Today is the 75th anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor – or, as declared by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the “date which will live in infamy.”
It’s also the week of news headlines blasting out the latest failure of the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide proper medical care to our nation’s most honorable.
So as we go about with somber moods, remembering the sudden and tragic loss of nearly 2,500 Americans – as well as the wounding of another 1,000 and destructiton of 20 U.S. ships and 300-plus airplanes – we ought, too, think with righteous anger on the pitiful plight of 73-year-old Owen Reese Peterson, a Vietnam Veteran who died while in the care of Talihinia Veterans Center in Oklahoma.
But he didn’t just die peacefully. He died while maggots feasted off his open wound, while laying in a VA bed and supposedly being tended by VA medical professionals.
This, from Townhall:
“Peterson came to the Talihina Veterans Center with a case of sepsis this fall. On October 13, an incident report was filed indicating maggots had been found in one of his wounds. Executive Director Myles Deering acknowledged the incident but said it was the sepsis, not the maggots, that killed him.
“If you ask Peterson’s family, they’ll tell you that Deering’s explanation does little to erase the shocking discovery, nor the fact the clinic ignored their entreaties. The victim’s surviving son, Raymie Parker, said he had repeatedly asked the VA staff to tend to his father’s bandages, often to no avail.”
Three nurses and a physician’s assistant resigned after the news went public, no doubt to avoid an embarrassing firing.
But so what?
President Obama has vowed for years to turn around the ailing VA, after report after report of subpar care of our nation’s veterans hit the media circuit. Is Peterson’s care evidence of the long-promised turn-around?
Let’s hope Donald Trump – who’s also promised for months to tackle the bureaucratic VA and install people who actually seem to care about veterans in its many, taxpaid facilities around the nation – doesn’t just talk the talk like Obama.
Concerned Veterans for America released a statement in the wake of the Talihina revelations that read: “It is heartbreaking that the VA is treating sick and injured veterans in this degrading and negligent manner. Veterans made the ultimate sacrifice to defend us, and when they get home they deserve the absolute best care. We should never open the news to find headlines of maggots in the wounds of American heroes.”
That’s an understatement.
At least Pearl Harbor was an attack from another country. Peterson, no less a remarkable military member than those stationed at Pearl Harbor, suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to care for him – he was a victim of his own country’s government.
Maggots on a veteran in the care of the VA – no doubt, for Peterson’s family at least, that’s a day of revelation that will live in infamy.
Disgraceful! Hopefully the new Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs will do something about this problem so it never happens again.