Veteran's Help - Submitted Stories

Yo Brothers and Sister Vets: I just registered for this site, and I'm happy I found it.

Listen! I lucked out, I guess, and got 100% disability the first time I applied. The same thing happened for SS disability, I got it in just a couple months - they usually drag their feet for sometimes up to a year I've head. They didn't even call me in to be grilled by their own shrink, which my shrink, a great guy, said was unheard of. So I guess I must have said the right things, and my shrink wrote up a good evaluation.

So I want to tell you brothers and sisters what I think worked for me, so that you all can get what you deserve. So I'll first tell you my story, and then how I worked the VA to get my benefits so fast. I was stationed on the USS Ogden, LPD or landing platform dock, home ported out of DaNang when I was operating in WestPac. Our operations included amphibious operations south of DaNang putting ashore marines and army unit for search and destroy.

May 1968 I arrived at Treasure Island and it was uneventful except that for a few days I got thrown into working the the morgue there where they had some really nasty casualties being readied for burial. Hey, like thanks US Navy, for giving me a crash course in how I could get blown to hamburger . . . at least they could have warned me what I would see. A few weeks later, I arrived at the USS Ogden and was promptly exposed to the brutal beating of another sailor whom I could not protect. The alternative to intervening seemed to be getting the crap kicked out of me too. And I wasn't savvy enough to just report it to the Master at Arms. Anyway, the guy was off the ship the next day anyway. That event showed just how much discipline the US Navy had over violence below decks.

Next, while working in mess duty, a cook pulled a gun on me and held it to my head. We had just locked down the dishwashing room so all the doors and shutters were closed. Didn't say a thing except, "Hey, I want to show you my .45 I bought from a marine." Whereby, he pulled the auto down off the ducting from the overhead, locked the slide open, slipped a cartridge in the chamber, and slammed the slide home. Then put it up in my face about eight inches from my nose. The thing I most clearly remember is how dark and how really big that .45 inch hole looked at the end of the gun. I was kind a waiting for the blast of gasses to splash in my face from the powder . . . when he simply removed the bullet and placed the gun back up on the overhead. I asked him why he did that. He didn't answer. This was another good example for me as to how effectively the armory kept weapons in their control, and thereby out of the hands of idiots.

Several months later, there was a fire in the ships laundry which I was heavily involved in fighting. Just after lights out, I smelled smoke, I have a good sense of smell. So jumping out of my rack, I see this thick rolling smoke gushing out of the hatch leading aft on the second deck birthing area. I called it in to the bridge, then ran back to where the smoke was coming from . . . it was from the laundry. Well, the bridge took about five minutes to call a general alarm, great efficiency on their part. Well, it seems laundry workers left some laundry in a drier and it kept running. This was my lesson as to the standard of professionalism in fire safety on the USS Ogden. I always did feel in danger of being blown to atoms by the ammo and aviation fuel we had on board.

A few months later, I was just drifting off to sleep, when a shipmate snuck up on me and grabbed my dick - what a surprising way to wake up. I reported it to my supervising petty officer, but he took no action. Matter of fact, he told me that this guy did the same thing last year, so he had made sure he wasn't in the birthing area that evening. That taught me how much my NCO's cared about my well-being. I was discharged out of a transit base Seattle, May 7, 1970.

My nightmares started the night I got home. Usually, they consisted of my somehow becoming re-enlisted, but it was all a mistake. Anxiety attacks, and panic attacks started a few months later, along with the night sweats. I slept better if I had a .45 under my pillow. Several years later I started carrying a gun everywhere, almost, I went. I don't do that anymore. Soon I found myself breaking stuff and having really far out angry outbursts, and generally extremely irritable. I had an urge for bunkering up, as I now know it's called, but at that time, in my twenties I could still maintain enough to plan on a normal life. I had no idea I had PTSD to such a severe degree as I would later find out. I just wondered why life was so hard for me. It was extremely hard for me to be around anyone, relate to anyone, trust anyone, especially at work. Well, in the thirty years since I got out in '70, despite all the symptoms I was having, I managed to get well educated. Studying was something a could do, and why not, I didn't have to relate to anyone to do it. I actually excelled until just recently, then the memory problems started. I started seeing a shrink in 1985 for depression, anxiety, insomnia, irritability, etc. and continued being treated for the symptoms, not what was wrong - PTSD.

When I was working on my fifth marriage, I moved to a small town where almost everything went down the tube. My memory was going, I couldn't keep it together at work . . . when I could find a job. I could hardly stand to be around anyone. I spent virtually all my money taking care of a sick wife, and ended up going broke.

In 2002, a social worked I was talking to at the unemployment security office in Ellensburg, WA told me I should go to the Vet's outreach in Yakima. He did a quick one minute assessment and came up with the right diagnosis that everyone else had missed for the last twenty years. This was the start of my discovery that I have PTSD big time. After a year or so of my PTSD getting worse and worse, throwing my computer across the room, putting my fist through the wall, trashing the inside of my house, some physical stuff combined to get me in the psych unit in the VA hospital in Seattle where they officially gave me the PTSD designation. Of course the physical stuff that exacerbated the whole thing they totally missed . . . the microplasm infection (the same bug they are starting to suspect some first Gulf War vet's are getting sick from), the Lyme's disease I fought of previously, the intestinal infection I had.

I hadn't been able to work and ended up living in my truck after discharge from the hospital. I got put on state disability where I got $337 and $97 worth of food stamps a month. At times I was a danger to myself, not because I'd want to kill myself, consciously anyway, but I'd get really drunk and take bunches of downers which probably should have killed me. I also took up taking my hunting knife to carve big cross on my chest which at times it seemed like I wanted to carve my heart out. I was getting fairly out there. Okay, I told all that to set up what I did that lead to such quick award of full benefits and also to show what I had done that made it work.

1) I sought treatment relatively early, starting in 1985, although I hadn't know I had PTSD.

2) I tried a lot of different medications - that is I kept at the process of trying to get better.

3) When finally at the point that I was nearly out of control, I placed myself in the hands of the local Community Mental Health Clinic, Kittittas County Mental Health, who had a good staff with experience with Vet's and PTSD, and I told them I was nearly out of control. I think I lucked out in that they had a lot of experience with Vet's who would hold up in the deep wood's around there. Now and then the neighbors started reporting gunfire when the vet's would go on a drinking binge and start shooting at the Cong in the woods around their cabin.

4) I started working with my shrink that I had for about six years previous to this to develop a diagnosis to support a claim of disability. Since he had know me for so long he could develop strong documentation for any diagnosis he came up with. We also trusted each other.
5) I found a social worker who I liked and who knew PTSD and started seeing her weekly, every week.

So by the time I applied for disability, I had a shrink, my social worker, a doctor at the VA in Seattle, medical records from a hospital I went to after carving a cross in my chest, and records from the VA in Walla Walla Washington where I visited once or twice for diagnosis.

My application for disability for the VA included five separate incident reports, and reports from my shrink and my social worker. My incident reports were extremely detailed. For anyone who wants a extremely helpful guide for how to get the most benefits the fastest got to http://gemini65.tripod.com/index-2.html Go about a third of the way down the page to "Viet Nam Door Gunners Association" and click on that link. This will take you to an extremely detailed thirty-three chapter online booklet that outlines everything you need to do to get the benefits you deserve. One suggestion though - where as the Door Gunner's suggest and rightfully so - you do not have to be in therapy to get PTSD benefits, there are several reasons to do so. One is that it is healing to talk to a gentle empathetic counselor about what happened to us. Find one that is EXPERIENCED IN TREATING PTSD. Two, memories that you can use in your incident reports, like names, will surface. Three, a good report from a first rate MSW will help in getting your benefits.

Some tips I just stumbled upon while making my application and some helpful hints from my counselor. One, I drew some pictures of the incidents which I included in my application for pension, all five. I used my computer, but a hand drawn picture would work just as well. Like when their was the fire in the laundry . . . I drew out a picture of the whole second deck birthing area of the port side supply department . . . where my bunk was and where the bunks were of shipmates whose names I could remember, and then down the port side to the ships laundry on the same deck. I traced my movements in arrows from my bunk, to the telephone where I called in the fire, then aft toward the laundry. I included every space I could remember, like the barbershop and an engineering watch station.

For you guys in the army, it could go something like draw a picture of a bunker say. Like it was a rectangle dugout. Show where the gun slits were and who if anyone was manning the sixty or whatever was poking through the gun slit if anything. If you went through a particularly severe mortar attack, describe where everyone was, what they were doing, curled up in the fetal position, firing their weapons, cussing, peeing their pants. Describe the smells, the cordite, the dust, where was the entrance, who left and who came in. And especially describe the absolute abject helplessness you may have felt, describe the certainty that you were going to in just a few moments die. Describe the scene if someone got hit, what happened, if you felt you wished it had been you instead of your buddy. And describe if it is true for you, that what you were going through was because the top brass didn't know what the f**k they were doing back in Saigon. If you didn't feel anything, say that. Then comment about how as you look back, the feelings you were having at the time you couldn't feel because you were so scared. Then say how terrifying it all was. Well, you get the idea. The manual at the "Viet Nam Door Gunners Association" can help you with all that. God bless all you brothers and sisters who served in Nam. I love you all and you all are hero's . . . mine too.

Tyler

PS - There are still plenty of nights I lay wishing that I had died in the place of a worthy GI who got killed slugging it out with Charlie in some rice paddy in Quang Wang province.