Vets with cancer

anti-veteran?

2009-07-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

google has removed its ads from my blog stating it was a risk to their advertisers. maybe google diagreed with one of my posts....maybe they don't promote free speech of disabled veterans with cancer. it seems to me this happened after my post that placed blame on the VA and the senate oversight committee on VA for lack of action. i have stated repeatedly that i am NOT anti VA or anti army...but i do think veterans have to fight for all they get. i guess the folks at google must not share my opinions...but whatever their opinions are, they're entitled to them. goodbye google...as i no longer have your support, you no longer have mine.

The latest scare

2009-07-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

About five months ago my CT scan and PET scan showed a left hilar mass (a mass in the left lung). As you can imagine, I was very concerned and thought the worse. Last month my doctor did another CT scan and said if the mass had grown any that I would have to start chemo. Well, I was in luck; my CT scan showed no mass in the lung at all (yippee). Now I’m waiting for my PET scan results for the scan I had done yesterday. Trying to get a PET scan done through tricare is very painful and slow. I think they would rather have you actually die before spending the money on the PET scan…maybe its cheaper. I have a friend with a civilian type of health care and he has no problem getting all of the PET scans his doctor orders. You would think the government would make sure we have the best care available!

the fight with VA

2009-06-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

I know, a veteran shouldn’t have to fight with the Veterans Administration…but we do. I’m not saying that the VA is a bad organization or that they’re against the veterans, but they do often make things very difficult for us. Whether this is by design or not, I will leave it to the VA to explain. Whichever view you take, wording of the claims made through VA is everything. One document that the veteran should view is title 38. Title 38, chapter one, part four discusses the schedule of ratings for disabilities approved by the VA. It can tell you whether you have a disability and what the rating should be. It shows you what you need for a 10%, 20% etc. by condition. In other words, if you’re being rated as 10% for your back but you have the symptoms for the 20% evaluation, you should contact VA and request a re-eval.
As stated in an earlier post, when I retired I claimed right side pain that the VA and Army said was nothing. This was important, because it showed a link to active duty. When they found the mass in my kidney it was about a year after I retired. The VA stated I should have appealed their initial ruling. Then my VSR (veteran’s service rep) showed me documentation linking hypertension to kidney cancer. This is very real and very true, but hard to prove. VA stood their ground, regardless of the fact that the American cancer society, the American blood institute, a VA study performed in Birmingham, and my oncologist agreed. My oncologist actually wrote two letters to the VA supporting the link. VA did some shotty internet research that they claimed was more valuable than my oncologist’s opinion. Their research was based off of a medication that I had taken several years earlier. Well, my army doctors had switched my med before I retired to a “thiazide” family med. Thizides are linked by some studies directly to kidney cancer. When we informed VA of this, they stood by their bad and disproven research.
After all of this I decided it was time to get one of my senators involved. I never thought that our senators were so powerless! The VA trampled on the senator’s office and made them like it. The senator’s office agreed with me, but was powerless against VA. VA, at that time, seemed to me to be a rogue government element…answering to no one (I still have that opinion). When I complained to the senate’s oversight committee on veteran’s affairs, they sent my complaint back to the same senator that couldn’t get it done in the first place. When I called the verbally about it they claimed that was all they could do; again, our senate was powerless against VA.
After all of this, I finally just called VA again and told them I wanted a face to face with the director of the regional VA. This will not work through the 1-800 number, you have to get the direct number to the regional office. We had a very heated discussion that finally ended in them giving me the exact wording they wanted from a doctor’s letter. Again, if it’s not exactly how they want it, it can and often will get denied …even if you have something like cancer. I guess they were more scared of their director than they were the US Senate. And I also guess that the director knew nothing of my claim, and they wanted it kept that way.
This time, I consulted the military doctor on post that performed my surgery of what VA wanted. He said that he could say without a doubt that the cancer was there before I retired. He said he would be glad to write a letter for me, and that letter worked. The VA dated my disability back to my surgery date, and gave me nothing for the two years of symptoms I had. Well I guess I won. I don’t plan on fighting over the date of disability, because I just don’t have the energy to fight VA anymore. I get the feeling that is exactly the point of them messing up your disability so many times…so that you’ll quit.

I stated in my very first post that I am not anti military or anti VA, and I stand by that. I do, however, think that the senators and the senate oversight committee are failing the veterans. Whether intentional or not, the VA is mistreating the veterans…and the senate endorses it through lack of interest. Again all of this is just my opinion; I served my country with pride because I love my country.

Tom

emnpuf9iat

2009-06-27T09:15:00.001-07:00

emnpuf9iat

How it all began

2009-06-26T05:13:00.000-07:00

after 21 years of active military service i retired on the 28th of february 2006. before retiring i had complained to my military doctors about a pain in my right side...they found nothing. i also informed VA on my initial retirement filing of the pain...they took no issue with it.
about a year after retirement i was seeing an endocrinologist for low blood sugar. he ordered a PET scan to see if there was anything wrong with my pancreas. Tricare (military health insurance) refused the PET scan and stated they would not do a PET scan without a diagnosis of cancer. i was upset to learn that my military service had landed me with poor health insurance. Tricare did, however, approve a CT scan of the abdomen.
the results of the CT scan showed a healthy pancreas...but a 2 cm cyst in the right kidney. i was then referred to a urologist/surgeon on Fort Sill (Oklahoma). he seemed very knowledgeable and helpful. he showed my the cyst and explained the difference between a cyst and a tumor: a cyst basically is a fluid filled mass and a tumor is more solid. he stated he would follow up the CT scan with an annual CT.
in April of 2008 i had the follow up CT scan. soon after i received a phone call from the urologist stating that he needed to seem me soon. at my appointment he stated that the cyst had changed and appeared to be a tumor with an 85% chance of malignancy. on the 6th of May 2008 I had my right kidney surgically removed. the biopsy confirmed stage one cancer. the cancer had not spread beyond the kidney and the surgery was considered curitive. i was given an 85% chance of surviving 5 years...they said that there was not enough data to give me odds on longer survival becuase they really didn't have a great deal of data on kidney cancer versus other types of cancer.

well....that's how it began. more to follow

Tom

welcome

2009-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

well, this is my first blog. i'm a beginner.....a newbie. i'm looking for a place to write about my cancer and my experience with the military medicine and the veteran's administration that have landed me here. i am not here to bash the military or the VA, but will try to put into words what has happened to this point. i will also include research that i have done as well as internet sites that were helpful to me. this is my initial post, so i will keep it short...more to follow

Tom