I thought my military service was ancient history (NAVY 88-93), but it turns out I have lived longer than my capacity to continue running.
May I ask for help here in navigating this? I've filed my claim and am on stabilizing medication, but I feel an almost adversarial relationship with the VA and my family is in crisis. Squatting in a falling apart rv on a now estranged friend's property. We have just received a VASH/HUD section 8 voucher and are hopefully getting into a place with plumbing in a few weeks, but our financial crisis will not be helped by our inexperience and naive handling of this claim, not to mention my current level of incapacity which is complete.
About 7 years ago my life started to unravel. I was having difficulty with my job as a plant manager for a large bottled water company. I was missing easy things, forgetting important and essential deadlines and I was becoming less and less able to focus. I was prescribed adderal and that helped for a time, but by 2009 I had to resign.
That began a downward slide into homelessness for me, my wife and 2 small kids as my capability was eaten away and replaced with panic, sudden bursts of anger and frustration and implacable feelings of it all ending very soon. I've become almost completely isolated and have been unable to support my family at all for 22 months now. I was hospitalized in december (st joes in tacoma) for 5 days due to suicidal thoughts and a comprehensive nervous breakdown. It was from here that I was able to see the events without conditioned filters and my wife (the absolute most patient woman in the world) helped me file a claim with the va. I've been diagnosed by a psychiatrist in Arizona, the staff at St Joe's and by the VA as having PTSD/MDD and am on a lot of stabilizing medication.
During my active service while deployed to Diego Garcia in support of the gulf war effort I was told during a routine physical that I had blood in my urine.My flight surgeon was concerned because she did not have the necessary equipment on hand to rule out bladder cancer.The decision was made to take me off of flight status and medivac me to Japan for more detailed diagnostic testing.I was in Japan about a week and had several examinations that ruled out bladder cancer.During one exam, conducted alone and in an unprofessional manner by a naval officer I was sexually assaulted and it left me in a great deal of physical pain, feeling violated and deeply ashamed.
When we were alone in the exam room, the doctor nodded at my wedding ring and asked if there was any ‘other’ reason that could be causing this problem.I said ‘No’.He pressed authoritatively, “You need to be honest with me, I’m your doctor, are you telling me that you have not fooled around on your wife on deployment?”I was concerned that there was evidence of something bad like HIV that needed my honesty to secure needed treatment and the truth was that I had cheated on my wife with a girl in my squadron.And though I was reasonably sure that the protection we had used and the time that had elapsed since our triste was enough to ensure that I was safe from such things, the doctor’s demand for complete honesty and the fact that I felt reasonably safe sharing the truth (he’s my doctor after all) had me answer his question in the affirmative with the explanation of why I didn’t think it material given the explanation of time and protection cited above.
The doctor’s demeanor visibly changed.Like a mask had come off.He looked very disappointed, on the verge of open anger.His face grew red and his breathing changed, like he was trying to control his temper.“Now I’m going to need you to turn around and drop your drawers.”
As a Naval air crewman, I’ve had over a half dozen prostate exams.Only one of them could be defined as digital sodomy.He held me forcefully and told me to, “BE QUIET” when I cried out from the shock and intense pain, begging him to stop or at least tell me what the hell he was doing. It felt like he was trying to force his entire hand inside of me in a procedure that lasted at least a full minute in which the doctor exerted a tremendous amount of effort, nearly lifting my feet from the ground several times.I started crying as he finished. He released my shoulder and told me to “HOLD STILL OR WE’RE GOING TO DO IT AGAIN” and he squeezed my prostate producing a burning and painful discharge of fluid from the tip of my penis that he collected on a glass slide.He removed his hand from me and said, “Get your clothes on and next time, keep your dick in your pants.”He did not answer me when I asked what he had done.
The exam left me in a great deal of pain, feeling ashamed, punished and deeply violated.This proved to be a very destabilizing experience as I slowly began to realize through intense and intrusive flashbacks, that this was not the first time I had experienced this combination of emotions at the hands of an angry male authority figure.
I began to withdraw from friends, I took myself off flight status, I was no longer able to shoot my bow, something that had always been effortless before.But now I was starting to unravel, unable to face the shame of the reality of what the doctor had done and the overlap it had with the, until now, completely repressed memory of being handcuffed and violently raped by my best friend’s uncle at the age of 7.
By the time I was discharged from the service, I was suffering greatly.It was as though a plug had been pulled and I couldn’t stop the flow of effluent that was leaking out.And I couldn’t get away from it either.I desperately needed help. But I was terrified, confused, intensely embarrassed and depressed.
Within a few months of discharge my increasingly impulsive and erratic behavior led to me causing a vehicle accident while street racing my car (something I had never done prior to the assault, but was now doing compulsively) that killed two elderly women returning home from church on a Sunday morning.
My wife, pregnant at the time, lost the baby shortly thereafter and our relationship imploded. That KO'd me for a while. I shunned treatment, counseling anything associated or linked to the accident. My shame over having killed two people by my irresponsibility became a massive boulder that sealed everything associated with that event off like a tomb.
I did not want to be seen as a victim myself and set out to become something. I worked my way up in a company willing to take a chance on a felon and went from a $10/hour night loader to the Plant manager and near 6 figures in 10 years without a degree. I started racing ATV's (I'd never ridden a motorcycle before) and in 4 years had climbed into the top 10 as a national pro.
But my life chaos was increasing exponentially as was my self destructive behavior. after 13 years I again divorced. This coincided with resigning my position at the water company and and marrying my 3rd wife.
From there we had our first child while we blew through my retirement trying to figure out what in the hell we were supposed to do. We moved in with friends and I got a job doing driveways for $12/hour. My degrading social skills put huge strains on the friendship status of the family that was good enough to help us. We ended up living in a small camper for 5 months with no plumbing. I called my old boss who now lived in Georgia and was running a consulting firm to the energy sector and asked for a job. This guy thought I walked on water at my last place of employment. We moved in late 2012 across the country. It was an unmitigated disaster. I lasted 18 months before I had to resign. the physical manifestations, panic attacks, loss of focus, inability to follow direction, intense and growing phobia for talking on the phone (it was phone sales job) and an increasing tendency to freeze in stressful situations. (on the phone or in person) just really weird long silence from me.
We moved to Arizona to live with our in laws. My wife flew ahead and I met up with my father in law, who was only 6 years older than me in NM. 15 minutes after meeting up, he, died of a massive heart attack in front of me on the side of the road, I had to call my wife and tell her dad had died.
the two years spent living in phoenix with a wrecked mother in law going through menopause and losing her mind over her grief now had me and my incapacity to focus her pain on. I started smoking pot heavily (I had not had a substance abuse issue prior to this) and my capability continued to recede. I was working in a tiny post office in a rural town for 4 hours a day. My beard hair fell out and my panic attacks were happening 3 - 12 times a day and everyone felt like the heart attack I saw my father in law have. My Daughter was born in August of 2015
The relationship with my mother in law deteriorated until she sold her house and bought us this little rv we are in now, early in 2016
I went to the doctor in phoenix for the first time in April of last year where he diagnosed me with PTSD and we picked up and moved back home here to washington to flee the intense stress from living in a dirt parking lot in July in Phoenix in an rv, not to mention the now open hostility directed toward me from my in laws who weren't buying any of it.
By some miracle my wife was able to locate my Pink medical folder and it has the doctor's name in there and the dates, though he doesnt mention in the chart notes the procedure in question, at least from what I can tell. This guy was a ltcdr in the NAVY, I'm fairly confident I am not the only person he taught this lesson to.
So now we are in process. My wife has done all the filing to date and has been as thorough as possible, but there is a lot of water left to cross and Im not entirely sure of the strength of our case and I dont want to learn on my own experience the lessons of those who have successfully navigated this.
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SoulArcher
Thank god for this community.
I thought my military service was ancient history (NAVY 88-93), but it turns out I have lived longer than my capacity to continue running.
May I ask for help here in navigating this? I've filed my claim and am on stabilizing medication, but I feel an almost adversarial relationship with the VA and my family is in crisis. Squatting in a falling apart rv on a now estranged friend's property. We have just received a VASH/HUD section 8 voucher and are hopefully getting into a place with plumbing in a few weeks, but our financial crisis will not be helped by our inexperience and naive handling of this claim, not to mention my current level of incapacity which is complete.
About 7 years ago my life started to unravel. I was having difficulty with my job as a plant manager for a large bottled water company. I was missing easy things, forgetting important and essential deadlines and I was becoming less and less able to focus. I was prescribed adderal and that helped for a time, but by 2009 I had to resign.
That began a downward slide into homelessness for me, my wife and 2 small kids as my capability was eaten away and replaced with panic, sudden bursts of anger and frustration and implacable feelings of it all ending very soon. I've become almost completely isolated and have been unable to support my family at all for 22 months now. I was hospitalized in december (st joes in tacoma) for 5 days due to suicidal thoughts and a comprehensive nervous breakdown. It was from here that I was able to see the events without conditioned filters and my wife (the absolute most patient woman in the world) helped me file a claim with the va. I've been diagnosed by a psychiatrist in Arizona, the staff at St Joe's and by the VA as having PTSD/MDD and am on a lot of stabilizing medication.
During my active service while deployed to Diego Garcia in support of the gulf war effort I was told during a routine physical that I had blood in my urine. My flight surgeon was concerned because she did not have the necessary equipment on hand to rule out bladder cancer. The decision was made to take me off of flight status and medivac me to Japan for more detailed diagnostic testing. I was in Japan about a week and had several examinations that ruled out bladder cancer. During one exam, conducted alone and in an unprofessional manner by a naval officer I was sexually assaulted and it left me in a great deal of physical pain, feeling violated and deeply ashamed.
When we were alone in the exam room, the doctor nodded at my wedding ring and asked if there was any ‘other’ reason that could be causing this problem. I said ‘No’. He pressed authoritatively, “You need to be honest with me, I’m your doctor, are you telling me that you have not fooled around on your wife on deployment?” I was concerned that there was evidence of something bad like HIV that needed my honesty to secure needed treatment and the truth was that I had cheated on my wife with a girl in my squadron. And though I was reasonably sure that the protection we had used and the time that had elapsed since our triste was enough to ensure that I was safe from such things, the doctor’s demand for complete honesty and the fact that I felt reasonably safe sharing the truth (he’s my doctor after all) had me answer his question in the affirmative with the explanation of why I didn’t think it material given the explanation of time and protection cited above.
The doctor’s demeanor visibly changed. Like a mask had come off. He looked very disappointed, on the verge of open anger. His face grew red and his breathing changed, like he was trying to control his temper. “Now I’m going to need you to turn around and drop your drawers.”
As a Naval air crewman, I’ve had over a half dozen prostate exams. Only one of them could be defined as digital sodomy. He held me forcefully and told me to, “BE QUIET” when I cried out from the shock and intense pain, begging him to stop or at least tell me what the hell he was doing. It felt like he was trying to force his entire hand inside of me in a procedure that lasted at least a full minute in which the doctor exerted a tremendous amount of effort, nearly lifting my feet from the ground several times. I started crying as he finished. He released my shoulder and told me to “HOLD STILL OR WE’RE GOING TO DO IT AGAIN” and he squeezed my prostate producing a burning and painful discharge of fluid from the tip of my penis that he collected on a glass slide. He removed his hand from me and said, “Get your clothes on and next time, keep your dick in your pants.” He did not answer me when I asked what he had done.
The exam left me in a great deal of pain, feeling ashamed, punished and deeply violated. This proved to be a very destabilizing experience as I slowly began to realize through intense and intrusive flashbacks, that this was not the first time I had experienced this combination of emotions at the hands of an angry male authority figure.
I began to withdraw from friends, I took myself off flight status, I was no longer able to shoot my bow, something that had always been effortless before. But now I was starting to unravel, unable to face the shame of the reality of what the doctor had done and the overlap it had with the, until now, completely repressed memory of being handcuffed and violently raped by my best friend’s uncle at the age of 7.
By the time I was discharged from the service, I was suffering greatly. It was as though a plug had been pulled and I couldn’t stop the flow of effluent that was leaking out. And I couldn’t get away from it either. I desperately needed help. But I was terrified, confused, intensely embarrassed and depressed.
Within a few months of discharge my increasingly impulsive and erratic behavior led to me causing a vehicle accident while street racing my car (something I had never done prior to the assault, but was now doing compulsively) that killed two elderly women returning home from church on a Sunday morning.
My wife, pregnant at the time, lost the baby shortly thereafter and our relationship imploded. That KO'd me for a while. I shunned treatment, counseling anything associated or linked to the accident. My shame over having killed two people by my irresponsibility became a massive boulder that sealed everything associated with that event off like a tomb.
I did not want to be seen as a victim myself and set out to become something. I worked my way up in a company willing to take a chance on a felon and went from a $10/hour night loader to the Plant manager and near 6 figures in 10 years without a degree. I started racing ATV's (I'd never ridden a motorcycle before) and in 4 years had climbed into the top 10 as a national pro.
But my life chaos was increasing exponentially as was my self destructive behavior. after 13 years I again divorced. This coincided with resigning my position at the water company and and marrying my 3rd wife.
From there we had our first child while we blew through my retirement trying to figure out what in the hell we were supposed to do. We moved in with friends and I got a job doing driveways for $12/hour. My degrading social skills put huge strains on the friendship status of the family that was good enough to help us. We ended up living in a small camper for 5 months with no plumbing. I called my old boss who now lived in Georgia and was running a consulting firm to the energy sector and asked for a job. This guy thought I walked on water at my last place of employment. We moved in late 2012 across the country. It was an unmitigated disaster. I lasted 18 months before I had to resign. the physical manifestations, panic attacks, loss of focus, inability to follow direction, intense and growing phobia for talking on the phone (it was phone sales job) and an increasing tendency to freeze in stressful situations. (on the phone or in person) just really weird long silence from me.
We moved to Arizona to live with our in laws. My wife flew ahead and I met up with my father in law, who was only 6 years older than me in NM. 15 minutes after meeting up, he, died of a massive heart attack in front of me on the side of the road, I had to call my wife and tell her dad had died.
the two years spent living in phoenix with a wrecked mother in law going through menopause and losing her mind over her grief now had me and my incapacity to focus her pain on. I started smoking pot heavily (I had not had a substance abuse issue prior to this) and my capability continued to recede. I was working in a tiny post office in a rural town for 4 hours a day. My beard hair fell out and my panic attacks were happening 3 - 12 times a day and everyone felt like the heart attack I saw my father in law have. My Daughter was born in August of 2015
The relationship with my mother in law deteriorated until she sold her house and bought us this little rv we are in now, early in 2016
I went to the doctor in phoenix for the first time in April of last year where he diagnosed me with PTSD and we picked up and moved back home here to washington to flee the intense stress from living in a dirt parking lot in July in Phoenix in an rv, not to mention the now open hostility directed toward me from my in laws who weren't buying any of it.
By some miracle my wife was able to locate my Pink medical folder and it has the doctor's name in there and the dates, though he doesnt mention in the chart notes the procedure in question, at least from what I can tell. This guy was a ltcdr in the NAVY, I'm fairly confident I am not the only person he taught this lesson to.
So now we are in process. My wife has done all the filing to date and has been as thorough as possible, but there is a lot of water left to cross and Im not entirely sure of the strength of our case and I dont want to learn on my own experience the lessons of those who have successfully navigated this.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
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MKAH
As a soldier which indured MST back in 1984, reading your post literately brought me to tears. I have no expert advice or knowledge f how best to proceed, but you will find it on the Hadit website.
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