Reminds me of an incident where I once worked. We were in a very large building (warehouse), and one day the office girls complained about being bitten by little insects (gnats or fleas). We brought in an exterminator, and he reported no signs of any insects in the building at all-the management reported this, but still everybody was complaining of the itching (caused by the bug bites). The management was in a quandry-they din’t want to risk anybodie’s health by spraying insecticide around, yet the compalints were growing day by day!
What did we do? We had the exterminator spray around the building, using nothing but scented H2O!
it worked like a charm-the office girls stopped scratching, and nobody was exposed to possibly harmful chemicals!
Shows you the power of the mind!
When did we become a world of whiners?
I work in the insurance industry. Some days it seems like there is an endless procession of people trying not only to blame every problem in their life on others, but trying to collect some dough from it.
I think that Cecil’s column this week was a good example. COntrails, Crayons, copy paper, Gas, cell phones, microwaves, carpeting…is there not pride or shame left?
Mr. Zambenzi, I think it is a mistake to charecterize suffers of GWS as “whiners”; the ilness is alomost certainly pyschosomatic. However, that is not the same as being “faked”. One of the reasons psycosomatic disorders are so diffucult to treat is that the minute someone suggests that there is no physical, external agent at work, said suffer assumes that they are being called a liar and a faker–which they are not–and goes on the super-defensive to prove that they are “legitimently” sick. It becomes a matter of saving face, and it makes progress more or less impossible. For whatever reason, the human brain seems to have this universal tendency to physically manifest symptoms in response to high-stress situations. We will never figure out how to prevent this, or work around it, until the real/fake dichotomy is left behind.
A great book on this is called Hystories by Elaine Showalter. She traces the history of hysterical disorders–psycosomatic disorders–from the nineteenth century. It came out in paperback, and most libraries should have a copy.
Oh, I know that they are not “whiners” exactly. It just amazes my that as or life gets safer and safer and medecine gets better and better, so many people find imaginary ways to make if scary and awful again.
In the insurance world, we tend to see a little different type of victim. I have met a lot of plaintiff’s with somataform disorders of one type or another. And I have met frauds.
For both, the key seems to be some form of secondary gain. Whether it is money, attention, not having to do housework, staying out of work, or being able to blame their failure on an ailment.
It is not that these people don’t, in some way believe that they are suffering. It just always seemed to me they were trying to get their needs metthrough a grown up form of…well…whining.
As another Gulf War vet, I am still stumped about the GWS. We were the only F-117 Stealth fighter unit in the area, and hundreds of miles away from the front lines. We based out of a mountain range close to the Yemeni border, consequently, the chemical/bio threat to us was nil. The F-117s did not use depleted uranium weaponry, and the Kuwaiti oil fires at the late part of the conflict did not affect us, sitting on a mountain top 7000 ft. above sea level.
Surprisingly, a few years after we came back, one of our group claimed GWS. We were a military police unit that kept security over the F-117s, halfway through our deployment, this guy claimed he couldn’t perform perimeter defense duties anymore, so he was reassigned light barracks detail (read that as “housekeeping”). Needless to say, he spent the rest of the war in our eternal contempt.
How this slacker got Gulf War syndrome is a mystery to me unless you could have possibly got it from prolonged exposure to laundry soap and mop water. Just before I retired, I heard he was at the VA hospital in Mississippi with genito-urinary problems associated with his “participation in the Persian Gulf conflict”. Gimme a freakin’ break! Apparantly the VA was taking this hook, line, and sinker.
I appreciate that they are looking closer into veteran’s health problems after all the problems with Agent Orange in Vietnam, which was a legitimate topic. You would think they could’ve run this asshole’s case through the bullshit detector and at least interviewed other personnel from his unit. It kind of looks strange when one man out of a 500-man Air Force squadron hundreds of miles from the Forward Edge of Battle Area comes down with GWS. I guess he must’ve been issued one of those new depleted-uranium mop handles.
In defense of the VA - The laws are that govern benefits are poor. Many deserving veterans are not receiving benefits because they can not provide the evidence to prove their claim although it is clearly obvious they deserve compensation. An example is a veteran who is suffering from a back condition caused from injuries on the battle field, although records are not detailed enough to grant benefits. A lot of military records, especially during a war-time period (WWII in particularly), are shoddy and incomplete.
On the other hand, I have seen service connected compensation claims granted to veterans who are less than deserving. Two perfect examples are:
(1) The veteran who is recieving disability benefits at the 100% rate for injuries he obtained while driving drunk. He, along with another soldier, were bar hopping one weekend and crashed while driving home. The accident broke his back and killed his passenger. Normally, benefits are not granted for injuries caused from willful misconduct, however, he was never legally charged for DWI. By the time the wreckage was found hours had passed and his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit. The VA pays him $2298 per month, tax free.
(2) The female soldier who decided to pay a visit to her husband’s girlfriend to beat her up. The girlfriend kicked her ass, fracturing her jaw and nose. She is now recieving a large sum of money each month. She also received back payments close to $100,000.00, again tax free.
Both receive the addition benefits of vocational rehabilitation, property tax abatement, commissary privileges, free park service entrance along with camping, fishing, and hunting fees waived, veteran status, educational benefits for their spouse and children, free medical benefits.
It is extremely frustrating to the VA when benefits can not be granted to those who truly deserve it, but it is even more frustrating when benefits are granted to those who don’t. The law is written in such a way that there was really no way to deny benefits to either case. Both cases showed evidence of injury while on active duty, both showed continuance of a disability, and neither showed documentation of willful misconduct.
The VA’s hands are tied by Congress. Be assured, it is damn frustrating at times.