Va Nursing Home Interview

As I ponder whom I could possibly interview, my wife suggests, what do you think of interviewing my dad? This immediately appeals to me but there are challenges. He is living in a VA nursing home with early onset dementia. He also has a hard time hearing due to his injuries roughly forty years ago. This would make a phone interview extremely difficult. Instead, I start to formulate a similar idea, what if I interviewed my wife on her experiences as the child of a disabled veteran? I move forward with this idea with a dose of apprehension. I don’t want my wife to relive any pain. During the interview I find just the opposite to happen.

Growing up in Plainview, a small town in the Texas panhandle, Beth found the people to be supportive of her family. “Everyone was always supportive of us, in Texas there are a few things we love and our veterans are one of them”. Her Father, Bobby Masters, was injured in the Vietnam War in 1969. “He was a Marine and in his early twenties. One night, just as he laid down to sleep, he was hit by a mortar. They thought that he was dead and put a sheet over him. He started blowing on the sheet to alert people that he in fact was not dead. He was in the hospital for some time

and ended up losing both arms, one past the elbow and one just before.” Bobby had to have several skin grafts due to the shrapnel throughout his body. After his amputation, he chose to have hooks rather than a prosthetic hand. He felt it was a better fit for him.
For many years after he came home he self medicated. “He used to drink. It was his way to deal with everything. Sometimes at night I would hear him moaning. I once asked my mom what was happening and she told me he was having dreams about the war.” Though he was not a member of the church when she was growing up, he was always supportive, and would even join the family on Sundays for church meetings. He did eventually stop drinking and smoking and was baptized into the church in 2011. “Everyone always loves my dad as he is so personable, many people where happy to see him finally baptized”
As I start to delve into some of the more potentially raw questions, I study my wife for any apprehension or discomfort. I don’t find any. Rather, I find her remembering the happy times. “He still does many of the activities he did before, driving, hunting, cooking, skiing, he even had special golf clubs made. He didn’t allow it to slow him down”, she says when I ask how this has affected him physically. Indeed, I have heard many stories of her dad taking her hunting, skiing, and of golfing. I ask her how kids treated her growing up. She starts to chuckle as she thinks back, “You know, I don’t really feel like we were treated different. It wasn’t something that I thought about. I knew he was different but it wasn’t anything special to me. My friends always thought it was cool and would want to play with him.” Bobby knows that children are naturally curious about his hooks. Many times they are scared. Other times, they are just curious. He always takes time to let children warm up to him and after just a few minutes, he has kids crawling all over him and playing with his hooks. I have seen this many times but there is something special about seeing it with my son, his grandson.
After the war, Bobby attended Auburn University as any true Alabama boy would. He later went on to receive his Masters degree in Occupational Therapy. As we discuss this I ask her if any of this had an affect on the decisions that she made in her own education, “Yes, my dad was a counselor and worked with physically disabled people. I decided I wanted to do the same so I could help people like my dad did. I did my internship at the VA as that is a population that I am drawn to for obvious reasons. Most of my grad papers in my social work program were on veterans and the different set of challenges they face”
As we start to draw to close I ask her if there are any changes she would make to the VA healthcare system.

She is in the rather unique position to be both a healthcare provider, and also the child of a disabled veteran. She of course would like access to be easier for all of our veterans. There is also the issue that many of these men and women come from a culture of dealing with problems on their own. Bobby once broke his ribs. Try as they did, nobody could get him to go the doctor. “Now that he is getting older and dealing with Alzheimer’s he does have to go more often. I feel since he is considered 100% disabled it has maybe been easier for him to get help he needs. Also, my mom is one to stay on top of the VA and make sure things get

done.”
As we have had this interview I have seen in the relationship between my wife and her father something special. I hope to be able to emulate this and have my children feel the same for me. To summarize that feeling is hard. If I had to, it would be that although I may not be perfect, that I always tried to be the best parent I could, and to make them feel of the love that I feel for them.