re: Want to retire at 25? Go military

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My husband also spent 23 years in the Navy - most of that flying Tomcats off aircraft carriers. Guess how much he got for disability? Drumroll…… a whopping 20% and that was for a knee operation they really screwed up and the one that everybody who was ever on a carrier seems to get - tinnitus. That’s it. He definitely should have qualified for more. Hell - just his damn neck still gives him problems from all the G’s he pulled. But he never went to the doc back then unless he absolutely had to because he didn’t want to be marked med down and be unable to fly. He said that was pretty standard with all his squadron mates, as well. I remember when he was getting ready to get out of the military the civil service folks on base actually offered classes basically teaching them how to work the system to get more money - but because he had never documented any of his medical problems back when he was flying he wouldn’t have gotten much of anything had he even pursued it anyway since he didn’t have any kind of medical “proof” the navy caused any of his issues (blown ear drum, concussions, back issues, etc.).

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This sounds very familiar to my own case. I was ultimately med-boarded against my will because extensive stress fractures in both legs refused to heal. Rather than giving me the eight weeks I needed, my command repeatedly countermanded my medical profiles and disrupted the treatment plan. At least at the time, commanders could effectively overrule the restrictions doctors imposed. Instead, I relied on what today would be considered a criminal quantity of Percocet, hundreds of pills a month, so I could “drive on.”

I deployed to Iraq with a broken back, wearing a brace and using a cane, in full battle rattle, carrying a 203 and a full basic combat load of 5.56 and 40 mm ammunition. I also went to the field in training areas, through the woods and carrying gear, while wearing a full-leg cast and using crutches. My sergeant major once chewed my arse in front of the battalion for having the audacity to report to work in a leg cast.

A first sergeant once forced me to report to first formation the morning after I broke my back, two ribs, my ankle, and my hand because he had “heard” that I wrecked my car while driving drunk. I was not even the driver. Our completely sober designated driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree at 70 mph.

The Army did not cause the accident, but it did force me to spend two hours in excruciating pain, crawling down two flights of stairs and across a quad, just to turn around and go back upstairs after I “reported,” with no concern for whatever additional damage that movement may have caused. It was punishment based on a false rumor and one man’s misplaced spite. Even had I been the drunk driver, forcing someone with a broken back and multiple other fractures to crawl to formation would still have been indefensible.

My left hand was so badly damaged and pinned back together that I can no longer make even half a fist. As a bonus, the Army doctors also failed to notice that my eyes were open and that I was still fully conscious and feeling everything as they drilled screws into my bones for an hour while discussing the upcoming weekend. My right middle fingertip has been badly sewn back on.

I made several attempts to get help dealing with traumatic images and violent memories from Iraq and was repeatedly blown off. That includes the first time I watched a family with young children turn into mist and a literal skid mark on the road directly in front of me. I also spent probably a couple hundred hours in the immediate vicinity of toxic burn pits. So far, so good on that, but I am ready for it to show up and kick my arse soon.


I have almost no natural balance because the core muscles in my abdomen were literally torn apart, and my lower torso is now just a map of scar tissue.

I have suffered multiple concussions, and I now have serious trouble forming long-term memories. I can give you detailed recaps of hundreds of college football games and rosters from 1990 through 2015. But right now, without Googling, I cannot tell you the last bowl game Alabama played, who the opponent was, or the result. Other than permanent opponents I assume they have played, I cannot reliably tell you who Alabama has faced over the past ten seasons. I cannot tell you which years Alabama or LSU won national championships during the past decade without looking it up. I do not even remember who won the national championship in any of the past five years. AND I HAVE WATCHED EVERY RANKED SEC GAME DURING THAT TIME.

I remember the teams, scores, and results for two or three days, and then they are gone.

My knees, shoulders, and feet are wrecked from years of ruck marching. The pain is so ever-present that I went to the doctor for a sprained ankle a few weeks ago, and after X-rays, I was informed that my ankle had been completely broken for six months to a year. I never noticed because I THOUGHT IT FELT NORMAL.

I was diagnosed with hypertension at 25 despite having no previous history of high blood pressure, being at an ideal weight, and doing 20 to 30 hours of exercise and high-intensity training every week.

Later, I spent a month in a coma. The muscle wasting was so severe that I had to relearn how to walk ten fricking steps, and it took me over a year to be able to stand up from my couch and go take a leak.

I could keep going.

What do I receive? Ten percent, or roughly $190 a month. That does not even cover the medical supplies I am forced to procure on my own because I cannot rely on the VA to deliver them on time, and I have to have them.

Yet I am still counted among the “40 percent of veterans receiving disability” being thrown around in this thread, as though that statistic proves veterans are living high on fraudulent benefits.

So excuse me for still going to work every day and enjoying an adult beverage afterward, but some of these guys can go frick themselves.

And before anyone tells me to blame other veterans for receiving the compensation they earned because I got fricked over, I do not blame them. I blame the incompetent bureaucracy that failed to document injuries, obstructed treatment, ignored repeated requests for help, and then used its own failures as the reason to deny proper compensation.

I also blame the dickheads on this board who wholeheartedly supported invading Iraq because Toby Keith singing about kicking arse gave them a hard-on. They all deny it nowadays, of course. They supported deploying the same guys into combat four and five times, but now want to bitch when the bill comes due. Support for the invasion was around 75 percent among Americans, yet everyone on this highly conservative board now pretends they opposed a Republican president who was highly popular at the time. GTFOH.

A bunch of you want to portray callmestevo, the guy offering to help vets ITT, as some kind of scumbag, but he texted me back immediately and offered to help. That alone makes him more solid than 99 percent of the born-on-third-base accountants on this board who were practically forced through college by their parents, wear khakis recreationally, listen to Foo Fighters when they feel edgy, and think they accomplished something extraordinary by becoming soft little bitch-tit doughboys who drive to their cubicles in lifted f250's.

I’m taking him up on the offer.