Back Home, Disabled Vets Fight Injuries, Red Tape

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The yellow ribbons are faded and fraying outside the neatly appointed house where Jay Briseno lies tethered to a respirator, his nearly motionless, 21-year-old body a shrunken shadow of the young man who last year went marching off to war.

Shot in the back of the neck in Baghdad on a sweltering afternoon in June 2003, Briseno was rushed with all the speed and efficiency the Army could muster to one hospital after another, brought back from multiple heart attacks and strokes.

But Briseno isn't a soldier anymore. He is a veteran, facing a lifetime of excruciating disability. The efficient war-fighting machine he was a part of has moved on. His care is left to his parents and sisters, who, bent over his bed day and night, are struggling to adjust.

For Briseno and his family — as for thousands of others wounded in the Iraq war — the transition from the life they knew as soldiers to a future as disabled veterans is filled with frustration and pain. The military is more efficient than ever in treating its wounded. But after the battle-scarred leave Army hospitals, they often find themselves on their own in an unfamiliar and difficult-to-navigate thicket of benefits and services

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-wounded8aug08,1,2869030.story?coll=la-home-headlines