Ch 7
The Decline
San Angelo, TX. It’s impossible to even say without first mentioning the water. If it were only the harshest water ever, or the smelliest water anywhere it would not be anything to even bring up, but it’s both (and trust me, it is hard to say that when the smell of burning flesh is forever seared in your brain). It is not natural to feel “nasty” only after you take a shower, nor for an American city of over 100,000 to have sewage backups citywide where inside or out the smell is inescapable. I have adapted many hygiene routines from my more interesting days of service, bottled water and baby wipes can take over especially when there are boil warnings for the brownish tap water….
Anyways, it was now the summer of 2008, and although the process of moving had not only become tiresome but increasingly taxing on my health. Things were looking up though in many regards. As to myself I was able to initiate another appeal and in the first few months alone had several appointments at the local VA clinic. I was really impressed with the homely atmosphere, and for the time it lasted it was just like going to see extended family. Well, at least when you talk about everyone other than the two doctors that just happened to be assigned to me.
Again let me reiterate. The majority of the staff during my encounters with the VA have been people I am proud to have on my team. Hard workers, friendly, caring, professional, anything you need them to be to help you as a Veteran and a person. I have had many VA personnel slip me information and files along the way which they knew put their career at risk, and just as many who would say point blank they would love to help but they were afraid of the repercussions. Most, but not all….
Within the first year there I had officially been on 33 different medications thru the VA system;
(---Medications thru VA so far… Morphine, Hydrocodone, Omeprazole, Quetiapine Fumarate, Sertraline, Simvastain, Pantoprazole, Lortab, Cyclobenzaprine, Olanzapine, Divalproex, Docusate, Gabapentin, Oxycodone, Sennosides, Ranitidine, Quitiaprine, Trazadone, Ambien, Methocarbamol, Zoloft, Flexeril, Percocet, Neuyrontin, Vicodin, Butalbital, Fioriciet, Protonix, Zocor, Molindone, Prilosec, Buspirone, Etodolac; 33 and counting (literally, I still do not have all my VA records yet so there could be more I have been subjected to not listed). This dose not include the multiple “pain relief ointments” prescribed (one of which helped, but the VA stopped carrying it, and replaced with on which burned like fire for hours, happy days…), nor the dozens of OTC medications to try and avoid heavy medications in the first place, plus the one‘s to counteract the prescriptions.)
The majority of these I had waited three months to, as I was told “make sure the drug has penetrated your system and had time to take affect”. Occasionally I would be prescribed one that I couldn’t even stomach for a week the side affects and symptoms were so volatile. I repeated my intent on “no narcotic drug of any sort until every option was thoroughly exhausted”. I had held out at first, even let the VA put me on antipsychotics as “possible nerve suppressers”, been thru several treatments so far as the pain only progressed more. Well I gave in a little, a little became a lot and before I knew it I was being prescribed 100mg of Narcotics with almost a dozen other medications and supplements each day.
A touch more on this, it was well debated for years by this point. My pain tolerance was off the chart and with two young kids I wanted to make sure everything was done to avoid this decision. By the end of the first year out of the Army I would not touch alcohol and was one to even refuse an aspirin or ibuprofen when needed. I was driven to raise my pain tolerance as any drug would only gain tolerance. When it finally came to compromising these lines drawn in the dirt it was the last and only path not traveled. I weighed being an absentee father, unable to get out of bed, as worse than the medicine it would take to get me possibly up and going again….
Physical therapy had been at the forefront. The military had done an exceptional job in me in both the initiative and the knowledge to do this on my own, at first anyways. After several debilitating moves I found myself in San Angelo with no access to a gym, which did not seem like too large of an issue but I found myself more “limited” in what I could do overall. I would save up and go out and buy equipment to help out, weights, a bench, even a punching bag. None of it helped as my ability decreased at a more rapid pace and I could no longer meet any goal I was setting for myself on the best of days.
Other treatments at this time only made things worse. A TENS unit to administer a self-shock treatment anywhere/anytime to my spine, the medications of course, chiropractors popping my spine without diagnosing it first, but in particular at this time was a pain specialist that I was assigned to. I would have to drive an over two hundred mile round trip twice a month to have needles repeatedly inserted into my spine. Corizone injections, a steroid. Unfortunately it would be well after I quit the treatments that my wife found out that there is suppose to be a recovery period after each treatment. In being confined to a vehicle for hours afterwards they were doomed to not only fail but be counterproductive.
Before this there were more good days than bad. Even with many of those bad days having me totally incapacitated, I still felt well adjusted and was hopeful to be able to overcome my injuries if I worked hard enough and bore the suffering with a grin. After a couple of month I had to quit the injections though. Lockups became as common as breathing, and a vast number of joints in my body started having their own problems, from knuckles to shoulders, hips to knees. Every single joint in my body popped just from moving the smallest of movements . From fingers, wrist, elbows, shoulders, neck, back, hips, knees, ankles, all the way to toes. Since all VA doctors that this has been brought up to have ignored the issue, all I have is my own opinion, but it seems I have/had full blown arthritis and I am still under thirty years old today.
So by the summer of 2009 I was on a steady regiment of morphine and hydrocodine for pain, no treatment plan and had received yet another denial on my claim. This time the VA claimed their paperwork on my claim showed no injuries to my spine whatsoever (later told it may have been a mix up of files…), in direct opposition to paperwork I had from the VA stating otherwise. It was not the first time we realized this would not be a normal process, but nowhere in my mind did the concept ever lay that things would have come to where they have. To me and those I told, it seemed a simple open and shut case. I had facts provided by the VA, and knew those facts justified compensation based in the VA’s guidelines, to easy right?
I had given a copy of everything I had over to the VA (it is recommended, even thought the information is given to you by the VA, it is insisted that you “cover your own tail“ by making sure the claims department had a copy of everything available to you). This was again not just a delay but detrimental. We were a family of four, still living at the poverty line. In the years prior we had not only liquidated every asset we could but exhausted any favors I was holding. So while the world was reckoning with a debt crises we were finding ourselves in a world of financial hurt ourselves.
