Dr Phil- Failed by the VA- 12.19.09

"When you look at the pictures from when [Jeffrey] came back, that smile didn’t encompass Jeffrey as a whole,"
says Joyce of her son. "You would look at him and say, ‘Is this my son?’"

"The first real indication of a problem occurred on Christmas Eve. [Our daughter] Debbie found Jeff in the kitchen.
He had been drinking, and he was crying," recalls Jeff's dad, Kevin.

"He threw two dog tags at me and said, ‘Don’t you understand? Your brother is a murderer,'" Debbie remembers.

"Jeff was having hallucinations. He was seeing camel spiders in his room," Kevin reveals. "I had ordered a book on
PTSD. He went through all the symptoms. He was saying, ‘I have this. I have this. I have this,’ and then finally he
looked up at us with tears in eyes, and he said, ‘I’m going [expletive] crazy.’"

"I knew I was losing him. You could feel it," Joyce laments.

Jeff went to the VA for medical help. "I really had blind faith that we were delivering him into the arms of angels,"
Kevin says. "We were under the perception that he was going to be assessed. In fact, we were told that they
refused to assess him for PTSD. How insane is that?"

Kevin recounts the night his son died. "It was about a quarter to seven, and I drove into the driveway. There was a
light on in the far corner of the cellar, so I walked down. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Jeff and I thought he
was standing there, until I saw the hose double looped up around his neck. He was so cold, so clammy. I knew he
was dead," he says, voice quavering.

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Failed by the VA