Trying to make a life
After a battlefield injury, endless challenges
Much of the time, Recio has been at Walter Reed, alone and depressed. His parents visit Washington as often as possible, and his wife, whom he married shortly before deploying, stayed with him, too. "At Walter Reed, he has nothing to do all day," says his father, Jorge, who owns a lumberyard in Hialeah, Fla. "When he is alone there, he gets down. More than a year of his life has been wasted." Recio's depression is in striking contrast to his younger self, when his parents were convinced he would become a priest. Idle and bored, he eventually became hooked on painkillers, taking 15 a day, grinding them and snorting them. Finally, in August, his wife persuaded him to quit, and he gutted out an agonizing week of withdrawal.
In Recio's perfect world, he would like the Army to medically retire him and let him return to Miami to restart his life. What exactly that new life will look like is still unclear. His marriage recently collapsed under the strain of his recuperation, but despite his growing bitterness, he is proud of his service in Iraq. "I support the war completely," he says. "I'm prouder than hell. At least I got hurt doing something I believe in. I wish I could stay in the Army."
While on medical holdover, soldiers go through the Army's physical evaluation board, which soldiers call the med board. That is essentially an exercise in form filling: Doctors evaluate a soldier's disability to see if he is fit to serve and pass that along to the board, which decides the soldier's fate: It can keep him on active duty, discharge him with a lump sum payment, or medically retire him with monthly retirement pay.
Recio hasn't reached that stage yet, but Ramiro Mayorga, the young medic who has had eight hand surgeries, languished at Fort Gordon for more than a year on med hold while his evaluation dragged on. "Your life is on pause," he says. "You basically sit there, and whatever the doctors write on the paper is what you get evaluated on. You are a paper to them." The med board finally retired him at a 40 percent disability. That means he gets 40 percent of his base pay--he takes home $640 a month. Mayorga had hoped for 50 percent but decided not to appeal. "I just said, 'Screw it.' "
"Profound change." Mayorga finally got home to Miami September 29, almost 15 months after his injury. Being retired from the military made him eligible for the second part of the bureaucratic process: applying for benefits from the VA, which offers healthcare, compensation, and burial benefits for 70 million potentially eligible people--veterans, their families, and survivors. Principi says "a significant, profound change" has been placing VA staffers at military hospitals and bases to help soldiers begin to file for VA benefits "so they don't have to wait until they get their discharge papers." Indeed, the VA hospital in Miami actively tries to reach out to new war vets, but Mayorga has not yet hooked up with the hospital for physical therapy for his hand or counseling. He did, however, apply for disability compensation for his hand, hearing loss, and PTSD; he learned last week the VA will give him 70 percent disability, or $1,029 a month.
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