Jarnhamar said:
If VA has an issue with that they think is soldiers faking injuries then they should take it up with the medical dudes and not make a press release about it.
I would go so far as to say that they should take it up with the persons they believe to be faking or over playing their problems.
I've filled out disability paperwork for social assistance on many occasions in my last job, and have had to look people in the eye and tell them to go back to their case workers, as they have no medical reason that they can't work...conversely, I remember cases where I told someone to go and see a case worker, because they had a serious issue that was impairing their ability to do activities of daily living, much less work, because they had a serious and undertreated illness. I've also looked at people and basically called them bald faced liars - one springs to mind that had a record of doctor shopping, would go to a single physio appointment and then mysteriously not follow up. They'd sit in my office chatting happily with my receptionist until I showed up and then would start moaning anytime, and I mean literally anytime, I was in their eye or ear shot. If they thought I wasn't around, it stopped. Needless to say, I told them I wouldn't fill them out.
As for those (many) of us that have been carrying/concealing/underplaying injuries, there are two issues at play - first is training. We've been trained to live with discomfort, since the job is inherently uncomfortable (unless you're living in hotels with the Air Force ;D). We've been also told to avoid the MIR for a variety of reasons, some of them to conceal some of the retarded things our bosses did to us, sometimes so we don't let down our mates and sometimes because of plain old abuse of authority. Whatever the reason, it gets hardwired into us.
The second thing is simpler - plain old biology. Humans are high order, predatory primates. We're biologically hardwired, like all other animals, to not show weakness. Watch your dog or cat at home - they could be dying of something and won't let you know until they're well on their way, because that's what animals do to not stand out as prey. We're no different.
This leads to what I like to term "jumping over that fine line between hard and stupid". As young soldiers, it's what we do. As older ones, we still do it, our bodies permitting. My Sports Medicine teacher in PA school always said that our bodies will ignore things we do to it until our late 20's; it'll tell us to be a bit more careful, but will forgive us in our 30's; it is no longer forgetful in our 40's; by the time we're in our 50's, it is not only not forgetful, but not that forgiving to a lot of things we do. As I tell the old farmers out here, "we ain't 17 anymore - we don't fix ourselves all that quick". Between soldiers and old farmers I've looked after over the years, they often forget that we're machines with parts that break down over time, no matter how well and often you do your oil changes and tire rotations to yourself. The problem with soldiers is, IMHO, we're always afraid to admit there is a problem until it's often too late, because we don't want to upset the applecart, miss out on a deployment or let down our buddies and work mates. These are the folks, as mentioned earlier by a few, I really worry about. I'm no different - been trying to work up the gumption to start the damn VAC process because stuff I've kept locked away has finally eaten away the locks. Hearing stuff like this really makes me wonder why I should even bother.
Sorry for the long wind.
MM
