Monthly Archives: June 2017

Tropical Storm Cindy and My Crazy Thoughts

This past week we dealt with Tropical Storm Cindy here where I live in Florida. Yes, the landfall was hundreds of miles away to the west, but the rain was far-reaching. With the rain came localized flooding, at least one tornado that caused damage, and over 5 ½ inches of rain right here from June 20th to the 22nd (recorded at the local military base according to Weather Underground’s website). That’s a lot of rain in just 3 days.

 

What a wonder view of the clouds outside my back door.
Very minor damage for me, the siding started to come loose.

Views from my back door after the main part of the storm had passed.

But now I’m going to be controversial. All the hype the different weather sources put out about weather events, is just that, hype. At least most of it is. They need ratings, just like the news channels. They will play it up as much as they can to make sure you tune in. I have to do some research on the subject, but as far as I can tell, someone changed the term “tropical disturbance” to “tropical cyclone.” Why? Because “cyclone” sounds more scary. On a similar note, but going in a completely opposite direction, we got PTSD from changing the way it’s named. It went from “shell shock” to “battle fatigue” to PTSD. People will change the name of something to impact how you view it depending on how they want you to see it. PTSD doesn’t sound near as bad as Shell Shock.

But I digress. I do that from time to time. Let me grab another beer.

The reason I know the Weather Channel, and other weather outlets, hype things up is because I’ve seen it. In Panama City Beach years ago, they did a report about flooding from a parking lot that floods in an average afternoon thunderstorm. The roads were fine, no problems. But the reporter walked through the deepest part of the parking lot talking about how the flooding was affecting us. It was a lie. I saw a reporter on the Weather Channel once talking about how bad the winds were during a particular tropical storm one year. They were reporting from in between two condominium buildings, where the wind is tunneled as it comes off the beach and increases in strength. It’s always windy in that spot. I was on the crew that built the pool for one of those buildings and I know firsthand that the wind right at that exact spot is always much greater than on the beach. Again, they lied. Or at least in both cases, the source of the information was manipulating the truth in such a way that it was not accurate reporting.

 

Some tornado damage at a local park.

I have lived in the Florida Panhandle for more than 25 years. I’ve sat through every tropical storm and hurricane that has ever come our way. Some storms were worse than others. Some hurricane seasons were worse than others. But the common denominator in every storm, every year, was the reporters for the weather and news channels hyped them all up more than any of them ever turned out to be. The only one here that even came close was Hurricane Opal in 1995. Opal forever changed the landscape of the Emerald Coast. And 1995 was a record-breaking year for named storms at the time.

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This guy had a bad day.  But then again, the tree missed the house, so maybe it was a good day.

The point of all this is to take everything with a grain of salt. Have a little common sense, do some research. Understand that not everything is as it appears or is as reported. Not everything is what the name suggests. A tropical cyclone is still just a tropical depression until it becomes a tropical storm. And while I’m on the subject, who renamed the “War Department” to the “Department of Defense” in 1949? Someone that thought War Department sounded too harsh, probably. They still do the same functions despite the name change.

I’ve written enough for the amount of beer I’ve consumed tonight, so I’ll close for this week. Thanks for reading my bizarre ramblings. But I do hope you take some of this to heart and not be fooled by the appearance of things that aren’t true. Good day, God bless.

Dave

My New VA Psychiatrist

For the few of you that are also on my Facebook page, you know I had an appointment with a new psychiatrist recently at my local VA. The reason anyone knows about it is because I posted my displeasure with the new psychiatrist there. At the end of the appointment, I left unsatisfied and wondering if she really cared or if she was just checking the boxes. I know for sure, she gets paid no matter how I feel when I leave her office. I think it was a waste of my time.

The main thing that upset me was the changes she made to how I get my medication. First, let me back up. A while back they gave me a prescription for a 30-day supply of my medications, but made my next psych appointment 50+ days out from that. I had to ration my medication so I wouldn’t be without them for too many days in a row before I could get them refilled. I would always get a paper prescription and take it to the base to be filled. It’s a process that has been working for a long time. It’s flawless. That process has never failed.

My new psychiatrist says I can now only get my medications through the VA. Well, one of them, which they keep in stock at my local VA, only comes in twice the dosage I take. Now I have to cut the pill down every night, whereas from the base, I can get it in my prescribed dosage. Not a huge deal, but still annoying, especially since I’m not fond of change when something has been working for as long as it has. That might be the PTSD coming out in me, I don’t know. The other medication is NOT kept onsite. They would have to mail it to me. I’m already out of it by the time of my appointment, and now I must wait up to ten days to get it in the mail. How does that help?

My new psychiatrist told me the reason she wants to change how I’ve been getting my medication for over a year is so that she can have control over it. She also mentioned that I would have to be at my house to sign for the medication when it arrived, although the postal service may allow another adult to sign for it, she didn’t know. It is a controlled substance. But that didn’t work. The postal service let my 13-year-old daughter sign for it. Tell me how much control the new psychiatrist has over that? Please explain to me how the way she wants it done is better than me taking a paper prescription straight to the base and getting my meds the same day, without a controlled substance being signed for by a 13-year old?

I plan on bringing all that up at my next appointment with her. And I may have already made a formal complaint about it before then. This is one of the reasons I find the VA so frustrating. Why fix something that isn’t broken when there are so many broken things they should fix? Why change something that has been working without fail and create a process that I am not comfortable with? She cared more about controlling my medications than she did about what was going on in my life, or at least that’s what I believe to be true. That’s how she made me feel.

That’s my frustration with the VA for the week. On a lighter note, the AMAs I’ve been hosting seem to be going well. I found out there was a glitch in the way they counted RSVP participants, so last week when I thought I was up to 500+, it ended up being a little more than 100. They fixed it and the numbers are now accurate. I’m still happy about all of it. I’m amazed by the number of people that take the time to ask me questions on there. The site I’m doing the forums on is still very new and will only continue to grow. And I’m getting paid to do it. I love that part. Go check out my next one if you want. And RSVP to it when you get there to help my numbers if you feel so inclined. And, ask a question. That’s the whole purpose of the AMA anyway. Hope to see you there.

https://militaryama.com/during-my-two-deployments-one-to-iraq-and-one-to-afghanistan-my-camera-took-158812/

That’s all I got for the week. Thanks for listening me to vent about the VA. I’ve said many times that all the good doctors leave the VA for better jobs. My new psychiatrist will probably be there forever. But anyway, Good day, God bless.

Dave

Subpoenaed for Deposition

I was subpoenaed for deposition this week as a witness to a wreck I watched happen. A wreck that happened in 2012, 4 ½ ago. The attorneys wanted to question me as to what I remembered from that day. From 4 ½ years ago. Sometimes I have trouble remembering why I went into the kitchen and they want to know details about an event from 4 ½  years ago. Let’s see how that went.

I clearly remember the wreck. It was the kind you don’t forget. I watched it from my work truck, traveling on Highway 98. It was right in front of me. A Jeep swerved into the median, then came back across the travel lane, nailing a pickup truck. The Jeep then continued at full speed off the road, became airborne, and landed hard in a ditch. I thought for sure there would be serious injuries to the driver of the Jeep.

I stopped. I went to the Jeep and opened the driver’s door. The woman in the driver’s seat asked me to help her move her Jeep. I think she was asking me to help find her keys. She was drunk. She appeared to be uninjured, but was most definitely inebriated. The passengers in the truck seemed to be unharmed as well. When the State Trooper arrived, he ordered me to wait in my truck until he could get a statement from me. It’s from that point on that my memory is less clear. The adrenaline rush of the wreck made the immediate details clear and lasting in my mind.

The Attorney for the Plaintiff asked relatively easy questions. Basic stuff. Mostly questions about the actual wreck, where I was in relation to it as it played out, why I stopped. Things I had some answers for. He asked about 20 minutes worth of questions. The defense attorney, however, asked a bunch of different questions. He would ask, then rephrase the question, seemingly trying to get me to change my answer. I know how it works. He’s the defense attorney, he’s supposed to try to discredit any witness that can make his client look guilty. He even asked me if I could tell him what kind of shoes his client was wearing that day. Seriously? When I got to the Jeep, I expected to see someone in dire need of medical attention. I wasn’t looking at shoes.

After the defense attorney finished with his questions, I thought I was done. I was hoping to be done. The deposition had already gone 30 minutes longer than I was told it would and I was now running later for work than I had told my boss I would. But then, there was a third attorney, a gentleman sitting at the table that I thought was just there observing.  He turned out to be the attorney for the ex-husband of the defendant. The ex was the actual owner of the Jeep at the time of the wreck. The attorney for the ex-husband only asked one question and then I was free to go.

I have chronicled my memory issues in previous blogs. Some of the things I remember are detailed and vivid because of the circumstances. During my travels in Afghanistan, there were many times we found ourselves under attack from the enemy. I can probably remember certain details of every time we came under attack. I can’t remember much of anything after an attack ended. But the particulars of where I was at the time, who was with me, what base we were at, what I was thinking, time of day, how close or far away the explosions were…. I can remember all that stuff.

It’s ‘funny’ how the memory works. And I have no idea why mine remembers certain things clearly, but other things, I’m clueless. In the link here, https://storyofmylife.blog/2016/06/04/memories-and-afghanistan/, I mention a memory from Afghanistan that for two years I had completely blocked out or forgot until one of my appointments with my psychologist. And it all came back. The memory was similar to the dangers of the attacks I mentioned, so why did my mind suppress it? Why did it take a session with my psychologist to pull it out?

I kept a log of all the missions I went on while in Afghanistan. And between my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan I took over 8000 pictures. Both of those things help me with my memory. I don’t look at the mission log much, but I do occasionally browse my pictures. And every time I do, I find pictures that remind of things I seem to have forgotten. I would really like to know what memories are hiding in my head that I didn’t get pictures of or put in the mission log.

I don’t know how much help I was in the deposition. Maybe I should have taken pictures of it all or wrote it down. But it didn’t seem that complicated at the time. To me, it was cut and dry. A drunk driver caused an accident. I don’t what they can be doing to drag this on for 4 ½ years. But I’m sure the lawyers are getting paid no matter who wins.

Thank you for reading Story of My Life this week. Good day, God bless.

Dave

P.S. Join over 500 others that have RSVP’d to my next AMA that will be on Wednesday evening, June 7. Check it out and ask me a question. Follow the link if you are interested. Hope to see you there.

https://militaryama.com/hi-im-dave-as-a-disabled-veteran-much-of-my-health-and-psychiatric-care-157850/