Getting Myself Prepared
by James Glaser
April 2, 2012

I have a doctor's appointment at the VA this week. It used to be no big deal for me. I would keep a note on the refrigerator to remind me, and when it was time, I would get cleaned up and head out. Now I have to do a little thinking before I go. Let's call it a little mental preparation.

For years I have been using the VA for my health care, and every time I would go I could see guys with missing limbs, guys using a white cane because they are blind, and guys who are so disfigured you have to be careful you don't stare at them.

What is different now is that for the first time in my life I am seeing disabled veterans who are younger than me. To tell you the truth, some of them look like kids, and now they are not all guys. There are plenty of women veterans at the VA, too.

I am sure it was the same for WW II and Korean vets when I first started going to the VA. I was the young kid back then. I have to tell you, it is a shock, and so sad to see a triple amputee, but for some reason it isn't so bad when they are your age or older. When they look like you children, your heart goes out to them.

There is a protocol at the VA. You treat every vet like they are the same as you. Your war was not any harder or more horrible than theirs, and an 80 year old vet can talk to a 20 year old vet like there is no difference in age, because really there isn't much difference in their war experience. A guy who had his leg blown off in WWII had about the same battlefield experience as the young man or women who lost their leg in Iraq. Pain is pain, and the physical and mental recovery is something they both had to go through.

For me, getting ready to go to the VA is just reminding myself what I probably will see. I do that so I don't get so bummed out and sad seeing the destruction war causes on these young people.

Yes, I talk to them like they might have been in my unit. You might say we talk adult to adult, but really it is different, because we are talking veteran to veteran. We are both 20 again, and that is true if you are talking to somebody 80 or 25. Every time you go, you kind of fall into this limbo time where you, and whoever you talk to are still in the service or you both just got out.

The VA Hospitals and Clinics are a strange place, and you do a lot better if you prepare yourself for your next visit.

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