Tuesday, July 22, 2008

News that affects friends

The headline reads:

Army slow to process injuries

We have a friend, Mike, who is essentially living this, right now. Mike is Adam & Lucas's good friend from the neighborhood. He joined the Army a while back, spent quite a bit of time in Iraq, and is now at an Army facility in Germany doing nothing. Technically, he doesn't have an "injury" but something has left him blind in one eye. This means he cannot perform any typical soldiering, but he has not been discharged, nor has a diagnosis been made, nor a treatment plan developed.

Perhaps, by now, he has received some help from the military medical establishment, but his situation has been going on for months and when we saw him at Adam's wedding a month ago, there was no sign of progress.

I suspect that the extreme under-staffing of the military medical services is causing this, and there may be no quick fix for the situation, but it is disappointing thinking of this good young man being assigned to sit behind a desk with nothing meaningful to do, while no one is working to get his sight back, or to discharge him to civilian life.

This is one data point in thousands. But it's the one that matters to us.

Be well, Mike.

No comments: