UPDATE....I'm home now

[lostchild]

Good luck to the OP, I hope all goes well and he recovers quickly.
The VA is their model for how universal healthcare would look.
I saw a tv add last night bragging that they had "World class medical care".

They didn’t mention that it was “Third World” class?

 

[Gaffer1968]

Sorry you had to go through what you did. I'm sure it sucked and that you were dealing. I know any kind of dental stuff is painful and yes dental work is expensive even with insurance.

I've always kept up with my dental care while in the military and even after I retired. I've never had this happen before and yes it hurt and yes it sucked and I wouldn't want anyone to have to go through this.

Thanks, Most of my dental problems were caused by the military. In 1969, this dentist straight out of 2LT Georgia Dental College or something proceeded to drill and fill EVERY tooth crevice I had on my upper teeth - all in one sitting. He did this because he said, "you're headed over to the jungle and won't be able to get any dental care." After several hours he was done and said to make another appointment in a few days and he'd do all the lowers. Over the years most of those uppers cracked and split and the almagam fillings fell out. I lost three or four teeth to that. I can only thank the heavens I never made that second appointment. All the lowers are still okay and I've had little problems with them.

 

[Ghost-1]

Fortunately I've never knowingly suffered from agent orange. In early '68 we put a combat road right across the Michelin rubber plantation going from east to west to connect the 1st ID to the 4th ID. We also cleared rubber for about 500 meters on each side of the road. It seems that about every week or so the AF's C123s would make an agent orange run over us and give us a spraying for the 5 weeks of the operation. The Michelin was a nasty place and we were most happy to get out of there.

Thank you for your service. My did three tours in Nam all with different ODA's and he finally retired right before DS/DS an he was doing good then a few years ago he started getting sick and having issues and he was going through the VA at the time. Well he finally got tired of the run around and started seeing someone outside the VA as he was a retired soldier himself.

Well they are the ones that found out what was going and when he took that stuff to the VA of course they started playing the we don't know what you are talking about game and then just started being stupid. By the time they even tried to do anything for him it was to late.

I was supposed to go see him the weekend after he passed away and we had plans and everything and we were both looking forwards to me going up the Augusta and seeing him. The next thing I know I get a text message informing me that he had passed away. Not a phone call but a damn text message from my evil, lying, conniving, self centered mean as hell step mother letting me know.

I did three tours to Iraq and two to Afghanistan along with two tours to the Balkans and one to Macedonia along with some other little crazy places. I tell my son that our problem and issues is the burn pit's and that is what all of us OIF/OEF vets are dealing with as that is our so called Agent Orange stuff. I have issues I am dealing with now due to them such as sinus stuff and breathing issues and they have found nodules on both of my lungs that I have to have watched and a cat scan each year on them along with some other issues as well.

 

[nepag]

Ghost -- thank YOU for your service as well. Hope you're able to get good medical care. I remember the damned burn barrels that were also used in Nam. Nasty smoke, and were to be avoided whenever possible. As far as burn pits, if we wanted to get rid of munitions, and other questionable stuff, we just applied an ample amount of C4 outside the wire and blew in place. Once in Lai Khe we were cutting a bunch of rubber trees in our company area with det cord and neglected to let the big brass in Div HQ know. We let 'er rip and all the base sirens went crazy thinking we were getting incoming. Happy ending though, the base camp was big enough so they never knew where the big "Boom" came from.

 

[Ghost-1]

nepag thanks and yes I am getting some pretty good care as the VA has come a long way from when my grandfather who was a WWII and Korea vet and my dad and uncles who were Nam vets and retirees as well and me and my brother who are all OIF/OEF vet's and I am the only retiree. Yes there are some places that the VA needs to change and get better and then there are some like where I go that are pretty good and do take care of us but they all have bad apples all over the place.

They could have done a better job as far as getting rid of waster and other stuff and doing something to better that the burn pit's which were burning anything and everything no matter what it was. Then you had them right there where soldiers were living and it was just nonstop with the stuff and you never really knew what was being burned in the pits.