'Cost of war' too much for Walter Reed, vet says; Durbin wants Duckworth on panel

[babylonsister]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/west/chi-0703120189mar12,1,4332150.story?coll=chi-newslocalwest-hed

`Cost of war' too much for Walter Reed, vet says
Durbin asks to put Duckworth on panel

By Jeff Long
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 12, 2007

Tammy Duckworth saw young soldiers that were horribly wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq come home to fight other battles against the bureaucracy at the troubled Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Sometimes they got lost in the system--or in their own depression--and never showed up for therapy.

The overworked staff didn't always have time to find out whether there was a problem, said Duckworth, a National Guard major who lost her legs in combat.

"We called them the missing patients," she said. "There was nobody keeping track of where they were."

Duckworth spent 13 months at Walter Reed after a rocket-propelled grenade struck the helicopter she was co-piloting near Baghdad in November 2004. Her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, also a National Guard major, was with her during her long months of rehabilitation.

"He wasn't going to put up with any bureaucracy," she said. "But it's really different for the 19-year-old who has a brain injury and six months in the Army. He doesn't understand the system."

Duckworth was a congressional candidate last year and now is the director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has asked President Bush to appoint her to a commission that will look into allegations of poor care and dilapidated conditions at Walter Reed.

more...