More on Madigan reversing PTSD diagnosis As A Cost Cutting Measure

"The latest reviews were triggered by revelations that the forensic psychiatry unit at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state may have reversed diagnoses based on the expense of providing care and benefits to members of the military."

They say many of us are compensation seeking veterans, and yet they do this to save money? Who's seeking financial gains here, really?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-launches-review-of-ptsd-diagnoses-after-complaints-some-were-overturned/2012/05/16/gIQAN0YkUU_story.html

Anger = Energy E=MC2 and Post Traumatic Growth

For me PTSD = Anger and Anger = Energy so I tried thinking of it this way if E = MC² than if I could channel the energy from my anger into something positive, contribute something to society, well then it was easier to channel the anger and release it.

(Disclaimer: To my physicist's friends. Sorry for my loose use of E = MC²}

I used this energy to create HadIt.com and it did not happen overnight. It took practice, constant practice. I had an anger management problem and in God's great wisdom he gave me an opportunity to work on that everyday. I started thanking God every night for sending an ass of a person to me that day so I could work on my anger management. 

The 15 minute 1 issue visit at the VA Medical Center

My primary care doc is a PA, I'm not complaining about her. What I am complaining about today is policy. There is policy from what I understand from my PA, that appointments shouldn't go over about 15 minutes and you can only discuss 1 issue at a time. If you have another issue, you have to make another appointment.

I realize there aren't enough docs to take care of all the veterans, not my problem. I realize that they can't spend much time with you because of their caseload, again, not my problem.

What I find most frustrating is the 1 issue visit, where I sit in the waiting room trying to triage myself, so I can ask about what I think is the most important issue. 

I am blessed in that I don't have many physical problems. I worry about our brothers and sisters who have a lot going on with their health and I am wondering if this 1 issue visit is happening at more than my VA. 

Is there a shortage of doctors in the country? Or is there just a shortage of doctors in the VA? I am not a psychic, but even I could see at the beginning of the Afghanistan war that we were going to have a lot more veterans come into the system. Then the Iraq war and so I knew we would have even more. 

So why at the beginning of the war did they not start hiring more doctors and training them up? Why didn't they hire more raters so by the time the war was over they would have the experience and training they needed to handle the caseload, which is so backlogged, it makes the news at least once a week lately.

The VA motto "To Care For Him Who Shall Have Borne The Battle And For His Widow, And His Orphan" Abraham Lincoln

Those are powerful words, of course they lose some of the power if you add 1 issue and 15 minutes at a time.

Perhaps this 1 issue 15 minute visit is just my VA, it's damn frustrating for many of our brothers and sisters.

I get that many that work at the VA think it's a thankless job and it is a difficult job, I'm onboard with that. But hey we are veterans we know all about thankless difficult jobs. So thhere ladies and gents is my two-cents.

Sitting In The Waiting Room Of The PTSD Clinic

So perhaps it's just me, but it just seems odd to me. but I'll run it past you all and see what you think.

So we have a new building that our PTSD clinic has moved into. The entire front is glass the whole front of the building. In front of of the big window that is the wall are chairs for us to wait in, with our backs to the windows.

Now this puzzles me, as many of us who have PTSD like to have our back to the wall. So since the new building is here I spend my time in the waiting room trying to decide if they purposely designed it this way as some kind of subliminal exposure therapy or is it that no one really gave it any thought. It just seems odd to me.

So funny thing this last visit. I'm sitting in the waiting room pondering the whole glass question when another veteran (tough looking, think biker) comes out this side door and takes a seat by me. He says "I don't like this new system" and I'm like "We got a new system?" and before he can answer they call him in, just before he leaves he says "I don't like these locked doors" and I say "I don't like all this glass" his response "Hear ya" and so that was my latest visit to the PTSD clinic.

Ringtones That Are Not Good In Your Therapist's Office

Ringtones That Are Not Good In Your Therapist's Office

I Want To Be Sedated - Ramones

Hair Of The Dog - Nazerth

Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd (Probably anything from Pink Floyd)

And more

Shattered - Rolling Stones

19th Nervous Breakdown Rolling Stones

More

Mother's Little Helper - Rolling Stones

Blaze Of Glory - The Alarm

One Way Out - The Allman Brothers

Shark Attack - JAWS

Documenting Your VA Compensation Claim

This my system, but you may have a better one so use it.

• First thing I do after receiving a service medical record is number each page when I get to the end I go back and add 1 of 100 and so on.
• Second I then make a copy of my service medical records on a different color paper, yellow or buff something easy to read, but it will distinguish it from the original.
• I then put my original away and work off the copy.
• Now if you know the specific date it's fairly easy to find.
• If on the other hand you don't know specifically or you had symptoms leading up to it. Well this may take some detective work and so Watson the game is afoot.
• Let's say it's Irritable Bowel Syndrome
  • I would start page by page from page 1, if the first thing I run across an entry that supports my claim for IBS, I number it #1, I Bracket it in Red, and then on a separate piece of paper I start to compile my medical evidence log. So I would write Page 10 #1 and a brief summary of the evidence, do this has you go through all the your medical records and when you are finished you will have an index and easy way to find your evidence. Study your diagnosis symptoms look them up. Check common medications for your IBS and look for the symptoms noted in your evidence that seem to point to IBS, if your doctor prescribes meds for IBS, but doesn't call it that make those a reference also.

It's just green beans, baffling dilemmas in life

It's just green beans, baffling dilemmas in life

Peculiar ways my PTSD make me stumble. In my day to day life I can be absolutely indecisive on the tiniest things.

Example:

I go to the grocery store, I go to pick up a can of green beans, but then which can store brand, or premium and if premium which one, dizzying choices in my brain and as I stare at them wondering which to choose, then I notice I have to choose french cut or regular and then all of sudden it feels like I am trying to decide to cut the red wire or the green wire. I flee from the green beans perhaps being so overwhelmed I just leave my cart and go home.

I just have to keep telling myself it's just green beans, it's just green beans.