There are many examples of the Bush administration's habit of transferring the consequences of its failures to non-governmental entities to clean up. From food banks stretched to the breaking point to feed the swelling ranks of the unemployed to the thousands of church and college volunteers who have come to rebuild our city destroyed not by a storm but by lust for a war.
This month, AARP's magazine focuses on another mess left for somebody else with Barry Yeoman's outrage-inducing When Wounded Vets Come Home.
In profiles of wounded veterans, their families and the doctors and bureaucrats who've been overwhelmed by the legions or returning soldiers and Marines, Yeoman paints a picture of a system of care that has failed our veterans, leaving their loved ones to act as nurses, caretakers, even legal advocates.
Lots of former "empty-nesters" complain of the travails of dealing with children coming home--doing laundry and dishes, putting up with odd schedules--but these complaints pale in comparison with dressing skin grafts, suctioning tracheostomy tubes and trying to figure out whether aberrant behaviors are the result of Traumatic Brain Injury, PTSD, or maybe both.
"I know many parents who are entering late middle age, some in their 50s and 60s, who are now full-time caregivers," says John Melia, executive director of the Jacksonville, Florida-based Wounded Warrior Project, which assists severely injured service members and their families. "Lifelong dreams have been shattered. The things that you do in your golden years—they’re not getting to do that kind of stuff because they’ve now got another job: full-time caregiver."
With the miraculous improvements in battlefield treatment and evacuations, the fatality rate of battlefield casualties has dropped dramatically, from 38% in World War II and 28% in Vietnam to only 6% in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The dark side of this miracle is a flood of traumatically wounded returnees who the military and VA can't, or won't, properly treat, leaving their families to shoulder the burden. As nearly half of active-duty troops are under 24, and nearly half unmarried, "family," as often as not, means "parents." For as many as 10,000 returned wounded, they are the primary care-givers.
The numbers, as even the DOD admits, are staggering.
As of April 29 the Pentagon counted 31,848 wounded service members in the current conflicts. Independent experts say that is a conservative figure. They estimate the number of brain injuries alone might total 320,000, or 20 percent of the 1.64 million who have served so far—a number that S. Ward Casscells, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, calls "plausible." In addition to the physical injuries, there are thousands of cases of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Last year military screeners detected psychological symptoms in 31 percent of Marines, 38 percent of soldiers, and 49 percent of National Guardsmen returning from war.
Not only must these parents act as primary care-givers and morale officers, but, all too often, legal advocates fighting for the care that military and VA facilities don't provide. The Army, in particular, has been the target of many complaints of expedited discharges, to remove the wounded from its facilities to the often less adequate VA system.
Cythia Lefever related the story of seeing the Army attempt to dump her son, Spc. Rory Dunn, from Army care long before he was ready.
Cynthia was convinced her son still needed the care of Reed’s top-notch surgeons, but the Army wanted him to sign a form initiating the discharge process. "Within days of his coming out of his coma, the colonel at Walter Reed was at Rory’s bedside, putting a pen in Rory’s hand," she says. "Rory had no forehead. No eyesight. No hearing. Couldn’t walk. He was doped on fentanyl." Cynthia walked over and took the pen out of the soldier’s hand. "Rory’s not signing anything today," she recalls saying.
With that experience, Lefever started down a long road that many veterans' parents travel, learning the legal and bureaucratic intricacies of the services and the VA, fighting to get their children the care they were promised but often denied.
The article tells the stories of other veterans, their families and the often frustrated officials who strive to care for them in a system overwhelmed by the casualties of this terrible, unnecessary war.
Yeoman also lists some organizations where wounded veterans and their families can seek assistance:
Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes
The Coming Home Project
The Wounded Warrior Project
Operation First Response
The online version of the article also contains a link to other resources for caregivers of returning vets, including Fisher House, which provides housing near military and VA hospitals for families of soldiers and veterans requiring long-term care.