Vietnam Veteran Lost Home For Christmas...and Dogs

Veteran loses home, dogs to Christmas fire
The New Mexican
By Tripp Stelnicki
December 31, 2016

In the early hours of Christmas morning, Fred Vigil lost everything he had.

Fred Vigil, 68, from Santa Fe, a Vietnam Veteran who served in 1967-68, stands over the remains of his home on Friday, December 30, 2016. Vigil’s home caught on fire on Christmas. He also lost his two dogs Paco and Loca. Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican

A fire, possibly started by a wood burning stove, consumed Vigil’s trailer parked off Rabbit Road, just after midnight Sunday. The fire might have taken Vigil, too, were it not for a miraculously timed beer run.

Vigil, 68, was showering, unaware, as the flames spread through his home. Nearby neighbors, celebrating late on the holiday evening, noticed the blaze when one stepped outside to grab beers from a parked car. They leapt into action, broke a window to enter the fiery trailer and pulled a disoriented Vigil to safety.

Meanwhile, Vigil’s old photographs, the fatigues he wore in Vietnam and his savings burned to the ground with the rest of his trailer in a matter of minutes.

“All my worldly things,” Vigil said. “It’s all gone.”

Worse, the two beloved dogs that helped Vigil cope with post-traumatic stress disorder — Paco, a boxer, and Loca, a German shepherd — did not escape. Because they didn’t bark or otherwise react to the fire, they were victims, Vigil believes, of smoke inhalation.
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Combat PTSD Bad Discharges May Not Be Lifetime Scarlet Letter

Pentagon review could help veterans shed ‘bad paper’ discharges linked to trauma
STARS AND STRIPES
By WYATT OLSON
Published: December 30, 2016

“So many of our servicemembers have developed PTSD and brain injuries while on active duty," he said. "Many...were undiagnosed until long after their service was completed."

The Defense Department announced Friday that it is reviewing and potentially upgrading the discharge status of veterans who might have been improperly discharged for reasons related to post-traumatic stress syndrome, sexual orientation, sexual assault and other circumstances.

“With today’s announcement, the department is reaffirming its intention to review and potentially upgrade the discharge status of all individuals that are eligible and that apply,” a Pentagon news release said.

The announcement comes a week after President Barack Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which included a bipartisan provision to help veterans who may have been erroneously given a less-than-honorable discharge due to bad behavior arising from mental trauma, such as PTSD or traumatic brain injury.

“Too many service members have lost access to their VA benefits because of mental health injuries that were not recognized when they left the military,” said Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee Personnel Subcommittee, in the same statement.

The provision will let veterans with mental health injuries and those who experienced military sexual trauma more easily have their discharges upgraded “so that they can get the care they need and the benefits they earned,” she said. read more here

They would not have PTSD or TBI if they did not risk their lives. Why should they have to pay for their service the rest of their lives just because we did not help them while they were still in? The DOD told them it was their fault when they pushed "Resilience Training" making them think they were weak instead of having a strong emotional core. How could they ask for help when they believed there was something wrong with them instead of right with why they served in the first place? They did not get the help they needed and it is up to us to make sure they get justice now.

Bad Leadership or Bad Recruits?

Combat PTSD, Legacy of Leaving?

Fight Back For Their Sake
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 30, 2016

He still has PTSD but I have a good marriage and so do a lot of us older wives. We wanted to leave a legacy of love, not of leaving.

How is it that we knew more then? Thirty-two years later, it seems as if most of us knew what to do so that we could have better lives with PTSD than this generation knows now. The other thing is that back then, we had to learn the hard way.

No one was going to the press to get coverage for talking about raising awareness for themselves while doing absolutely nothing meaningful. We had a hard enough time to get the press to report on what all of us were going through. 

No social media groups to seek out. No cell phones to call for help or even phone numbers other than 911. No computers to link us to others, or have the basic ability to learn about others so we no longer felt all alone.


Maybe we were just doing whatever we could because our lives depended on getting whatever help we could to help them? 

Ok, enough of that. What got me started on this is I read an article on Ask Ms. Vickie about a wife going through what all of us did.

I am a wife of a lieutenant colonel in Army Reserve. We have been married for 25 years. The first 10 years were fairly normal with some ups and downs.
The next 10 years from 2001 until 2011, my husband served multiple deployments overseas for the most recent two wars. He seemed to be gone more than he was home. Those were very turbulent years. Among those deployments were two-year deployments to Afghanistan, and his last deployment was one year in Iraq.

Sound familiar?  If not this next part will.

He is done with his counseling now, but not much else has changed. He lies about things and takes me for granted. He keeps threatening to file for divorce.
I've never stopped loving him and I can't see my life without him, but he acts like he doesn't love me and he says that he is numb to me. I know that all of this fits the PTSD pattern.
Is there anything that can be done or anything out there that might be able to save my marriage? Thank you for your help!

Normally she is pretty good with the advice but not so much this time.

So my question for you is, why you are staying with someone who doesn't respect you and doesn't want to be with you? In my opinion, he's already saying the marriage is over. You're the only one fighting for the marriage.

Good Lord! If I had a dollar for every time my husband said stuff like this hubby does, I'd have a second house! Everything going on comes with the territory. How about she suggest he actually see a counselor that knows what he/she is talking about? Like maybe one with the specialized training in combat trauma?

Yes, Ms. Vickie is right to talk about getting away from physical abuse. There is no excuse for that at all. It would have been a lot more helpful for her to explain to the "wife" why he does what he does, thinks the way he does and treats his family like this.

Most of it comes with PTSD, when they think they do not deserve help at the same time they demand respect from us. When they feel so miserable about what is going on inside of them, they want the rest of the family to be miserable too, then wonder why we are. When they are suffering and seek out anything to feel better, like buying stuff, making bad decisions, cheating or thrill seeking. That list is pretty endless, but while they don't seem to mind using that energy for all that, they can't seem to find the strength to fight back against what PTSD is doing to them or their family.

Twisted? Yep but when you understand what PTSD is, and what it does to them, you know the person we fell in love with is still in there. 

Advice to the "wife" is, get to a safe place, then learn whatever you can about what PTSD is. No matter if you go back with him or not, you still have to live with yourself and help your kids recover from all of this. 

It has nothing to do with you or really, even the way he feels about you, since it is a pretty safe bet that he doesn't feel much at all. You may be thinking it is about what you lack, but it isn't. Your kids wonder about themselves as well. They think it is their fault. Trust me. I did when I was an Army brat and then when I was older, a vet-Army wife. (Hubby was already out of the Army by the time we met.) 

We went though all that was bad but came out on the other side and we still hold hands when we go shopping. I wasn't just the only one fighting for my marriage, anymore than a lot of my friends were just fighting for theirs. We were fighting for our lives and the future we were creating for our kids.

Is it hard? Hell yes! We split up more times in the beginning than I can even remember but we never once stopped talking. He knew I love him but he also knew what I wouldn't put up with.

The last thing hubby or wife needs is a lazy lover. They need someone who loves them enough to fight for them. There was no way in hell I was about to let Vietnam take my husband away from me. She had him for just one year but haunted him trying to keep him with her. I said, screw that! I learned about that enemy and knew her weakness. I knew that love was a good weapon but it was like an unloaded bow. I didn't just have to figure out how to make the arrows but how to use them. So here's some sound advice.

Mood swings Use the good mood swings to enjoy a day together. Don't screw it up with talking about what they did wrong during a bad day. On a bad day, walk away. Go off and do what you want to do without hostility against him. Have your own life when he can't be part of it and share it when he can. Always let him know he is welcome to come with you but never force him to go or you'll both have a miserable time.

Learn what battles to fight and what ones to let go of
Your enemy is PTSD. Not him. It is trying to destroy the same person willing to risk their lives for the sake of someone else. That comes from a very strong emotional core that few others have. Think about the size of the population of this country then understand less than 1% serve now and less than 10% are veterans. Our husband are not the only rare ones. So are we!

Is it worth losing sleep because he didn't unload the dishwasher or take the trash out? Is it worth an argument because you want to go to a movie and the thought of sitting in dark theater with a bunch of strangers behind him is so repulsive that he causes a fight right before you are heading out the door? Pick you battles because you need as much time and energy as you can get to destroy the enemy instead of helping it defeat the person you are supposed to love.

It is alway easier to walk away than to stay in the short term but there is something you need to consider. If you walk away too soon without giving it all you have to give and getting whatever you can to help you help him, what will you miss?

If you thought they were special enough to fall in love with, then why aren't they special enough to fight for now? When I think about the last 15 years or so, imagining I would have gone though the worst times, walked away and would have missed the best times, it make me sick to think of all I would have missed. He still has PTSD but I have a good marriage and so do a lot of us older wives. We managed to do it all with a lot less than wives have now. We wanted to leave a legacy of love, not of leaving.

One of Two Killed in Helicopter Crash Named

FAMILY NAMES SOLDIER KILLED IN HELICOPTER CRASH NEAR LA PORTE
ABC NEWS 13
Updated 4 mins ago

LA PORTE, TX (KTRK) -- The name of one of the two soldiers killed during a routine training flight near La Porte has been released by his family. Relatives of 33-year-old Lucas Lowe from Hardin told ABC13 they've been notified of his death.

Lowe leaves behind a son, daughter and a wife who is pregnant with twins. He served in Iraq in 2008.

ABC13 has also learned that the other soldier killed in the crash is from the Houston area. His identity has not been released.
read more here

Killing Pain or Killing Veterans?

The claim made about Opioids is a valid one. The question is, why hasn't Congress done their jobs after all the years it has been reported in the past?

Not a new problem for veterans

Air Force veteran Ken Grady, 45, says the local VA prescribed him OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin and fentanyl patches in the 2000s because of a series of surgeries for back injuries. “The VA made it so easy,” he says. “It was endless, and I abused it.”

And one more thing to point out is this.

Last month, Mr. Grady had several teeth pulled by a VA contractor, who prescribed him Vicodin for the pain. Mr. Grady says he protested, but “you don’t have to twist my arm too much.” He relapsed, bought more pills on the street and landed back in jail. He hoped to be out by Christmas but his mother says it is taking longer than expected to find treatment and a place to stay.

The VA Hooked Veterans on Opioids, Then Failed Them Again
Wall Street Journal
By Valerie Bauerlein and Arian Campo-Flores
Photographs by Travis Dove for The Wall Street Journal

Shortly after enlisting in the Army, Robert Deatherage was prescribed Percocet for a back injury. Wounds from Afghanistan meant more painkillers.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.—Robert Deatherage, a 30-year-old Army veteran who has battled addiction to pain pills and heroin since suffering severe injuries in Afghanistan, says he reached rock bottom a year ago when he holed up in an empty church and tried to kill himself. Twice.

“I was just so sick of being as sick as I was,” he says. He put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, but it didn’t fire. He says he then used two syringes to shoot all the drugs he had, but didn’t overdose.

Mr. Deatherage took the failure as a spiritual sign and walked to the nearby Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The facility didn’t have any space and turned him away, offering only a jacket from the lost and found and a phone number for a homeless veterans coordinator. After he picked up his disability check a few days later, he checked into a hotel where he knew other addicts, including veterans.

“It gets discouraging,” Mr. Deatherage says. “It makes it easier to just say, ‘F--- it, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.’ ”
read more here

But this is nothing new.

Veterans dying from overmedicationCBS News
By Jim Axelrod
September 19, 2013
(CBS News) Veterans by the tens of thousands have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with injuries suffered on the battlefield. Many of them seek treatment at Veterans Affairs hospitals. Now a CBS News investigation has found that some veterans are dying of accidental overdoses of narcotic painkillers at a much higher rate than the general population -- and some VA doctors are speaking out.
Five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan left 35-year-old Army Spc. Scott McDonald with chronic back pain.
His wife Heather said over the course of a year, VA doctors in Columbus, Ohio prescribed him eight pain and psychiatric medications."It just got out of control," said Heather. "They just started pill after pill, prescription after prescription...and he'd come home with all brand-new medications, higher milligrams."

Then a VA doctor added a ninth pill -- a narcotic called Percocet. Later that evening, Heather came home from work and found Scott disoriented on the couch.
"And I asked him," Heather recalled, "'You didn't by chance by accident take too many pills, did you?' And he's like, 'No, no. I did what they told me to take, Heather.' I popped a pillow under his head and that's how I found him the next morning, exactly like that."
McDonald wasn't breathing. The coroner's report ruled his death accidental. He had been "overmedicated" and that he died from the combined effects of five of his medications.
read more here

But that wasn't new either

Veterans with PTSD more likely to get addictive painkillers despite the risks, VA study showsBy Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, March 6, 4:34 PM (2012)
CHICAGO — Morphine and similar powerful painkillers are sometimes prescribed to recent war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress along with physical pain, and the consequences can be tragic, a government study suggests.
These vets are at high risk for drug and alcohol abuse, but they’re two times more likely to get prescriptions for addictive painkillers than vets with only physical pain, according to the study, billed as the first national examination of the problem. Iraq and Afghanistan vets with PTSD who already had substance abuse problems were four times more likely to get these drugs than vets without mental health problems, according to the study.
Subsequent suicides, other self-inflicted injuries, and drug and alcohol overdoses were all more common in vets with PTSD who got these drugs. These consequences were rare but still troubling, the study authors said.read more here 

But that was nothing new either. 

Rise in drug prescriptions may signal abuseBy Gregg Zoroya - USA TodayPosted : Saturday Nov 1, 2008
The sharp rise in outpatient prescriptions paid for by the government suggests doctors rely too heavily on narcotics, says Army Col. Chester “Trip” Buckenmaier III, of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Recently, at least 20 soldiers in an engineer company of 70 to 80 soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., shared and abused painkillers prescribed for their injuries, according to court testimony.
“The groundwork for this toxic situation was laid out through the continual prescription of highly addictive, commonly overused drugs,” said Capt. Elizabeth Turner, the lawyer for one defendant in the case.
In response to six suicides and seven drug-related deaths among soldiers in Warrior Transition Units — created for the Army's most severely injured — aggressive efforts are underway to manage prescription drugs, says Col. Paul Cordts, chief of health policy for the Army surgeon general. These include limiting prescriptions to a seven-day supply and more closely monitoring use.

But that wasn't new either 

Autopsy: Mix of pain meds killed Irwin soldierThe Associated PressPosted : Friday Aug 22, 2008 8:08:04 EDT
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — An autopsy of a soldier who died while training at Fort Irwin has revealed she was killed by a combination of prescription drugs she was taking for pain.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department made the finding about the accidental death of Spc. Emily T. Ort, 24, of Willis, Texas.
“There is no evidence of suicide,” the report said. “The decedent did not have a history of chronic drug abuse.”
On May 3, Ort was discovered unresponsive in her sleeping bag and was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy was performed a few days later, but the report was not released until this week.
Ort had acetaminophen, morphine, hydrocodone and gabapentin as well as anti-anxiety drugs Valium and oxazepam in her system, the report said.
The soldier was apparently taking Vicodin and Valium for injuries she sustained during a 2007 car accident.
The night before she died, Ort told her mother that her medication was stolen and her doctor prescribed morphine and a muscle relaxer as replacements, the report said.http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/ap_irwindeath_082208/

I could keep going but I have such informed readers you get the point.