I was the first U.S. Postal Employee retired for combat PTSD back in 1986. In 1987, as a workstudy at the Vet Center in Cincinnati, I wrote the original instructions for PTSD stressor letters in use today.(The VA didn't have any instructions on what to put in the letter.)

My booklet How To Receive Compensation For PTSD has been the word-of-mouth PTSD Bible since 1987. My real expertise has always been the stressor letter because a lot of veterans put information in stressor letters that the VA can use against them, and advice after the claim has been filed.

(The veteran must, however, be represented by a service organization, preferably one that will actually help them use the advice I've given them.) This is becoming a major problem as service organizations become overwhelmed with more claims.

Anyway, I've started a little blog which I'll add to from time to time. I've been 100% since 1997.

Editor note: I made an edit due to requirements of TOS, please do not take offense. Our Admin has given much leeway on this forum, due to the PTSD special needs. The links to other veteran commercial sites similar to Military.com (blogs included) has been discussed to great extremes. I was told not to allow those links. I was also told you can copy and paste to your hearts content, as long as copyrights are not violated. Since your material is copyrighted by you feel free to post.
Dave Barker

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DaveBarker,

I am a VietNam Vet with PTSD. I received the best care I could have found in the VA system at the Colmery/Oneal VA in Topeka Kansas. It is a 3 month in patient program. Very intensa and PTSD specific. You are treated with dignity and with respect there by all. I highly recommend this program to any vet with PTSD.

There are good programs that can help PTSD. I just don't think making a veteran relive the trauma is one of them. It didn't work back in 1981, and I don't think it will work now. I think having someone to listen to a veteran's problems dealing with civilian life and offering solutions to problems is more effective than trying to make a veteran stop thinking about the war. Not thinking about the war is something that won't happen and a combat veteran with PTSD will have to live with it always.

Thanks, Dave.
Dennis

I think that is a valid statement as to how far we have come in a few short years. It was at that same Topeka facility back in early 80's that I was diagnosed with PTSD! The difference was, diagnosis seemed to be the final act of completion of the job, was told to suck it up and get on with your life! Nothing even resembling treatment was ever offered or suggested.

quote:

Originally posted by jackiericketts:
I am a VietNam Vet with PTSD. I received the best care I could have found in the VA system at the Colmery/Oneal VA in Topeka Kansas. It is a 3 month in patient program. Very intensa and PTSD specific. You are treated with dignity and with respect there by all. I highly recommend this program to any vet with PTSD.

One Three Marine, I would appreciate it if you would send me an e-mail that would link me to your information. This way we do not violate the TOS on the site. I did a yahoo search for the book and came up empty handed.

VeteransPTSDPortal@yahoo.com

Semper Fi

quote:

OneThreeMarine: "I just don't think making a veteran relive the trauma is one of them. It didn't work back in 1981, and I don't think it will work now."

Point well taken.

quote:

I was the first U.S. Postal Employee retired for combat PTSD back in 1986. In 1987, as a workstudy at the Vet Center in Cincinnati, I wrote the original instructions for PTSD stressor letters in use today.(The VA didn't have any instructions on what to put in the letter.)

My booklet How To Receive Compensation For PTSD has been the word-of-mouth PTSD Bible since 1987. My real expertise has always been the stressor letter because a lot of veterans put information in stressor letters that the VA can use against them, and advice after the claim has been filed.

(The veteran must, however, be represented by a service organization, preferably one that will actually help them use the advice I've given them.) This is becoming a major problem as service organizations become overwhelmed with more claims.

Anyway, I've started a little blog which I'll add to from time to time. I've been 100% since 1997.

Good work!

Sometimes a lot of good can come from a single first step.

Thanks for posting with us.

OldAFcop:
Thanks. In the past 14 years, I've managed to make the PTSD claim process work for about 3000 combat vets. I get several calls a week, and mainly, the vets just want someone to talk to and guide them in the right procedure. I've talked to Nam vets from Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, and every state in the union over the years. Some of those vets have really been screwed over by the VA.
I talked to vet today with Type 2 diabetes. The VA near Spokane told him because he wasn't service-connected that he signed away his health benefits when got out. They didn't even tell him he could file for the Type 2 as presumptive for Agent Orange.
I don't understand why the VA does this because they have improved in so many other ways but they continue to push veterans away when they need help the most.

Here is a little article about daily living with Combat PTSD.

Living With PTSD

quote:

The VA near Spokane told him because he wasn't service-connected that he signed away his health benefits when got out.

This is an ongoing problem with DoD dumping our servicemembers into the VA system without fully debriefing them and evaluating them. This causes undue hardship on veterans, their families and the communities in which they live.

Hi OneThreeMarine.

I'm one of "the others". I was never in a combat zone --at least not a military combat zone outside of the U.S. I am female ex medcorps, my problem is PTSD/MST, and today I reached a point of sheer awestruck shock and anger at my fellow medical people in the VA system.

It's wierd feeling so much anger and so much outraged shame. I never really understood why, when I was AD, I ended up with this good rep for just doing my job. Today I finally realized just how much difference there is between people like myself to whom "going the extra mile" for patient or client isn't (it's just part of the job), and those people in various areas of healthcare who prefer victim-blaming over dealing with a broken system.

I am in school again, trying to get a master's, and the PTSD is kicking my butt but it doesn't look like I will be getting any official help anytime soon. People here have been able to tell me some of the things happening are actually pretty common for all of us, which helps in trying to cope though some of it makes no sense. I just read part of your blog, and in it found the beginnings of an idea.

I too have trouble with crowds. In class, or any other public place, I automatically sit with my back protected and with a clear unobstructed line to the nearest exit. It makes no difference to tell myself over and over that these college kids (I am 48) are not going to try to hurt me...I slink behind higher-than-my-head hedge plantings by the sides of buildings and watch till the crowds thin out and I feel safe enough to move out into the public walkways again.

I ghost down the parking lots on the edge of campus to the rec center's pool at times few will be there, and swim in the outside lane nearest the outer building wall and the emergency exits by preference. I can no longer swim in the same lane as a guy I don't know, or stay in a lane with people I don't know on either side, especially the wide lane people use for water games.

I called someone yesterday and asked if she could meet me for coffee downtown, because I had to get out of my place because the landlord had once again walked in and this time brought along his maintenance guys, and they had been banging, pounding, etc all day long and I was close to losing control...my "safety zone" had already been severely compromised by this landlord's actions (eg peeking into my bedroom window often enough that I now keep the curtains closed all the time, showing up frequently but without discernable pattern and simply unlocking the outside door and walking in) and this newest cacaphony felt like being under siege.

Strangely enough, my landlord is a retiree, and knows I have PTSD. He also knows I am in trouble at school...and that this is finals week.

I got to the coffeeshop first. By the time I ordered I knew where everyone in the place was and what they were doing. I sat all the way in the back, with my back to the L-shaped wall, barricaded behind a table in front and another to the side, with enough space to jump and run for the door along a clear path at the edge of the seating area. None of this happened with conscious thought. While I talked with my friend, I kept track of everyone's movements.

I called the crisis line, who referred me to the VA, and talked with the people at the VA specifically "mandated to do whatever it takes" to get help for any veteran who needs it. It's that last conversation I'm refering to with my third paragraph above.

Why does outrage at a colleague not worjking up to my old self-standards open up vistas in my head? I have no idea, really. It just occurs to me suddenly that competance is not always a matter of knowledge or ability. Sometimes competance is a matter of caring. Now I get it, in my gut, what they meant when they said we were all crazy because as soon as we identified someone as a patient we just forgot everything but them...and they wanted that kind of crazyness. People like me were good because they could teach us to take care of ourselves first (or our patients would die when we got hurt and more would die when someone had to break off and help us instead of seeing to them) a lot more easily than they could teach people with good self preservative instincts how to care about patients.

Before I only got it, in my head.

They need me, out there. Me and people like me. We are really needed, in a system so broken that the people in it aren't crazy. I don;t know where I am going to go; I have no idea what place or job like that a person with PTSD/MST can handle. I don't know how I am going to stick this long enough to graduate. I don't even know how I am going to survive the next 2 1/2 months before I can get out of here and away from this landlord...

So maybe this wierd shifting perspective casts a different light on your blog too. I used to wonder why a non combat vet would have feelings and behaviors that looked related to combat situations. Maybe I get that now, too.

Maybe it's as simple as reacting to a threat, from a source of previous threat. Maybe it's as easy as understanding that most of the danger in the world we inhabit comes from other people, and in crowds there are too many to keep track of and too much possibility of damage. Once your subconscious has learned that *shrugs*. I don;t worry about being mauled by a wild animal int he woods. I don't spend time avoiding bees or avalanches when it snows. I even went white water rafting recently and came back bone tired, soaking wet, a little sick from the amount of water I swallowed the first time I got tossed into the drink, but not worried about either water or the people who'd been with me. On the water I was too busy alternately trying to survive and watching the things we never see anymore (huge trees, circling hawks, incredible water and sky), being rescued by some of them and helping rescue some of them. Back home I felt an unaccountable relaxation that extended far enough to enable me to sit in a crowded noisy room with them for a quick sandwich.

So it wasn't gunfire...but they pulled me back into the raft right before we hit a second rapids...and then one gal had such a bad time she panicked before we managed to get her into the raft.

Maybe we all just need people we can believe have our backs when we are around all those dangerous unknowns. Maybe humans are wired that way. Maybe combat experience just makes that extreme.

Maybe I should quit rambling and get back to trying to figure out where I belong, now that I've had this tremendous (and for me it is) revelation that I am still needed.

Thanks for posting, and blogging.

quote:

Maybe I should quit rambling and get back to trying to figure out where I belong, now that I've had this tremendous (and for me it is) revelation that I am still needed.

You bet you are needed. Every single person on this site is needed for their valuable service to the Nation.

Whaddya trying to do, OLDAFcop, make me tear up again?

I always did have a good relationship with the cops on base. Most of them were extra-milers too, hey?

quote:

Originally posted by OldAFcop:

quote:

Maybe I should quit rambling and get back to trying to figure out where I belong, now that I've had this tremendous (and for me it is) revelation that I am still needed.

You bet you are needed. Every single person on this site is needed for their valuable service to the Nation.

Got to agree!

Yeah well in my case I can only say too damn bad the VA doesn't agree with y'all.

Had that 2nd appointment with that person I was refered to earlierm the one that was basically assessing my situation and had said she was going to enquire into getting me therapy where I live since transportation is such a giant problem. In essence she repeated what the VSO here said when I told him about this...that the VA doesn't make any effort to help veterans who are not already listed as service connected (I guess unless the veteran is fromt he current conflicts, but that's just because those are a big political football right now). So I am, pardon me, still F$$$ed. And this coming right after having ther "coordinator" int he brand spanking new shiney program bascially tell me all "coordinators" are responsible for is to say "we have x appointments, which one do you want?" and that if you can't physically mange that then they write in your records you refused help, really have me snorting at the idea that any person at all connected with the VA or the creeps who decide how it works and how much money it gets are either any good or give a blue damn about any of us.

Let's face it, you two...as far as any of the powers that be and many of the "providers" of healthcare are concerned, we might as well ALL suicide this second. They would so obviously be happy at that!!

It just sooo steams me that some congressperson somewhere at this very momnet is likely blithly lying about how great this program is, and how well it is working, and how it is checked, and how it is mandated to do whatever it takes to get our veterans whatever they need...

It makes you want to lay a curse on 'em all like..."May you find out what it is like...without anyone else getting hurt in the process..."

You've got some options here:

First, you can write to a Member of Congress. These letters are taken very seriously as we have discussed elsewhere.

Secondly, any decisions made by rating boards are subject to appeal.

Lastly, each VA Medical Center has Patient Advocates who are more than willing to assist veterans on an individual and confidential basis.

In one case, I personally can vouch for a doctor being terminated by the VA by a single complaint to a Patient Advocate.

Thanks for your post.

yes, I could write to a congressperson, that is true.

as for rating desicions, who cares at this point about rating decisions? OldAFCop, I need help NOW to get through school, and those bastards won;t even read anything for months. What good is a decision that comes down the last month I am in school, even if it is favorable? By that time I will either have made it or I will have flunked out as so many of us already did trying to get through a program without help.

Patient advocates are only as good as the individual int he job, and they can be just as bad or worse than the rest of the employees in the VA pseudohealthcare system. The patient advocate at the VA hospital in which I was repeeatedly refused treatment for depression/PTSD did nothing to help with that situation, told me flat that I would never get any sort of dental care though my dissolving jaw is caused by misdone dental work while I was AD...and I never spoke with her after being threatened by the head of one department since with her track record you have to know she wasn't going to do anything about it.

I guess that brings us back to writing congress. I just dont see a thing any congressperson could do for ME...they aren;t going to get me the money I should have had from the montgomery bill I am now past 10 years on using and never used because I was told years ago I was not eligible although I was, they aren't going to get me any kind of treatment or support that isn't so far away I can't attend at all most seasons of the year or I have to give up on school to attend, they aren't going to get me the decent safe housing consisting of something more than a 10x10 room in a house with 4-10 other people which I need and cannot manage without more than the monthly budget I am trying to exist on now, they are not going to get me the medical care to fix my jaw or my back or my knees so that I don;t have to contenplate losing my sight and not being able to walk even the 5 blocks to class I do now, and they sure are not going to fix the falsehoods in my medical records. The most likely thing out of them would be just another politely worded denial based on flase findings and an expectation that I can do everything for myself and am just goldbricking. Damnit, when has any of these people ever known what it is actually like to try to do sixteen things at once when you're already so overloaded you can;t even stand to be in a classroom with 30 people for 3 hours once a week, and exst terrified of not making it through this program and ending up back in a crudy job at 50 and then on the street and then in a grave?

The VA won't even treat me for my 104 degree fevers when they start...they say I just have a virus and send me off with nothing and then by the time my temperature climbs that high I can;t go anywhere anyway so I stay at home and wait to live or die. Of coruse, then they cn point to my records and say I didn;t have a 104 degree fever last time....


What congressperson is going to change any of that, I ask you! They don;t give anythign for my life, and never will. It would just be nice if I could somehow get one of the to see what they are doing to veterans en masse, to the point that he or she made some difference.

Even the new GI BIll is just a slap in the face to so many of us...I wasn't AD in afghanistan or iraq, and wasn;t AD after 9-11...so I get to struggle here alone and unaided and broke when a lot of the stress would be eliminated if I had the money for decent housing and food and text books instead of trying to get by on borrowing or using library reserves or just lecture notes. and I am far from the only one.

Look, it all just sucks, and the ones who get anywhere are the exceptions, not the rule.

Something to consider Prismatic. I have had two friends who had medical problems yet had never applied for service connection or put in a claim. The VA medical types treated them on something called like "presumption of service connection". I cannot pull out the references for that, but I can attest that such things did exist. They got full treatment based on that presumption, and I have since got both of them to put in claims and they are receiving disability payments. I don't know if the presumptive health care helped or not. Something to look into, anybody else come across this before?

The presumptive service connection was probably something to do with Agent Orange like Type 2 Diabetes. That means if you have it, it's an automatic service connection like certain kinds of cancers associated with AO.

PTSD is different, and until recently, was usually associated with combat or major disasters in the military. About a year ago, I helped a veteran with a stressor letter for a beating (by a DI) he took in boot camp that caused him to be discharged during the Vietnam War. He had tons of proof and a witness, and the DI had been prosecuted and discharged later for another beating. They gave this veteran a service connection for PTSD.