Now that the stress is gone...

Okay so now that I've had a couple days to recuperate from my final two papers of the semester, I've decided to sit down and give an update.  Aside from the fact that I'M DONE with my first year of grad school, not much is going on.  I'm doing some house cleaning, going through old things, sleeping in, etc.  Taking a break for a few days.  I'm also looking for a summer job that will be willing to work with me given that I start my summer class a month from today.  The bummer with this area is that I'm either overqualified for most jobs, or I'm under-qualified for jobs...not exactly what you like to hear/see when you're looking for a job.  Granted it's not like I need anything great, I just need something to bring some income into our house.

That reminds me, I was going to talk about all the "other stresses" I have going on.  As most of you know, my husband was medically retired from the Army at the end of September.  We had many many problems with the base getting things done on his med board.  He actually started the med board process during August of 2009.  He ETS date was March 28, 2010.  He was told his med board process and everything should be back by the end of December and he would be able to use his terminal leave prior to his actual ETS date.  Well....March 2010 rolls around and they still haven't mailed off his med board packet to Ft. Lewis for review by the committee.  He ended up being extended another 6 months in order to finish the med board.  His med board didn't get mailed off until around August 2010...one year later.  Throughout the whole process, his PEBLO was changed like 3 times, people lost paperwork (go figure, right), people lost his service record, doctors refused to do their summary of findings so the packet could be complete, etc.  Basically it boiled down to people not wanting to do their job so this process could get completed.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should have stopped everything to finish his paperwork, but at least devote a couple hours to do the paperwork in the 4-6 months it took before the hospital administrator got involved.  As part of this process his VA application for benefits was supposed to be completed, sent off, and he was supposed to have a rating before he got out of the Army.  Ft. Riley had already switched over their med board system in compliance with the new regulations, which state the VA rating is provided prior to discharge from active duty.  Well someone dropped the ball...again.  Finally after several phone calls and trips to the guys office, the guy realized that they never did my husband's VA paperwork.  The problem here...his discharge date was like 2 days away.  The rushed the paperwork, put some bogus stuff that didn't make sense on the application and sent it off.  Here we sit 7.5 months later with no rating, no clue of when the rating will come, and a lot of people at the VA asking why Ft. Riley didn't do this...that..this..that, etc. 

So going back to why all of this is a problem.  The retirement people at Ft. Riley said my husband is eligible for both state and federal unemployment for one year after he gets out of the Army.  So my hubby spends several days on hold with the Kansas Unemployment office and finally applies for unemployment.  After 6 months his unemployment stopped and he was told he either has to apply for an extension or apply for federal unemployment now.  This was the second week of April.  He has called and sat on hold for hours upon hours every weekday since the second week of April...never being able to talk with anyone b/c they disconnect the line after you wait for a good 2 hours on hold.  No exaggeration here, he has applied for hundreds of jobs since October 1st, not one of them have returned calls or emails for an interview.  So we have his retirement money coming in from the Army and nothing else as income.  His retirement check is $1100 a month.  That covers our car payments only, no other bills.  We haven't paid rent since October, so we owe our landlord $3,500 in back rent.  I've taken out the maximum amount of student loans each semester just to help pay the bills.  So in one year I've taken out just under $30,000 in student loans.  We now sit with about $250 to our name until June 1st.  We are going to the store on Thursday to buy groceries and toiletries...but then our money is gone.  So that provides an issue for looking for jobs because we don't have gas money to afford to go to the other towns to look.  We live in a tiny town that doesn't have much for jobs, so if we want to work we have to drive 30 minutes to another town.  I feel a lot of stress and frustration because of the situation we're in...so I can only imagine he feels worse because he's not able to support our family.  He's been working with the Vocational Rehabilitation through the VA the past couple months and takes a test for his commercial drivers license tomorrow.  Even though it's not an ideal situation, we are looking at him taking over the road jobs just to have money coming in.

So my opinion on this whole situation is that it goes to show that the military truly does not care about their wounded service men and women.  My husband is just another number to them in their roll call of those who were injured.