I think it is funny that the VA and Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. who services mortgages for the VA has foreclosed and is kicking a 100% combat disabled and almost totally housebound veteran into the streets and will not work with him to save his home.

      It all began when the veteran who was moved to Fayetteville, NC, by his then new wife, a place where he knew no one and had neither family nor friends. Within eighteen months of moving here his wife had cleaned him out of about $140,000 and gotten him into over $200,000 in debt.

      He had received the monies from his 4 years as an inpatient and outpatient at the VAMC in North Chicago, Illinois where he had met his wife. At the time they met he was a psychiatric inpatient at the VAMC and she was a nurse on the hospital ward where he was a patient. Reflecting back I often wonder if the reason she had moved him/me far from the VAMC soon after he/I received a rating of 100% disabled was that she feared retribution or at least a chastisement from the VA for marrying a patient and a vulnerable psychiatric patient at that. She need not have worried if that were the case. After the divorce he/I sought a remedy for the fact that her actions were immoral and unethical, if not illegal, by calling the VA to account. Rather than addressing the problem the VA conveniently delayed the claim and when it was close to being corrected sent the paperwork etc. to Fayetteville Arkansas and not Fayetteville NC. By the time this snafu was rectified the statute of limitations had run out and so the veteran/I/me was left broke, in debt, almost totally isolated within the community, in a place where I had neither family nor friends.

     The veteran after separating from his wife started to feel better and it is then he learned that his wife had been intentionally administering excessive amounts of his prescribed medications and manipulating him in an attempt to have him declared incompetent in order to gain control of his VA and SSD disability funds. Who better to push his buttons and manipulate him than someone who had been on his therapeutic team at the VAMC psychiatric hospital than one of the care givers?

      Needless to say that due to his disabilities he became almost totally housebound and without the additional monies provided by his ex-wife’s income he ran into some financial problems, one of which was paying the mortgage on his home. His Mother informed him of a VA program that would allow him to save his home even though she was all the way up in Michigan and he was residing in NC. Moms are special.

     In 1997 he applied for and was accepted for refunding. It took over a year for the paperwork to be completed and the regular refunding began in 1998. He was to pay about $900 per month on his mortgage. This was acceptable although due to the debts incurred by his ex-wife which he was now responsible considering that she had filed bankruptcy and had been less than honest in declaring her debts to the court. I guess considering the shape that he was in she knew the veteran was in no condition to know what was going on and check her on her actions. Heck even after being paid, the veteran’s divorce lawyer failed to show up in court and got away with it. I represented myself. Any way he was able to barely pay the $900 per month, but I did.

     Unfortunately within a year from the inception of the refunding the mortgage payment jumped to about a $1000 per month and he was unable to make those payments. When the veteran inquired as to the reason for the increase he was given no reason and when he requested the paperwork concerning the refunding and the increase he was told by the VA that they would send the paperwork, they failed to do so. He made as many $1000 payments as he was able to and when he called to get the paperwork again he was told that the VA in NC did not have them and that the mortgage company that serviced the VA loans did. He called them and they told him that the VA had the paperwork. He called the VA in NC and this time was told that the VA in GA had them. He called the VA in GA and they said the VA in NC had them. He called back to NC and was told that the VA in Virginia had them. He called Virginia and they said that the VA in NC had them and he should talk to the gentleman who had originated the paperwork. When the veteran attempted to contact this gentleman he was told that the gentleman no longer worked for the VA in NC. The veteran later found out that the gentleman still worked for the VA.

     After several months of this the VA in Virginia told the veteran that the VA in NC had never completed the paperwork. When the veteran brought this to the attention of the VA in NC they said that they had and that it was all at the mortgage company that serviced the VA refunding mortgages. Once again the veteran ended up calling the mortgage company, the VA in NC, the VA in GA, the VA in Virginia etc. etc…

     The stress caused by all of this and the fact that if he paid the $1000 per month other bills would go unpaid, that he was alone, without family or friends in strange environment and almost totally housebound caused him to inform the VA that if he did not get the paperwork pertaining to the refunding and the paperwork explaining the increase in monthly payments he would no longer be capable of sending a payment. The VA said they did not have the paperwork and that the mortgage company did. Yes, you guessed it, it all started again and continued for a couple of years until this year when the VA and mortgage company still not providing the paperwork has foreclosed on his/my home and within two weeks this 100% combat disabled and almost totally housebound veteran will be homeless and loose all that he has. It is ironic that they could not provide the paperwork pertaining to the refunding or the paperwork explaining the increase in monthly payments and yet they can find enough paperwork to foreclose and kick him/me out in the street.

     It is also ironic that the ex-wife has a nice 2000 plus square foot home, new furniture, carpeting, and nice vehicles and is doing fine.

      It is even more ironic that the city he lives in, for the present, obtained an illegal court order to clean the rubbish and undergrowth from his backyard, his disabilities precluded him from doing it within the time frame the city set forth, and in doing so, took much more than undergrowth and rubbish, including therapy machines, crutches etc., fining him $10,000 plus costs on top of it all. The irony is that due to the $10,000 he owes the city he cannot obtain a house or apartment to live in because it shows up on his credit report along with the foreclosure making buying or renting a decent place impossible.

     Why do I say it is ironic? One reason is because the city obtained the court order and in that order it states that “the defendant is not under a disability” and I have been diagnosed with the following:
100% PTSD
     A nervous disorder manifesting neurotic symptoms severely affecting relationships with others, emotional tension and anxiety productive of serious social and industrial impairment, abnormalities of conduct, judgment and emotional reactions, reduction in initiative, flexibility, efficiency, and reliability, severe impairment to obtain or retain employment, totally incapacitating due to fantasy, confusion, panic, explosions of aggressive energy resulting in profound retreat from mature behavior. The attitudes of all contacts except the most intimate are so adversely affected as to result in virtual isolation within the community, totally incapacitating psychoneurotic symptoms bordering on gross repudiation of reality with almost all daily activities, such as fantasy, confusion, panic, and expressions of aggressive energy and a personality disorder, not otherwise specified with wide schizoid features, presence of conflicting impulses, emotions and ideas, resulting in the disintegration of personality resembling, but more inclusive than, that found in dementia. Also resulting in irritability, anger, confusion, loss of confidence, inability to concentrate, memory loss, fear or panic, uncontrolled tremors, ability to withstand pressure or stress, withdrawal, loss of interest and impairment of ability to relate to people, socially and industrially and with a reduction of reliability, flexibility and efficiency levels resultant in inadaptability, gross impairment in thought process and/or communication; persistent delusions or hallucinations; grossly inappropriate behavior; intermittent inability to perform activities of daily living (including maintenance of minimal personal hygiene); disorientation to time or place; memory loss for names of close relatives, own occupation, or own name with deficiencies in most areas, such as work, school, family relations, judgment, thinking, or mood, due to such symptoms as: obsessional rituals which interfere with routine activities; speech intermittently illogical, obscure, or irrelevant; near-continuous panic or depression affecting the ability to function independently, appropriately and effectively; impaired impulse control (such as unprovoked irritability with periods of violence); spatial disorientation; neglect of personal appearance and hygiene; difficulty in adapting to stressful circumstances (including work or a work like setting); inability to establish and maintain effective relationships with reduced reliability and productivity due to such symptoms as: flattened affect; circumstantial, circumlocutory, or stereotyped speech; difficulty in understanding complex commands; impairment of short- and long-term memory (e.g., retention of only highly learned material, forgetting to complete tasks); impaired judgment; impaired abstract thinking; disturbances of motivation and mood; difficulty in establishing and maintaining effective work and social relationships. Depressed mood, anxiety, suspiciousness, panic attacks, chronic sleep impairment, ability to perform tasks only during periods of significant stress, or; symptoms controlled by continuous medication.

     That these symptoms affect my day-to-day adjustment to society is of concern. The changes in behavioral patterns including irritability, anger, confusion, loss of confidence, inability to concentrate, memory loss, fear or panic, explosion into aggressive action, uncontrolled tremors, ability to withstand pressure or stress, withdrawal, loss of interest and my ability to relate to people, socially and industrially should aid in validating my disability as well as the reduction of flexibility and efficiency levels which result in industrial and social inadaptability as my condition progresses due to the actions of the city.

     There are other and varied symptoms and I suffer from them occasionally. This disability in itself makes the court order somewhat of an erroneous and therefore illegal document.

If that were not enough my physical diagnosis is as follows:
Trigeminal neuralgia disorder whereas muscles crush the nerves deep inside the brain causing excruciating pain, blackouts, slobbering etc.
Cluster headaches
Temporal lobe epilepsy
Totally blind in left eye
No left shoulder socket
50% sensory loss left side of body
Shell fragment wounds to left thigh, left elbow, left wrist, left chest, left eye and heart with retained shell fragments, two the size of .22 caliber bullets lodged in my heart.
Double bypass within the last year
Partial hearing loss in both ears
     I also have verification from various doctors pertaining to my inability to go to school, be in public places or even be in the hospital waiting room.

  

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