The Fayetteville Observer September 24, 2012
The Last Battle: Steven Chadduck lost his home and nearly committed suicide while waiting for help for PTSD
By John Ramsey
Steven Chadduck lost a home and came close to suicide while waiting 18 months for the VA to decide that his PTSD and knee injuries make him unemployable.
His claim languished with thousands of others in the Veterans Benefits Administration's claims office in Winston-Salem.
There, an inspector general report released in August said the floor was in danger of buckling under the weight of about 37,000 claims folders stacked 2 feet high and two rows deep atop already-filled cabinets.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has promised to eliminate its entire backlog - more than 820,000 claims nationwide - by 2015. The VA has hired more than 3,000 claims processors and bought a $300 million computer system.
But the wait times in North Carolina - and in the other areas across the country that process the most claims - are getting worse.
VA workers process disability claims for most North Carolina veterans in Winston-Salem. Its backlog is among the largest in the Southeast, according to a national analysis by the Center for Investigative Reporting in California.
About 33,700 North Carolina veterans are stuck in limbo, waiting an average of 329 days for the VA to process their claims. Approximately 3,170 live in Fayetteville. Winston-Salem also has more than 12,500 pending claims from new programs that allow soldiers to file for benefits before they leave the Army.
And if a veteran appeals the VA's decision, he can expect to wait more than four years, in part because the workers who typically handle appeals have been reassigned to help ease the backlog. While they wait, those veterans often are not able to receive disability payments.
Wait times are higher than a year ago, even as Congress calls for improvements. The new computer system, which will allow for paperless medical records, won't be fully operational until at least 2015. For now, paper claims are kept in folders and passed around by claims representatives.
The claims are piling up more quickly than workers can rule on them. Nationwide, more than a million veterans filed claims for benefits last year. Some are Vietnam War veterans filing new claims because the government expanded its list of ailments that can be caused by exposure to Agent Orange. But many are from the post-9/11 wars.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that 45 percent of veterans who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan are seeking VA compensation for war-related wounds, the highest rate in history.
At Cumberland County Veterans Services, seven county employees help veterans file claims with the VA office in Winston-Salem.
Sharon Sanders, the county's veterans services director, has seen the workload rise from about 700 veterans a month to about 900 a month in the past 15 months. In August, her office assisted more than 1,000 veterans for the first time.
The workers used to tell veterans to expect an answer in nine to 12 months. Now they say 12 to 18. Some claims take more than two years, she said.
Sanders said even though her office is overwhelmed with the workload, she would recommend that any veteran who files a claim get help from experts familiar with the system. The process is so frustrating, she said, that many veterans who file claims on their own hit a wall and give up.
"We've got some that are homeless. You've got retirees. A lot of them are really struggling," Sanders said. "I don't know what the answer is, but I know that something's got to be done."
The VA is behind, but it's not alone.
The United States is wrapping up two wars that were fought differently and longer than leaders predicted.
"For the first couple of years there, the politically correct position was that (Iraq) was going to be a short war," said John Pike, a military analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org.
That put the military behind the curve protecting troops from bomb blasts and in treating those affected mentally.
And large bureaucracies, like large ships, have a hard time changing direction quickly, Pike said.
One of the first signs of the short-war mentality, in retrospect, may have come when troops had to use scrap metal to armor their Humvees against an emerging weapon of choice: homemade bombs hidden along roadsides or inside cars.
The Army realized it did not have enough armored Humvees in Iraq in 2003. But it took another two years to correct a problem that was putting soldiers at higher risk. Army leaders have acknowledged that the size and proliferation of homemade bombs, called IEDs or improvised explosive devices in the military, caught them by surprise.
As the wars continued to drag on, the military began using even larger troop carriers to protect soldiers from the blasts.
As the bombings increased, so did the number of soldiers suffering the signature wounds of the wars: concussions, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems.
When the soldiers started coming home, they overwhelmed the health care system. The VA treated 1.3 million veterans for mental health problems, up 49 percent from 2005.
The VA treated 1.3 million veterans for mental health problems last year, up 49 percent from 2005.
The VA has increased its mental health budget from about $3 billion in 2003 to more than $6 billion next year in an effort to build more facilities and hire more mental health specialists.
"They weren't set up for this. They hadn't planned for it. They didn't have enough people, didn't have enough beds," Pike said. "Because the services were telling them it wasn't going to be a problem."
Steven Chadduck first deployed to Iraq in 2003 as a cavalry scout with the 30th Heavy Brigade based in Clinton, a National Guard unit. Stationed along a major route for insurgents north of Baghdad for 15 months, Chadduck saw terrible things.
Back at home, every time he closed his eyes, he saw them all over again: the faces of fallen friends and of people he shot, or body parts scattered after explosions.
No one here seemed to understand him anymore, not even his family. He felt out of place in America.
So Chadduck signed up to go back. About four months later, Chadduck was deploying to Iraq for what he hoped would be a suicide mission.
"The intent was not to come back from that. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't deal with everything," Chadduck said.
When he came home the second time, his mind and body kept betraying him.
He couldn't sleep; sometimes he'd sleepwalk through his house acting as if he were clearing insurgents from rooms. He couldn't work; his damaged knees made the tough labor of the construction business nearly intolerable. And his temper was out of control: He snapped and picked up his boss by the throat at his last construction site, one of many incidents in which Chadduck describes acting aggressively while experiencing flashbacks to war.
Chadduck had come home from Iraq in 2006, but parts of his mind stayed.
He could no longer remember things he needed to, such as medical appointments. But he also could not forget the things he wanted to, the memories that tortured him.
Chadduck knew he needed help, but he could never bring himself to ask for it while he still wore the uniform. He didn't want to seem weak or hurt his career by becoming a mental health patient. But when he went to the VA after receiving a medical retirement with benefits that begin when he turns 60, Chadduck had a tougher case to make because he had never seen a doctor about his PTSD.
"We hide, and we hide well," Chadduck said of soldiers facing mental challenges. "We don't get treatment, then the VA doesn't see us as needing treatment because we didn't get it when we were on duty."
Doctors with the VA initially decided Chadduck's PTSD was not too severe. He was declared 30 percent disabled with PTSD. Chadduck thought they were wrong, but he didn't appeal. Appeals take at least five years, he heard. So he settled.
Despite his poor credit, he bought a trailer in Gray's Creek in 2009 after taking custody of his two sons. The $33,000 loan carried 11 percent interest.
It was small, but it was theirs. He didn't want to raise his family in the living room of the friend's house where he had been crashing.
In December 2010, he asked the VA to reconsider its ratings by asking it again to classify him as unemployable, an alternative to filing an appeal. That would force the VA to re-examine all his previous disability ratings, but it would not be fast.
The waiting made Chadduck angry, like so many things did now. He felt like the VA was ignoring him, hoping he'd eventually go away.
VA officials in Winston-Salem said they can't talk about Chadduck's case without his signed, written permission, which he declined to provide. But Chadduck acknowledges he didn't wait patiently.
He nearly got himself arrested for making threats.
Sanders, the county veterans service director who has helped Chadduck with his claims, said there were two or three times that VA workers called her to ask if she could help calm Chadduck.
Deputies once came to his house after he called the Winston-Salem office and lost his cool. Chadduck said they told him never to visit the Winston-Salem office in person.
"In the course of the conversation, I might've alluded to the specialized nature of my training. ... I made it clear I'm not someone to cross. I've killed people," Chadduck said of his telephone conversation with the VA worker. "When I get angry, it's not a pretty sight. It's like the Hulk."
Chadduck says December 2011 - 12 months into an 18-month wait - was the start of a long downward spiral.
The VA had paperwork with conflicting dates about Chadduck's final days on active duty and his first days collecting disability. A soldier can't collect both payment from the Army and disability pay from the VA. Chadduck had not, but the VA withheld his entire $857 payment that month. Chadduck would prove he was right with his retirement papers - the second time he had corrected the VA on its error - and recoup the money months later, but by then it was too late.
Chadduck was already struggling to pay his bills during the year he waited for a decision.
That $857 was little more than a clerical error to the VA. But to Chadduck, it was next month's trailer payment, next week's dinner.
He had no money, no way to make money, and no hope that his VA claim would be resolved fast enough. He was going to lose his home.
As a veteran, he did not qualify for the protections that keep banks from foreclosing on active-duty service members.
The foreclosure would not be official until his bank bought the trailer in an auction on the courthouse steps, but Chadduck knew what was coming.
He began searching the Internet for charities that help cash-strapped veterans. He was buying food for his sons with gift cards that would arrive in the mail. Other times, food banks kept them from going hungry. He sold his blood plasma to justify buying cigarettes.
The stress made everyone in the house miserable.
"I kept looking at my life insurance policy and thinking my kids might be better off, at least financially, if I weren't around," he said. "I was right at the edge of suicide."
He once downed a handful of sleeping pills, but the drugs made him vomit. Another time, he sat for what seemed like an hour with a shotgun alternately pressed against his chin or in his mouth.
Chadduck had spent 15 years sacrificing for his country and now spent his days on the phone begging for more time in a trailer because he had nowhere else to go.
On July 23, Chadduck's life changed again. The VA was approving his claim, declaring him totally unemployable because of his PTSD and knee problems.
His monthly payments would be more than double his original ones. And there would be thousands of dollars in back pay coming, a lump payment for all the checks he would have received if the decision had been made back in 2010 when Chadduck applied.
It wasn't in time to stop the foreclosure, but it did keep his family off the streets. Chadduck moved with his teenage boys into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom condo last month while the bank was taking the trailer.
The back pay came to more than $20,000. He used some of the money to pay off more than $2,000 in overdraft fees on his bank account.
Patrick Bellon, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, says the claims system for veterans is broken. He said the system ought to work something like the IRS, which grants claims and then conducts audits.
Bellon thinks the method would work in the VA in part because fraud has been shown to be almost nonexistent, happening in less than 1 percent of major disability claims.
"The issue is veterans are waiting for the money, and while they're waiting for the money, their financial situations are deteriorating," Bellon said.
Chadduck - who lived out Bellon's worst-case scenario - shares his view of the way claims should be granted.
Today, Chadduck takes five drugs each day for his stress and his pain. He said he's had four different psychiatrists assigned to him by the VA in the past five years. He's only met two of them, he said, because appointments are often delayed for months. It's usually just a 15- to 20-minute meeting, and they send him on his way with prescriptions to help him sleep and take the edge off of life.
He still has intermittent nightmares and still struggles with his temper.
Traffic can trigger flashbacks, which, in turn, cause the Hulk-like behavior. Chadduck has jumped out of his car to scream at the driver in front of him because the situation reminded him of an insurgent trap in Iraq meant to guide his vehicle into a bomb or an ambush. Chadduck says his kids are learning to help him cope. "Hey, Dad, you're not in Iraq," they occasionally have to remind him.
A pistol sits next to Chadduck's keys on the counter above the sink. He usually grabs both on his way out the door. The weapon helps him feel safe. Sometimes, he says, he wants to use it. Taking a life would not bother him, he said. It's losing his freedom and family that stops him.
He thinks sometimes about how he would have been on the streets if the delay had been just a little longer, the stack of papers ahead of him just a little higher.
"We came very, very, very desperately close, literally within days of that life," Chadduck said. "It's not the life that we deserved. It's certainly not the life that I earned."
© Copyright 2012, The Fayetteville Observer
