Photos Showing ‘Shameful’ Scenes At VA Hospital Prompt Investigation

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It's not hard to find stories of headaches -- and heartache -- when it comes to the VA. What makes this one different is it has pictures to go with it.

Marine veteran Stephen McMenamin and his wife, Hanna, moved to Raleigh from their home in Milwaukee a few months ago and already have amassed an armload of personal stories about long wait times at the Durham VA hospital -- both to get appointments in the first place and in the waiting room once at the hospital.


But they said it was what they saw Friday that moved them to take pictures and post them to Facebook.

"It was very upsetting," Stephen McMenamin said. He and his wife said they saw a handful of older veterans mistreated and ignored during the seven hours they were at the hospital, including an aged-veteran in a wheelchair.

"He had been sitting there for quite some time groaning and convulsing in pain," McMenamin said. "Almost to the point of where he was falling out of his wheelchair."

"He was visibly in pain," said Hanna. "And I think the thing with that that disturbed me so much was that there were people just sitting there acting like nothing was happening and he was sitting right in front of them and they were not even acknowledging that it was happening."

McMenamin says he and other patients asked if there was anything staff at the hospital could do to make the man more comfortable and were repeatedly told no.

After several hours, McMenamin says he offered the man a wheelchair he had been given.


"He sat in it for probably 15 minutes until the head nurse came around and kicked him out and said he can't do that, he can't be in that area. She was very rough with him and just completely insensitive," he said.

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McMenamin and his wife say another veteran that caught their attention was an older man who looked deathly ill coming in but also was made to wait. After multiple times trying to get comfortable and being told he could not, McMenamin says he just lay on the emergency room floor.

"He just kind of laid down and said, 'I can't get up, I won't get up. Please get me a blanket until you can see me.' "

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"The majority of the people working there were very nice to us. They were great," she added. "It's just that you have these people that don't care it seems like, and from what I've read from the comments, this is happening all over the place. You get people that just don't care for what they're doing and they feel like they can't be fired, so they just kind of get away with it. I just think it's unacceptable."

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