veterans Day is special, but it is the day, and many days after, that really matter. It is good to honor those in the Armed Forces, and it is more important to take care of their needs everyday.  They do what they do on our behalf, whether we as individuals ‘want’ them to fight or not, and so it is the duty of Americans to provide care when needed.

“Regard your soldiers as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!”
Sun Tzu

Here are five facts about Veteran’s Health Care.  Number 5 from that list is the following:
5. Nearly one third of returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have a mental health condition. Nearly 730,000 of the 2.4 million men and women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home with a mental health condition, according to the National Council for Behavioral Health. The same group finds that 30 percent of veterans have their mental health needs met with “evidence-based care.” The rest either do not seek out services or receive care that has not shown to improve outcomes.

The following article outlines areas of veteran care that are not working at their optimum capacity.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-12/veterans-home-from-war-battle-u-s-agency-supposed-to-help-them.html

We need to be better at this.

“Have the courage to act instead of react.”
Earlene Larson Jenks