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Letters To VVAW

By VVAW

VA Care Gets Worse

Both of the following letters deal with the rotten conditions in VA hospitals. While that class of people who run this country are trying to come up with all kinds of new ways to throw vets off the GI Bill, they are doing everything they can to cut back on VA care also. Both letters point out that, like the GI Bill, they are doing everything they can to cut back on VA care also. Both letters point out that, like the GI Bill, healthcare was something that vets fought for and which we now have to fight to keep.

Dear Veteran:

I am a disabled Vietnam vet from New York City. I've been fighting the VA for 8 years now, first to get the lousy 30% disability rating they "awarded" me, then to get it raised to 60%, and ever since then, fighting to keep it. Now it seems the VA is trying to award me 100%. No, not in terms of money, but in reality. Here's the story.

I spent two years in Vietnam (66-68) with the 1st Cav and flew as a doorgunner on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. During that time I had the wonderful experience of getting show down 3 times, hit in the back with a ricochet AK-47 round, lose the hearing in my right ear, crippled, and in general just messed up fighting to keep the imperialist red, white and blue flying.

The second time I got shot down--at the beginning of January, 1968, I got my back screwed up bad. The doctors at the 2nd Surgical Hospital at Chu Lai wanted to send me back to my company. So I spent the next month on my back, being carried from hooch to bunker and back again by my buddies, on a sheet of plywood. That was a Chu Lai, which was our rear area at that time. After a month I could walk well enough to go out on missions again, though I still couldn't lift anything over 30 years and lived on Darvons and any other kinds of pain killers I could beg, borrow or steal. Fortunately, we had a company medic who didn't go by the book on the question of how much pain killer a GI was authorized.

When I got back to the streets of NY I found I still had a lot of trouble walking or standing, so I took myself down to the VA to cash in on all those bennies the recruiter told us about. I, like most of my fellow veterans found a remarkable resemblance between the VA and the military. After much "hurry up and wait," I got a grand a grand total of 30% disability for my back, hearing, nervous condition and a few other problems thrown in for good measure, plus a back brace. Four years, several re-evaluation physicals, and two jobs later, they upped me to 60%. In the mean time I had developed an infection at the base of my spine, which is the result of getting hit there the second time I got shot down. I was in and out of the VA hospital dozens of times. Each time I was told I needed an operation. Each time a week or more down the drain, another dozen pills to pop and each time being used as a training aid for student doctors--and then being told no operation this time. By then I was trying to hold down a job as an elevator mechanic, but was spending more time off the job than on, and the lousy 60% the VA was sending me was just about covering expenses.

Finally, last August, I became delirious from infection and was rushed to the VA hospital. Three days later they operated. They told me before the operation that I'd only be out of action a few days. 27 days later I was finally able to walk (though not too well) out of the damn place. But now I had no job to go back to because I couldn't do the work. Because I was in for more than 21 days on a service connected disability, I was supposed to get 100% for that month. Hen the check came it was for my usual 60%. I still haven't gotten the difference and it's been 7 months now. But that's nothing to what has gone down between the time I got out of the hospital and now.

About a week after I got out, I started to have incredible pain. As the tissue started to heal and I could place my fingers in the wound, I felt something sharp sticking out. Because that had removed a large chunk of meat from my lower back, they used steal wires to literally wire me together. The only problem was they left six of them inside of me and now they were tearing me apart trying to work their way out. I spend another 4 trips to the VA hospital. Each time to have minor surgery to remove the wires, each time being assured they had gotten them all.

It's been 7 months now since the operation and I'm still bleeding, plus the infection has returned. I went back to the VA hospital last week and they had the balls to tell me that they blew the operation and I have to go through the same trip all over again.

I just called a private surgeon and am going to spend the $50 for him to give me his opinion. I can't afford to lay out the $50 but what else can I do? I'll be damned if I'll take the word of those turkeys at the VA. Also, this time they want to cut more meat out, a lot closer to the spine. Based on how well they've done in the past, I'll consider myself lucky if I can walk away from this one.

Before I went into the Army I worked at Lennox Hill Hospital here in NYC. We used to say to say that the hospital specialized in "diseases of the rich." That is, the doctors were the best, the treatment was excellent--but you better not even entertain the thought of going there unless you had money and plenty of it. For vets at the VA hospital or workers at the city hospitals, the opposite is true.

This doesn't just apply to medical care--it is the essence of everything that this system "offers" us. I got taken for the big ride when I was sent to Vietnam. I was a soldier in the imperialist US Army. Now I'm no longer useful to the rich who run and own this system so they want to throw me away. NO WAY. I'm not going to live like this and I'm not going to stand around while the capitalists try to lay similar trips on other people.

VVAW has put out a call for four days of actions in Philadelphia for July 1-4. "We've carried the rich for 200 years, Let's get them off our backs" is the slogan. This says it like it is. I'll see you in Philadelphia for all four days, even if I have to crawl there.

(This is a letter from several patients and workers, and one patient also a VVAW member, at the Allen Park VA in Detroit, Michigan.)

Dear Brothers,

Just a few lines to let other vets around the country who've been following the struggle here get an update. First off, the firing of Tim Wells* has had a big effect on both workers and patients. People are angry and still willing to struggle. But Tim's lawyers felt that they should "approve" any literature VVAW put out at the hospital because this might "jeopardize" Tim's case. We in VVAW think that just the opposite is true. We felt that it was very important to build on the unity that had been growing around Tim's case and the general conditions at the hospital. Most patients and workers agreed with us. To put your faith completely in lawyers and not in the people, bets and workers, is a mistake that we too often make. Lawyers, with all their intricate legalities take the very guts out of a struggle. They take our most militant fighters out of the mass struggle and drag them through months of waiting periods and "appeals." By the end of such a process the people involved in the struggle are demoralized and no longer united. This is not to blame individual lawyers, but the whole legal/courts apparatus which is specifically designed, through its red tape, to take all the steam out of a mass movement of the people. Still, many patients and workers want to keep up the fight against Tim's firing.

Conditions at the hospital haven't changed much. The hospital is putting on a big show by slopping around a lot of fresh paint and by paneling the elevators, which still continue to break down. They were also proud of the fact that they hired 30 new nursing assistants; but, by the time this letter was printed, they had already lost half of them--the assistants they give with a spoon they take back with a steam shovel. So they've closed down 2 wards, thus cutting the number of beds available to patients.

Meanwhile nothing new has been done to change the mess in "admitting," and the most serious danger to patients still continues to be negligence due to understaffing. One recent example is a patient who received a massive overdose of sedation and was out for 6 hours.

Resident doctors are so understaffed and overworked that they can't possibly meet the needs of vets. On one ward, 2 resident doctors handle 52 patients.

The picture for medical students (interns) is not much better and the situation for nurses is even worse. How can one nurse on one ward be expected to care for 50 patients?

So it is with all other departments. Sound a lot like the VA hospital in your area? Well our fight here is continuing. Unity is growing between patients and workers and with that unity we can build our strength and win.

Patients and workers at the Allan Park VA, and VVAW Detroit

*Tim Wells, a Vietnam vet, worked at the Allen Park VA hospital as an aide; because he was interested in decent care for patients and refused to knuckle unto pressure from the VA bosses, he was fired. The story of that firing and the struggle that was being built against it appeared in the last issue of The Veteran.