Walter Reed horrors real, but blame those in charge

[babylonsister]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070325/EDIT02/703250320/1090/EDIT

Walter Reed horrors real, but blame those in charge
Your voice: Kathleen M. Carroll


I was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center last November and December at the bedside of my 20-year-old son, Kieran. There were bright spots: The medical staff was brilliant and skilled. The administration was effective and compassionate. They even hosted a heartwarming Thanksgiving dinner, with beautifully decorated tables, a string ensemble and the higher-ups in dress uniform carving turkey and serving up mashed potatoes.

But, yes, there were lapses: dirt on the walls, stuck to the remnants of every piece of tape that had held a card, photo or letter in the past few years (in an environment where infection is a life-or-death matter), food trays perched on biohazard disposal bins, long stretches between staff visits.

My own travel to D.C. followed a phone call in which Kieran claimed that he'd been lying in his bed for five hours after waking up from yet another surgery, with no pain medication and no one answering the call button or his pounding on the wall. I was certain that it was his trauma talking, but he sounded like death and I was on the next plane.

Two days before we left, a nurse stopped in the room to tell us the call buttons weren't working. We'd have to use the phone to call or walk up to the nurses' station if we needed anything. Since I was bedside, in all my ambulatory glory, this was not going to be a problem for us, I assured him.

Some hours later, though, it became clear that it had been a problem for another soldier down the hall. He was screaming - shrieking, really - in a pained, hoarse voice. Between obscenities he complained of the pain he'd been in, that he'd had no pain medication since he woke up from surgery five hours before, and that no one was answering the call button or his pounding on the wall.

Kieran and I passed several doctors in the hall that evening. One asked another about that outburst. Had there been changes in his medication? Was this the first time he'd hallucinated?

I saw miracles and tragedies in Ward 54. Even our finest medical institutions can't cope with the casualties coming back from Iraq.

I think of it like the Titanic - built by the best, staffed by the brightest, capable of handling almost anything. Don't blame the boat. Blame the captain who rammed it into an iceberg.

Kathleen M. Carroll is editor at St. Anthony Messenger Press and Franciscan Communications in Over-the-Rhine.

[shance]

1. Walter Reed was intentional. They starved it so they could grab the land.

It was written in the Washington Post that Homeland Security headquarters was going to be put there, I'm assuming after they had neglected Walter Reed to such an inhabitable level, we as citizens would be forced to give it up.

What has not been intentional by this Administration?