The Nation: How the Pentagon Is Cheating Wounded Vets -- Soldiers Aren't Disposable

[unhappycamper]

How the Pentagon Is Cheating Wounded Vets -- Soldiers Aren't Disposable
The Nation / By Joshua Kors

May 6, 2010 | The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther's life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant's head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.

"I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at," he says. "I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me." Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors -- including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge -- was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.

Then came the headaches. "They'd start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank," he says. "The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye."

Doctors at Camp Taji's aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn't, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.

"To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face," says Luther. "Then when they said 'personality disorder,' I was really confused. I didn't understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain."



unhappycamper comment: This shit makes me just plain nuts. You enlist, go to combat, get injured and you get a hidy ho fuck you from the DoD because of an 'existing personality disorder'? Gimmeafuckingbreak. If you're good enough to pass the entrance exam you're good enough to get treated for wounds suffered, physical or mental. Period. :(

[Solly Mack]

1. k/r

[pinboy3niner]

2. Another version of insurance companies' "pre-existing condition" ruse

"Personality disorder" has been used to deny veterans' claims for decades--it's not just DoD, it's the VA, too. It's the equivalent of "pre-existing condition"--not service-connected, so no VA benefits.

I'm with you, unhappy. This shit makes me nuts, too. After what our troops are going through now, with stop-loss and MULTIPLE multiple deployments, they really don't need this crap. Talk about adding insult to injury!

[amborin]

3. K&R