Dim Sum Diaries
I just read this article via Sean from docinthebox. I am so mad.

1st Lieutenant Julian Goodrum, ex-navy and currently in the National Guard. He was in Iraq but he got sent back because he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and hand injuries. The article says it best:

Back at Fort Knox that September, Goodrum had surgery on his left hand. But he had to wait weeks to begin physical therapy. And weeks more passed before he could iron out the red tape for surgery on his right hand.

Conditions for soldiers on medical hold at Fort Knox and elsewhere were poor. There were too few doctors. Soldiers faced lengthy waits for processing and treatment. Many soldiers were sent to civilian physicians. And the base accommodations often were poor. Congress ultimately would investigate and recommend changes.

Goodrum filed more official complaints. And he made his "treated like dirt" comment to UPI. It made him a bit infamous on base. He felt it put a bull's-eye on his back.

Goodrum's treatment situation was becoming even more maddening. Suddenly, there were confusing complications in his quest to get surgery for his right hand. On Oct. 29, oddly, he was dropped from "medical hold" at Fort Knox, though he still needed care.

On Nov. 5, at a base clinic, he says, snide comments were made to his face about his outspokenness in the press. He claims a clinic attendant told him he would not be getting his second surgery.

He was so angry, so unnerved, he began to cry. He called a medical case manager. He called a commander he knew. He received assurances that of course he would receive his surgery.

So on Nov. 7, he reported to the Fort Knox hospital to begin the process. He would have to be readmitted to medical hold. And he also asked for help with the emotionalism and anxiety that seemed to keep overwhelming him. He wouldn't get very far.

Lt. Col. Ronald Stevens, then the deputy chief of clinical services at Fort Knox, had been checking up on Goodrum. Stevens had looked at Goodrum's records after the UPI article, Stevens testified at the Article 32 hearing. Stevens thought Goodrum had exaggerated. The UPI article, said Stevens, contained "untruths."

In his testimony, Stevens claimed he wanted to meet Goodrum. He had instructed medical staff to not readmit Goodrum into the medical hold company, but to send him to see Stevens instead.

The physician's assistant who handled Goodrum that day testified that he remembered few details about the encounter. What Goodrum remembers is this: being told that Stevens did not want him to be treated. And a note on a page of Goodrum's records from Ireland Army Community Hospital at Fort Knox reads, "Colonel Stevens do not [sic] want this pt. to be in med. hold."


You guys should read the rest of the article. I got so mad after I read it I emailed Arlen Specter who is the Chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. Then I emailed a well-known mil blogger re the situ. Jesus, I wish there was more I can do.