LETTER: A tale from the dark side of VA

In reference to Bill Miles’ Jan. 1 letter, I am glad he has had good experience with the VA health-care system. However, my friend Danny, who served on a destroyer in WWII, wasn’t so fortunate.

He injured his back in the 1960s and walked into the VA hospital in Reno, but he didn’t walk out due to a botched surgery. He had no feeling in his legs, but severe pain the rest of his life. Needing to use catheters he had frequent urinary infections; he also had heart problems. I met him in the 1970s. After his wife died, I would regularly take him to the Reno and other VA hospitals.

Once in the late ’80s I took Danny to Reno for urinary and heart appointments. A few weeks before he had scraped his buttocks on the edge of a swimming pool and developed gangrene (he couldn’t feel it but knew something was wrong). While he was at the VA hospital he asked a doctor to check it, and was told to go home and make another appointment.

When we got home (120 miles from Reno) he called the doctor at Auburn, California, whom he had to go through for appointments. The doctor called the VA (he gave them a piece of his very angry mind). They said to bring him back to ER, which I did that same day. The ER doctor verified it was gangrene and that he had to wait 1 1/2 hours for a surgeon. The surgeon said Danny had to wait six weeks for surgery, so go home. He also told me he had seen much worse cases, that it wasn’t that special. The ER doctor overheard this and told me if Danny didn’t have a ride they couldn’t put him on the street, so I told Danny goodbye and left. Nonetheless, it was about six months before they did surgery, and he remained in the hospital.

During this time his heath got worse and he fell and broke his back. No one would check his back, but after several weeks his legs were drawn up to his chest and they X-rayed his back. Some time later they transferred him to the Palo Alto, California, VA hospital for spinal treatment. It was too late to do any corrective surgery. He spent about three years in the hospital, came home with a nurse’s aide and died about two years later from very poor health.

So don’t tell me that the criticism of the VA is liberal crap. I am by no means a liberal. I had another friend also die due to VA botched treatment. —Dexter Hamilton, Kalispell