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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

some more consequences of the war

this time they have names (and they are NOT just the veterans, THEY ARE THE FAMILIES)
Injury in Iraq was just start of troubles
By Barbara Barrett McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — When Army National Guard Lt. Michael McMichael returned to Franklinton, N.C., from Iraq in January 2005, it took a while for his wife to recognize the changes in him.
They came on slowly at first: A hotter temper. Migraines. Sore bones.
Then the problems grew. McMichael lost his job, exploded at home and walked out on his family. In the three years since his return from Iraq, McMichael has tumbled from being a skinny but content war veteran to a troubled husband and father who's unemployed, walking with a cane and suffering tremors and nightmares.
His wife, Jackie McMichael, has suffered, too. Even when she repeatedly tried to get help, calling doctors in tears, officials turned her away, citing confidentiality requirements about her husband's health, she said.
The isolation of military families has become a common story in Congress, where lawmakers still are trying to understand how they can help veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Laws and rules have been passed to get counseling to troops in war zones, to expand research into traumatic brain injury and to ease the bureaucratic transition from the Department of Defense to the Department of Veteran Affairs........


.........."My assessment is the VA doesn't see the human face behind the patients they're treating," ...............

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