Hippies&Heros's Open Salon Blog

Saint Emelia

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:07:10 -0400

She wasn't quite dead when she performed her first miracle. We were all gathered around the shell of her body, she still breathing by the dull grace of a breathing tube, when the sound of CC's cell phone pierced the death bed scenario.

It was a doctor's office, confirming an appointment the next day for a small surgery to remove CC' small painful cyst on his thumb. He informed them he would not be there; his mother was dying.

The painfully persisting cyst stopped bothering him and went away. This is when I knew the sanctification of this demanding, ornery woman had begun.

I had just spent the last three years sheperding her around from appointment, to church, confession and the store. Most often, I sat with her bed bound husband while CC took mother duty. I much preferred my husband's father and he told a good tale which I was in the habit of writing down.

Emelia stirred in her jealous juices because I did not ask her for stories, but it was impossible to get much from her - to penetrate through the grouchiness and impatience for a glimmer of coherency.

Then she went and died, just three months after her lifelong mate and we were left with the estate. I found her story then; throughout her home in small pockets of time stuffed in drawers, closets, boxes, shelves - almost anywhere.Sometimes I would find only a small fragment of paper written nearly forty years ago with the words scrawled on it, "Keep this always." She had mountains of letters written by CC while he was in boot camp and Vietnam. We found her religious tracts, holy water, rosaries and saint medals.

My husband decided we should use her nearly new bed set, mattress and all. I was dismayed when we began sleeping where her worn energy had spent its last year draining from her body each night.

I went to writing, writing, writing. CC's story, mine, hers, the sixties. Great wads of words collected, rearranging themselves. First fact, then fiction with a truth growing from the past which was neither quite fact nor fiction.

Last week, CC brought a new mattress. He retired the old one to the other room. After nearly four years of becoming her - from sleeping on her matteress, to hanging her rosaries around, to an obsessive orneriness about items out of place; he finally choose a new bed.

With a quiet sigh of relief, I followed him to the new bed and hoped for the best. The next morning, I noticed with some relief he was a tiny bit different. He seemed to see me that day and know me as a fellow life traveler doing the best she can while not giving up her own dreams. It has now been almost a week and we do seem to be slowly reconnecting and rediscovering each other at times.

On the three hour trip home from CC's carpal tunnel surgery, Friday, CC's eyes had the look of a man best not fucked with. He was impatient and insulting to me much of the way home because he was sure without his due diligence we would end up squashed on the highway or lost far beyond the reaches of our destination.

One of his mother's habits CC adopted, is to carry the same carrying case she took with her whenever she journeyed away from home. After she died, we found it stuffed with currency. CC keeps it full of his medications, just in case our addicted son loses his way into our medicine chest, a seldom but not unheard of occurrence.

As I searched for where CC put his keys on our first stop after leaving the hospital, I looked in the case. Nope, not there. Shut it back. Opps. Shut that latch too far. Now it is locked. Oh shit.

I found CC's keys and give them to him and we get back on the road, but I know I have failed in one of my most important missions. I have locked him out of his old medications (not the ones we just got). I try to tell him before he grabs the box that I have accidentally locked it, but he can't hear me for screamming at me for something else. Finally, I pulled over and get the case from the back seat. The latch is not locked. Thank you, Saint Emelia.

Surgery @ the VA

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:07:04 -0400

It's been awhile. Blogging here got complicated when CC wanted to be involved in the message. Our desires for this public forum are at cross purposes. He's talking to the VA through it, but what I really want to do is keep a simple journal about life after war and how it continues to impact not just the warrior, but the family too. War is never left behind.

Many battles have been waged in our own home; especially since a service officer recommended CC apply to the compensation and pension board for a PTSD rating. This involved proving he has it. You would think two purple hearts and being medically retired with 120% disabilities shortly after a recoilless rifle round blasted his right side damn near off his bodywould be enough proof he has more than 30% post traumatic stress disorder. Then look at his personal history of four wives. And the seizures, hmmmm, maybe traumatic brain injury...

But no, the VA has things they are looking for before they'll let just anybody have the crazy diagnosis. Veterans prepare for these examinations, learn what is key in proving they deserve enough percentage to receive compensation. The more my marine maneuvered his behavior to achieve this crazy grail; the more it became true. Before I knew it, I was living with someone with full blown PTSD and he wasn't pretending anything.

The VA became the enemy. Then me and another family member or two. Without anger, there is no animating force to get him moving.

Our marriage has been in tatters. I've considered leaving so that I could have some peace. The cost of peace - quitting a man I love, a home that is my sanctuary, leaving a history I have painstakingly built - the cost is too high. I'm not ready to pay the price.

I'm not the submissive type. I do not follow orders well. To me conversation is in the details. If he says something is blue, I'm liable to chime in and describe the color more thoroughly - such as calling it blue green. To CC, this is equal to insubordination - I am disagreeing with him. I forget over and over what I think of as conversation; he believes is arguing.

It's a losing battle. I long for the easy going, funny, and affectionate man I once lived with and wonder who is the angry, bitter and resentful person who took his place.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the Family Waiting Room while CC undergoes carpal tunnel surgery. The last time the VA had him for surgery they chiseled on his knee with a hammer, tying him down and giving him nothing but a local for pain.

His blood pressure was elevated as they wheeled him away this morning.

In about five minutes they will begin the cutting process and in a couple of hours I'll be making a three hour drive home with my hopefully heavily sedated CC.

Medical Need or Just Whining?

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:03:22 -0400

There has been a bit of feuding going on for the past few months between CC and the personnel department of the pain and rehab clinic. Relations began swimmingly well, but deteriorated once CC got his wheelchair. He needed things to go with the chair. A cushion to sit on. That took a couple of months. Wheelchair gloves. He begged for those and finally got his first pair from a sympathetic prosthetic department in Atlanta. But they couldn't do a thing about his wheelchair which pulled to the right.

Each time CC had an appointment in Dublin, he popped into Ms Nichols office and made his requests. At one point, he told her he was on a mission to get all that he was eligible for. Not long after that, she told him she was only there for the paycheck and her retirement. After both had made their declarations, things got downright antagonistic whenever their paths crossed.

When she misplaced the order for new all-terrain wheels and put him off for seeing the wheelchair company representative for yet another month or two; CC filled out a survey and complained about the treatment he was receiving.

He'd been waiting to get his wheelchair adjusted since receiving it - it pulled to the right. Finally, after being in the chair for seven months, the wheelchair representative finally paid a visit to our home for adjustments and to put on the new wheels. Turned out the ball bearings on the front wheel had been damaged since manufacture and were causing extreme resistance in the wheel. As far as the knee pain, the representative told him to make himself a foot extension with a piece of wood.

CC asked for a new chair because his knee pain worsened after he began using the chair - the unmovable foot rest keeps his knee bent further than it his range of motion. He discovered he needed a chair which he could fold for flying (so he can go to the the Disable Veteran Olympics soon!) The wooden foot extension he made kept knocking into obstacles and causing more pain and distress.

"Why didn't he know all of this going into the first chair? Why was he given a different chair than the doctor originally prescribed? Why does he wear his brace when he is in the chair? Which brace does he wear? Why wasn't a VA representative present when he was fitted? How come we couldn't predict his needs would differ from the make of the chair?"

These are questions asked by the major medical board reviewing his request for a new chair. Actually, these are the questions asked by the Southeastern Director of Prosthetics who happened to be at this review.

The meeting was significantly more hostile than the review for his first chair. We were sent out of the room for twenty minutes while they discussed CC's case.

When we were brought back in; we were told his request for a new chair had been approved - based on medical need, not his personal desires. Hmmm. The crux of the matter. But then we were also quickly told he would get the Quickie brand, just to make him happy. Just because it was his personal desire, not because it made a more sensible alternative to the brand of which CC has spent his first 8 months.

CC may keep his original chair, but the VA will only maintain the new chair. He is not eligible for another chair for 24 months.

This is what I think: Ms Nichols took his complaints and requests for service as CC whining for things he wanted. She perceived him as a pest who had it out for the VA and had entitlement issues.

I'll be the first to admit that since going into the wheelchair, there have been personality changes in CC. In fact, I had to reveal this to him so I could blog it. With great reluctance, I told him he now behaved in a way often attributed to short people - loud, incessant talking, begging for attention.

In typical CC fashion, he replied to the revelation - "hmm, I wonder how short. We'll have to measure when we get home. 3' 6"? Later in a more reflective mood, in a restaurant after someone took a long look at him; he said,"either I'm totally invisible to people or extremely noticeable."

This is my stance. I don't care if CC is irritating in his constant requests. He is sitting in a wheelchair in constant pain, not because he had a motorcycle wreck or has a disease, but specifically because he spent eleven months participating in a war which culminated in a recoilless rocket round landing his fighting hole.

CC's leg and arm were very nearly blown off, but saved by VA doctors. Some of the best doctors in the world accompanied our soldiers to this war because this was the arena of cutting edge medical developments.

This nation has a contract with the men and women who serve in the armed forces. A man who is 100% combat disabled is eligible for lifelong medical care at the cost of the taxpayers. Think about that next time you are angry about paying taxes. You helped buy an appropriate wheelchair for my husband.

In the travel pay line, as we were leaving, I noticed a slight young man, with a dark complexion and hair sitting in a wheelchair. His knees were tucked in and he sat very contained in a body crippled by war, but otherwise fit and healthy. He was grim and quiet and when he turned; he revealed a big bald spot half covered with a sheath of hair on the back of his head. Brain injury. Will he be able to self advocate for forty years?

Enough PTSD for all of us

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:03:11 -0400

I have the commandment to blog our journey to the VA today for a major medical hearing for a new wheelchair for CC.

Background: Since I have not blogged recently and never told you the outcome of CC's quest to have the VA acknowledge and compensate him beyond the original 1969 classification of his disabilities. PTSD, hearing loss, nerve damage - these are some of the issues the Board was reviewing.

The deal is - they only gave him 30% PTSD. Hah. Hah. Not enough psychological damage to pay him for it. I am here to tell you, if this man only has a 30% rating for PTSD - I deserve another 70%. Then we need to award each child he has raised (four) another 50 to 75 percent.

This is the man who was drinking himself to death, decided not to die and got off the booze. Then we had to address the pain he was self medicating. His narcotic intake went up 10 fold. And he went on Prozac for depression. Anti seizure medicine for anger management. He became a walking pharmacy over the last year and a half. He was being compliant.

Too compliant to be compensated for PTSD. And now he is riled up and out to prove he has enough psychological trauma to be compensated. Try living with that, as if he hasn't already been a bit hard to live with.

A few weeks ago, he stopped taking the Prozac. He was tired of being semi conscious all the time. Up my PTSD another 50%. I am up to 130% now, I believe.

Back to today. We are headed to the VA to ask for a different wheelchair. The doctor ordered him a quickie, but the lady in rehab - Ms Nichol - said, no, no he needed an invocare. Which doesn't fold for flying, doesn't have adjustable legs, etc, etc. The VA is going to send him to a disabled veterans' games in Denver - but try getting this fellow on an airplane - especially with a wheelchair he can't fold and put in the compartment above him. And the non adjustable legs - well, he can't bend his knee far enough for that to work for him.

The hearing loss. They got him a hearing aid, but no compensation. His voice went down 3 octaves as soon as he heard how loud he talked. His 37 year old son exclaimed - "You mean they could have done something about this 37 years ago?"

I have to go now to the VA with an angry veteran to see if he can get another wheelchair which fits his needs better. See you when I get back.

Not Just A Spectator

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:12:34 -0500

At six this Saturday morning; I was not real hip in getting up and going anywhere. It was wet and cold and I was still sleepy. I had photos to take and that in itself was probably the most motivating factor propelling me.

I got to be part of the "Great Buy". I told you here about CC collecting toys and money at WalMart for Toys for Tots. This morning we went to spend all those dollars dropped in the jar Thanksgiving weekend.

We went to the Big Lots Store in Macon to do all our buying before they opened at 9am. It was like what you see on TV. We had every cart at our disposal and rushed around getting whatever struck our fancy. CC choose to use his weekend's walking quota for this event.

Last year and years before, all the gifts given to families for the most part contained toys for younger children. Our mission was to collect items interesting to older kids.

CC, Ron and , Bitsy (Tuffy's) sister and myself were designated buyers. Bitsy had the Bibb County money for children in that county and we had $1600 for Monroe County to buy whatever we wanted with an extra 20% off.

This is a partial list of items I remember putting in the multiple buggies we were filling:

microscopes

chess, checkers, yatctse

huge artist sets

photo albums

soft blankets and "husbands"

exercise mats,

baseballs, watches, clocks, radios

markers and pens and dry erase boards

We filled many baskets. Waylon and the three women working at Big Lots took our carefully bundled stacks of cash and counted them. Cars began congregating outside as stressed and worried shoppers watched us plunder all the good things.

Leaving, Ron said, Can we eat, yet?" and it was off to the Cracker Barrel for eggs and biscuits. Conversation eventually turned to the VA - as Ron has had over 20 surgeries on his eye from a retina suddenly detaching a couple of years ago. "Agent orange," he muses, "or blasts from aircraft repeatedly emitting missiles near my proximity."

This gets us thinking about compensation, how do you quantify a terrifying and brutal experience of war into the money that helps you survive into old age? How do you prove the culpability of war in your injuries to your body and psyche? How much money do you deserve as your body and mind deteriorate years later in ways that are directly connected to this combat?

Ron and CC are in the process of going through records which are not easily attained. Going to our congressmen and getting paperwork such as the date any man in your company was killed. You figure out which of these pertain to where you were and what was happening to you on one of those brutal days of killing which you experienced forty years ago and present this as evidence of your injuries and subsequent disabilities.

Just yesterday my husband told me the stupidest thing he ever did in Vietnam. He took his boots off one night before he laid down to sleep for awhile. This of all nights was the night the N V A (North Vietnamese Army ) overran his company perimeter lines over to the right of his squad's position. They got past the L P (listening post) and past a machine gun fighting hole and threw a grenade into the machine gun hootch, killing and injuring them - and then they were there, inside the Charlie Company perimeter in the dead of night where two out of three men were asleep.

Eventually the N V A were beat back outside the perimeter and were mortared in prearranged grids until there was a scattering of dead or dying N V A around the outside of the perimeter and quite a few within it.

At day break CC and his squad had to check the bodies, make sure they were dead. Later he had to throw dead and naked N V A on to a pile of bodies in a bomb crater.

________________

How much to you pay a man or woman to experience this? We are having to prove PTSD at a time we are doing our best to keep it at bay. A woman asked me the other day, isn't he better after all this time?

The answer is no, he is not. It gets worse as his body grows older and his hips no longer carry his weight and severe pain has become his most familiar companion. Back in the day, his anger did not have to be controlled with seizure medicine so those of us who love him could be near him. But the veneer has worn thin. Suggestions to skip a pain pill when seeing the psychiatrist, so she will understand his condition are met with looks of skepticism by me. How I am to escort him if he is not compliant with treatment? I am human. My feelings get hurt, I get mad - because if he gets started, he will stay at his targets until they are inflamed with his same fire. He has to comply, compensation be damned.

________________

Breakfast over, we climb back in our vehicles and proceed to the Firehouse in Forsyth. Over in one area there already stacked are toys for eligible families. Sure enough, they all look like perfect gifts for children under eight. We bring in our white bags, but we don't take the toys from them. Others in this chain of charity will unsack the packages, get the lists of families, divide the toys accordingly and deliver to families when the time comes. Firemen, Veterans and their wives. An orchestrated event taking place Christmas after Christmas. This year I helped. I may have gotten it - the good feeling which comes at Christmas.