Injury in Iraq was just the start of family's ordeal

WASHINGTON -- When Army National Guard Lt. Michael McMichael returned from Iraq in January 2005, it took awhile for his wife to recognize the changes in him.

They came on slowly at first: a hotter temper. Migraines. Sore bones.

Then the problems grew. McMichael lost his job, exploded at home and walked out on his family in Franklinton. In the three years since his return from Iraq, McMichael has tumbled from being a skinny-but-content war veteran to being a troubled husband and father who is unemployed, walking with a cane and suffering tremors and nightmares.

His wife, Jackie McMichael, has suffered, too. Even when she repeatedly tried to get help, she said, officials turned her away, citing "confidentiality" requirements about her husband's health. She called doctors in tears, she said, and for more than a year felt thwarted in her efforts.

The isolation of military families has become a common story in Congress, where lawmakers are trying to understand how to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Laws and rules have been passed to get counseling to troops in war zones, to expand research into traumatic brain injury and to ease the transition from the Department of Defense to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Much more needs to be done, said Jackie McMichael, 34.

"I represent thousands of wives, family members, mothers," she told the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs on Tuesday. "There are thousands who need this."

When Jackie McMichael's husband left for Iraq in 2004, she dealt alone with an infant fast becoming a wandering toddler. Her older, preschool-age son talked of how his daddy was "putting the bad guys in time out."

Head injury in Iraq

Overseas, Lt. Michael McMichael, a platoon leader, saw some of his men killed. A friend was shot in a battle in Baqubah.

Then in November 2004, a bomb exploded near McMichael. It slammed his skull against the side of his vehicle. It also caused injuries that he wouldn't realize until months later back home in Franklinton.

In the three years since, Jackie McMichael said, her husband has had three nervous breakdowns and been committed to in-patient psychiatric care. He never hit her, but he came close during one difficult night, she said in her testimony.

Depressed and repeatedly late for work, McMichael, 33, lost his job as a lineman for Progress Energy, he said. Now he receives $10,000 a year in disability pay.

"This happened to me, to my 6-year-old son, to my 4-year-old son," Jackie McMichael said.

With a master's degree in counseling, she figured she could care for her husband. She couldn't.

She wanted counseling for herself, for her sons, for her husband. She wanted to understand her husband's health needs, his medications and the warning signs of trouble. She called the Raleigh Vet Center; she called doctors at the Durham VA Medical Center. They refused to talk, she said, citing confidentiality.

"I said to the doctors, 'You don't have to say anything. ... Just listen to me.' "

Her testimony came as the committee gathers information to develop legislation for returning veterans.

"To hear that you're still going through this is a reminder that we're still not where we need to be," said Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem, the top Republican on the committee, called the problems with mental-health intervention "unconscionable." "My assessment is, the VA doesn't see the human face behind the patients they're treating," Burr said. "If they had a human face, we would be doing something different."

Officials with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs said they're trying to get better.

"We stand ready to correct the [problems] we heard about this morning," said Kristin Day, a chief consultant for managed care within the VA agency.

Day and Lynda Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for military personnel, ticked off the work they are trying to do for veterans, including providing case managers.

Senators learned that five years after the beginning of the war, the Department of Defense has just developed a book of doctors and specialists -- akin to the guides offered by health insurance companies.

Asked why it took five years, Davis said, "I can't say. I've been in this role for six months, and I'm just excited we're doing this now."