THE FARGO VA HOSPITAL IS A NIGHTMARE NOW

After they tried to force me to go to there clinic by only paying me travel to the closest clinic from my home and getting my health care all messed up because all my specialty care is at the Fargo VA and the VA Clinic is for primary care, to replace the non VA clinics we could go to close to home, but they are not primary care clinics, they are aid stations that refer you to the VA Hospital for treatment, with a doctor that goes there once a week to determine if you need treatment and if so they send you to the VA Hospital for treatment. So you have to make a trip just to get permission, before you can be treated at the VA Hospital. The Fargo VA a few years ago started up primary care team clinics, with a system with all the doctors being part of the team, like you could be on a red, or blue, or yellow primary care team and to save time they made all your appointments on the same day if at all possible. We still have the teams, my team is red, but everything they do is waist-full, like, lets say urology, if you need a dilation you go there just so they can see if you need one, and instead of treating you they set up an appointment and you have to wait, sometime quite a while, just to get treated. years ago our family PA treated me the same day. They act like you don't know if you need to be treated and someone that has been treated for that condition for forty years should know if they need treatment. This has got to be costly to the VA. Anyway, after I was sent back to Fargo, I had an appointment with my primary doctor and I got a phone call saying she had left and they would find another doctor for me and set up another appointment. I need a dilatation, because they said they would set it up for me. then a few days ago I got an appointment for cardiology, so I called primary care and got an appointment. Then cornary care canceled my appointment, and I called my red team and canceled my appointment to go with my cardiology appointment and told them what happened, and that I need an appointment with urology the same day. Then I got a call from urology and was told they could see me the same time as cardiology on Nov something. I couldn't believe it. My heart problems are critical and they plan to wait that long, so I was quite upset and the urology nurse treated me like I didn't need the dilatation, so I said set it up, then he said how are you going to wait that long when you said you needed it when you were here the last time. I said, "just like I have been all along. I told them a long time ago, that I had a cyst bath, I used when it got to bad and told them to write it down, and the other things important that I told them, so I wouldn't have to explain it every time I went in there because my memory is so bad. What a mess.

Has the Gop crossed the line??

Since the Bush election I have seen the Veterans hospital crumble from; A I don't care attitude, to a smell of corruption attitude. Most of the workers on the job went overboard to make you feel spacial, thanking us for serving and such, but the changes from welcome to unwelcome came by things that we old Vets enjoyed with pride, like the restaurant at the hospital, was nice plates to eat on, now we are paying for paper plates to eat on, it went from feeling important, to a soup kitchen for the poor type of attitude. like, we are not a hitching post, or bar, so don't over-stay your welcome. But now; the feeling we get is we don't want you here, so please don't come back. For example; I went into the travel pay room, that once had a chair to set on while you waited and nice pictures of animals on the walls. Now it has no chair, so you have to stand by his desk like a trouper reporting for pay sir. the only pictures is the desk and walls with posters on fraud, like you are a criminal being told we are watching you. A very unpleasant feeling. It is like the republicans now filled the higher up employee;s with republicans that want to force Veterans out of there hospital. Just this one area is perhaps the most intimidating I think. One day last summer they told me I couldn't get travel pay for primary care anymore because they had a primary care clinic in a town closer to where I live. Yet when I became a part of the red clinic, I had to give up my fee base care and join a team with primary care and special care working together. My team is the red team. So I went to that other clinic and they were not even a real clinic with a doctor or PA there full time, and didn't even have an Xray machine so how could they treat anyone. It was just a place that checked to see if you needed any treatment and then sent you to there hospital to be treated, right back to square one. Anyway there hospital was about as unfriendly as the Fargo one, saying in a nice way you should stay where all your doctors are at. So I went back to Fargo and yesterday I went and stood at attention waiting for the paper work in the room with all kinds of posters on fraud posted all over and this time they paid me, but for only one way. So are we dealing with corruption now, to make Obamas health care law look bad???

THE OLD VET

You newbie veterans are not alone, we old vets have the same problems you are having. I will no longer go to urology because on my last visit I waited four (4) hours in an exam room in a tiny gown, for a cysto, I am a diabetic and had nothing to eat all day, and I had to get dressed to leave when they begged me to stay. Everything was closed when I got out. It is not the staff who is at fault, it is the top rulers who set the example for the staff to follow. Those rulers ordered the use of paper plates, and everyone followes there example of what they consider as respect. There real motto is to cure them enough so we can label them cured and be done with them. I can remember when the VA was allowed to represent a vet and help them to get there disability rating, just like the VFW or The disable veterans org does now. I remember when travel pay was good and nothing was deducted from it like the Fargo VA does. I remember eating on real plates in the cafeteria, and proudly to people to the VA to eat at the cafeteria. Yes, I can remember a VA system that was for the Vets, and there was no greater respect shown anywhere. So as good as it seems, it is nothing like what we once had.

RESPECT OUR VET'S

The Fargo VA hospital serves your food in there cafeteria on paper plates, now that's showing the respect they have for our Veterans. I think we should serve our men and women in congress there food on paper plates to show our respect for them, I bet they get a food allowance to buy food at a fancy restaurant. How did our servant's in Congress become more important then our combat Vets? Now tell me how many restaurants would be able to get away with this in the private sector? Do other hospitals with cafeteria's serve food on paper plates? But of course it will remind them of the good old days on the combat field eating C and K rations. People, we did not send them on a vacation in Paradise, when we sent them to war. Do our recruitment posters say fun in Iraq? Enough already...

WHAT HAPPENED

The great America paniced, when we got hit on 9/11, they saw the sky falling and rushed to push it back up without thinking about the consaquences of there actions. So they ended up with a huge tower to heaven, but everyone started speaking a different langrage, so they had to quit. They forgot that we cannot reach heaven even today with our mighty rockets. We were so full of hate that we forgot we were so broke that we had to cut the programs our Veterans needed to balance the budget, and our old war debt was the cause of our budget problems. So we took that debt and made a tempory fix, that would make it easer to deal with if we didn't have any more costly wars, because we didn't think there would be any more costly wars. This was our second big mistake, We need a law that will add a war tax and a VA tax on any war we fight to pay for the war and to get our VA ready for our wounded, because there will always be a costly war as long as we have no law to keep our presadents from going to war when our society is volerable from panic, and going to war would have to be extreamly important before we would go to war.

The first mistake made was after the vietnam war, when we got rid of the draft because we thought there would never be another big war, and we turned on our Veterans for the same reason, we would never need so many of them again. Now our troops have to go back to war over and over again because we cannot get enough troops to replace them. The all volentary army failed big time and our troops now are suffering because of it and we still think that this is the last war also, so we will never improve our VA system, until these new vets start fighting the government for there rights.

If there were a draft, the VA would be like before, the best we could give our returning troops, because so many would have to serve and fight, who now set back and allow the VA to fade away to save tax's. But of course if there was a draft there would no longer be a war, because it was protests by our own troops during the Vietnam war that helped end it. But the government forgot is that a long war will cause the enlistment of a lot of troops that will become veterans, and when they start speaking out watch out. One other thought, if those fighting today find out they fought for not, there will be a bad taste to deal with as they take on those who did this to them.

RUN-A-WAY TRAIN

I was reading the Bertha newspaper and was shocked by the stories about the Veterans, our troops coming home with little help from our government VA system. So shocked that I created this blog to do my part to help them.