The battle after the battle
Soldiers say military pushes them to discharge before medical needs are met
LES BLUMENTHAL;
The News TribuneLast updated:
July 11th, 2005 08:44 AM (PDT)
The day before his 22nd birthday, a bomb hanging from a tree along a road near Fallujah exploded above Rory Dunn’s Humvee.
Dunn’s forehead was crushed from ear to ear, leaving his brain exposed. His right eye was destroyed by shrapnel; the left eye nearly so. His hearing was severely damaged.
“I remember a bright flash. The trees lit up, and the Humvee was shaking,” Dunn recalled during a recent interview while curled up in an easy chair in the living room of his mother’s Renton home.
Within minutes of the May 2004 explosion, he was strapped on a stretcher and flown by helicopter to a hospital in Baghdad – the first step in his 10-month struggle to recover.
Yet, even as Dunn fought to overcome his traumatic brain injury and other wounds, his mother, Cynthia Lefever, fought the Army to ensure her son continued to receive critical care from Army specialists. Lefever said the Army tried to pressure her son into accepting a discharge before he was ready – pressure other severely wounded soldiers say they’ve experienced, too.
Lefever and other critics say the Army’s medical system, particularly Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., has been overwhelmed by the number of wounded returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They accuse the Army of attempting to discharge wounded soldiers before their essential medical needs are met and transfer them to Veterans Affairs medical facilities.
“The Army tried to get rid of him,” Lefever said. “It was immoral and unethical. The Army owes these kids.”
Army officials deny they’re taking advantage of wounded soldiers.
“There are no efforts to ‘rush’ anyone out of the Army or through medical treatment and the disability system,” Col. Dan Garvey, deputy commanding officer of the Army’s Physical Disability Agency, said in an interview via e-mail.
Soldiers are discharged if they no longer can “adequately perform” their assigned duties and have received “optimum medical care,” Garvey said. The process is subjective and can last months or more than year, he said, but soldiers are informed of their rights and can appeal.
“There must be a balancing act, and the system tries very hard to maintain that,” Garvey said.
The issue has attracted attention in Congress and among veterans groups.
John Fernandez, a 27-year-old retired 1st lieutenant from New York who lost part of each leg in Iraq, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee this spring the Army tried to discharge him before he received the medical care he was entitled to.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle), a member of the committee, said she heard similar stories from other wounded soldiers and their families.
“I think (the Army) underestimated the number of wounded. No one predicted this,” Murray said. “I don’t know whether they are overcrowded or just trying to cut costs. No one is talking about it.”
Clinging to life
Doctors initially gave Rory Dunn little chance of survival.
As he clung to life in the Baghdad hospital, they glued his left eye back into its socket and placed him in a deep medical coma to ease brain swelling. Five days later, Dunn was flown to a hospital in Germany, where his family had gone on “imminent death orders” to say their goodbyes. If he lived, they were told, he might need full-time care for the rest of his life.
Almost six weeks after he was wounded, Dunn emerged from his coma at Walter Reed, where he had been transferred. Days later, Lefever said, the Army asked her son to begin the discharge process. She objected.
During the coming months, before his skull was rebuilt, before a cornea transplant, before speech and physical therapy, the Army made at least three attempts to get her son to accept a discharge, Lefever said. In one instance, she said a top medical officer showed up in her son’s room in Ward 58, the neuroscience ward at Walter Reed, and said Dunn needed to immediately sign papers formally starting the discharge process.
“We all understood he couldn’t return to the Army, but he hadn’t even started his treatment,” Lefever said, adding that her son had just emerged from his coma.
In the fall of 2004, roughly five months after he was wounded, Lefever said her son was told to attend a meeting without his mother. During the meeting , which Lefever insisted on attending, Dunn was given three days to sign papers starting the discharge process or the Army would do it without his authorization. At that point, Dunn had not received the surgery that would rebuild his forehead.
“I felt bullied,” Lefever said.
During a six-week period stretching into February, Lefever said the Army stepped up the pressure, at one point offering to send her son to a hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., that specializes in traumatic brain injuries – but only if he first agreed to a discharge.
“I was disgusted,” Lefever said.
Though Dunn wanted out, Lefever said he wasn’t ready and felt the Army was trying to play her son off against her. In phone calls and in meetings, Lefever said her son was repeatedly told that his discharge was “none of his mom’s business.”
“Rory left his right eye, his forehead and his blood in the dirt in Iraq because the Army sent him there,” Lefever said in one e-mail to medical officials at Walter Reed. “Rory went and did his job as ordered by the Army, and deserves so much better than to sit and wait … depressed, angry, frustrated and contemplating suicide. Rory deserves the opportunity to ‘come back’ 100 percent both physically and mentally.”
Feeling overwhelmed, Lefever said she sought assistance from a veterans group, Disabled Veterans of America, as well as Sen. Murray’s office. The veterans group assigned an advocate named Danny Soto to Dunn’s case.
Soto said lots of soldiers feel they’re being “pushed out the door.” He blames the military for failing to adequately explain to the families of wounded soldiers that there will be a “continuity” of medical care after discharge.
After a series of meetings involving Dunn, Soto, a Murray aide, Lefever and Army officials, an agreement was reached that allowed Dunn to be sent to Palo Alto for treatment, then accept a discharge.
“All I wanted was the best for my son,” said Lefever, who made her feelings known to a string of Army officials, including generals at the Pentagon and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Lefever’s fight wasn’t unique.
‘I felt I was being rushed’
Fernandez, the retired 1st lieutenant, was injured in a friendly fire incident in Iraq in April 2003. His right leg was amputated below the knee, as was his left foot. He was fitted with eight prosthetics before he found ones that were comfortable.
A graduate of West Point, where he captained the academy’s lacrosse team, Fernandez studied the regulations and was able to “push back” and fend off the discharge for months.
“I had to fight to stay on duty,” Fernandez said, adding he didn’t want to be discharged until the Army provided him with the care he felt he deserved.
“A private just out of high school who doesn’t know his rights might just go with the flow,” he said. “You are dealing with injuries that will affect you and your family for the rest of your life.
It’s an emotional time. Then you get overwhelmed with all this information.”
Former Staff Sgt. Jessica Clements of Canton, Ohio, suffered a traumatic brain injury when a bomb – the military calls them “improvised explosive devices” – detonated while she was riding in a convoy near the Baghdad airport. To relieve brain swelling, Clements said, a neurosurgeon at the Baghdad hospital clipped off a piece of her skull and temporarily inserted it into her belly for safe keeping.
“I could feel it,” said Clements of the piece of skull stored in her belly for four months before it was removed and reattached.
As she lay in a bed at Walter Reed, Clements said, she received repeated telephone calls from an Army official telling her she needed to start the discharge process.
“I had no idea what was going on,” she said in an interview. “It was only two months after I was injured. I felt I was being rushed. My skull was in my stomach, and I was doing eight hours of therapy a day. It was very frustrating.”
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/v-printer/story/5012220p-4574442c.html
LES BLUMENTHAL;
The News TribuneLast updated:
July 11th, 2005 08:44 AM (PDT)
The day before his 22nd birthday, a bomb hanging from a tree along a road near Fallujah exploded above Rory Dunn’s Humvee.
Dunn’s forehead was crushed from ear to ear, leaving his brain exposed. His right eye was destroyed by shrapnel; the left eye nearly so. His hearing was severely damaged.
“I remember a bright flash. The trees lit up, and the Humvee was shaking,” Dunn recalled during a recent interview while curled up in an easy chair in the living room of his mother’s Renton home.
Within minutes of the May 2004 explosion, he was strapped on a stretcher and flown by helicopter to a hospital in Baghdad – the first step in his 10-month struggle to recover.
Yet, even as Dunn fought to overcome his traumatic brain injury and other wounds, his mother, Cynthia Lefever, fought the Army to ensure her son continued to receive critical care from Army specialists. Lefever said the Army tried to pressure her son into accepting a discharge before he was ready – pressure other severely wounded soldiers say they’ve experienced, too.
Lefever and other critics say the Army’s medical system, particularly Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., has been overwhelmed by the number of wounded returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. They accuse the Army of attempting to discharge wounded soldiers before their essential medical needs are met and transfer them to Veterans Affairs medical facilities.
“The Army tried to get rid of him,” Lefever said. “It was immoral and unethical. The Army owes these kids.”
Army officials deny they’re taking advantage of wounded soldiers.
“There are no efforts to ‘rush’ anyone out of the Army or through medical treatment and the disability system,” Col. Dan Garvey, deputy commanding officer of the Army’s Physical Disability Agency, said in an interview via e-mail.
Soldiers are discharged if they no longer can “adequately perform” their assigned duties and have received “optimum medical care,” Garvey said. The process is subjective and can last months or more than year, he said, but soldiers are informed of their rights and can appeal.
“There must be a balancing act, and the system tries very hard to maintain that,” Garvey said.
The issue has attracted attention in Congress and among veterans groups.
John Fernandez, a 27-year-old retired 1st lieutenant from New York who lost part of each leg in Iraq, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee this spring the Army tried to discharge him before he received the medical care he was entitled to.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle), a member of the committee, said she heard similar stories from other wounded soldiers and their families.
“I think (the Army) underestimated the number of wounded. No one predicted this,” Murray said. “I don’t know whether they are overcrowded or just trying to cut costs. No one is talking about it.”
Clinging to life
Doctors initially gave Rory Dunn little chance of survival.
As he clung to life in the Baghdad hospital, they glued his left eye back into its socket and placed him in a deep medical coma to ease brain swelling. Five days later, Dunn was flown to a hospital in Germany, where his family had gone on “imminent death orders” to say their goodbyes. If he lived, they were told, he might need full-time care for the rest of his life.
Almost six weeks after he was wounded, Dunn emerged from his coma at Walter Reed, where he had been transferred. Days later, Lefever said, the Army asked her son to begin the discharge process. She objected.
During the coming months, before his skull was rebuilt, before a cornea transplant, before speech and physical therapy, the Army made at least three attempts to get her son to accept a discharge, Lefever said. In one instance, she said a top medical officer showed up in her son’s room in Ward 58, the neuroscience ward at Walter Reed, and said Dunn needed to immediately sign papers formally starting the discharge process.
“We all understood he couldn’t return to the Army, but he hadn’t even started his treatment,” Lefever said, adding that her son had just emerged from his coma.
In the fall of 2004, roughly five months after he was wounded, Lefever said her son was told to attend a meeting without his mother. During the meeting , which Lefever insisted on attending, Dunn was given three days to sign papers starting the discharge process or the Army would do it without his authorization. At that point, Dunn had not received the surgery that would rebuild his forehead.
“I felt bullied,” Lefever said.
During a six-week period stretching into February, Lefever said the Army stepped up the pressure, at one point offering to send her son to a hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., that specializes in traumatic brain injuries – but only if he first agreed to a discharge.
“I was disgusted,” Lefever said.
Though Dunn wanted out, Lefever said he wasn’t ready and felt the Army was trying to play her son off against her. In phone calls and in meetings, Lefever said her son was repeatedly told that his discharge was “none of his mom’s business.”
“Rory left his right eye, his forehead and his blood in the dirt in Iraq because the Army sent him there,” Lefever said in one e-mail to medical officials at Walter Reed. “Rory went and did his job as ordered by the Army, and deserves so much better than to sit and wait … depressed, angry, frustrated and contemplating suicide. Rory deserves the opportunity to ‘come back’ 100 percent both physically and mentally.”
Feeling overwhelmed, Lefever said she sought assistance from a veterans group, Disabled Veterans of America, as well as Sen. Murray’s office. The veterans group assigned an advocate named Danny Soto to Dunn’s case.
Soto said lots of soldiers feel they’re being “pushed out the door.” He blames the military for failing to adequately explain to the families of wounded soldiers that there will be a “continuity” of medical care after discharge.
After a series of meetings involving Dunn, Soto, a Murray aide, Lefever and Army officials, an agreement was reached that allowed Dunn to be sent to Palo Alto for treatment, then accept a discharge.
“All I wanted was the best for my son,” said Lefever, who made her feelings known to a string of Army officials, including generals at the Pentagon and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Lefever’s fight wasn’t unique.
‘I felt I was being rushed’
Fernandez, the retired 1st lieutenant, was injured in a friendly fire incident in Iraq in April 2003. His right leg was amputated below the knee, as was his left foot. He was fitted with eight prosthetics before he found ones that were comfortable.
A graduate of West Point, where he captained the academy’s lacrosse team, Fernandez studied the regulations and was able to “push back” and fend off the discharge for months.
“I had to fight to stay on duty,” Fernandez said, adding he didn’t want to be discharged until the Army provided him with the care he felt he deserved.
“A private just out of high school who doesn’t know his rights might just go with the flow,” he said. “You are dealing with injuries that will affect you and your family for the rest of your life.
It’s an emotional time. Then you get overwhelmed with all this information.”
Former Staff Sgt. Jessica Clements of Canton, Ohio, suffered a traumatic brain injury when a bomb – the military calls them “improvised explosive devices” – detonated while she was riding in a convoy near the Baghdad airport. To relieve brain swelling, Clements said, a neurosurgeon at the Baghdad hospital clipped off a piece of her skull and temporarily inserted it into her belly for safe keeping.
“I could feel it,” said Clements of the piece of skull stored in her belly for four months before it was removed and reattached.
As she lay in a bed at Walter Reed, Clements said, she received repeated telephone calls from an Army official telling her she needed to start the discharge process.
“I had no idea what was going on,” she said in an interview. “It was only two months after I was injured. I felt I was being rushed. My skull was in my stomach, and I was doing eight hours of therapy a day. It was very frustrating.”
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/v-printer/story/5012220p-4574442c.html
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