Anyone who wishes to extol the virtues of medicine as practiced by the United States Army is clearly out of his mind. This encompasses active military service as well as the Veterans Administration.
My experience of a little bit more than three years in the American Army would seem to suggest very vociferously that anyone who appears at “sick call” has to prove overwhelmingly that he is not malingering. There was a case for example when I had worked all night and I was five minutes late appearing at the sick call window. The two registrants of the sick call told me that I must go away. It made no difference whether I was sick or not. The fact of the matter is that I could not reach sick call on time because of transportation difficulties and my inability to walk. When the two fellows at sick call told me that I was too late, I started toward the door with the intention of walking to the hospital, but then I collapsed. With that, the two people who had turned me down promptly produced a jeep to take me to the hospital.
It is the basic premise of anyone who is conducting a sick call that anyone who presents himself must be malingering. This is quite backwards. I would never have gone anywhere near the sick call apparatus unless I needed it.
Being admitted to the Army hospital was an experience in itself. When the physician, who was usually a captain, made his morning rounds, we were expected to stand at the foot of our bed waiting for him to question us. The fact of the matter is that some of us were too sick to stand. There was no such thing as intensive care, at least for those of us who were enlisted men. We were put into large wards. Most of us wished to avoid as much contact with the medical establishment as possible.
The reason for my collapse at the sick call mentioned earlier had to do with a raging case of malaria. Upon reaching the hospital, the only treatment in those days was to take large quantities of quinine. Quinine makes one terribly unsteady. It destroys any sense of balance. Since leaving the Army, I have told every physician never to give me quinine.
But in the Army, no accommodation is made for a soldier who has lost his sense of balance. In trying to get to the latrine, as it is called, it is not unreasonable to find one or two soldiers who have fallen short of their goal of reaching the urinal.
All things considered, I have a very low opinion of medicine as it is practiced in the American Army. My experience with medicine as practiced in the American Army is that there is a lingering fear on the part of the administrators that they are dealing with malingerers. There may be a malingerer here or there but as a general rule soldiers get sick from time to time and they try to avoid submitting themselves to the medical practices of the American Army. The fact is that no one enjoys going to sick call. It is to be avoided as much as possible. But the Army takes the opposite view that most of the people who present themselves at sick call are malingerers.
It has been alleged by some independent observers that the Veterans Administration has a much improved system of handling sickness among discharged soldiers. My experience with a Veterans Administration hospital will tell you that that is not true in any fashion. The practice of medicine, in my case, was suboptimal.
Shortly after my discharge from the Army, I encountered a case of pneumonia. I thought that the proper thing to do was to take my case of pneumonia to the Veterans Administration. That was a bad move. I am here to call you that the practice of medicine in the Veterans Administration is no better than it is in the military services.
The burden of this essay is that if you get sick, do yourself a favor and do not ever approach the military authorities in search of a cure. It could very well be that advances in medical practice are now reflected by improved practices in the hospitals and in the Veterans Administration. However, I would give you this one piece of advice. If you get sick, find a competent physician to treat your problems. Never turn over your problem to the military authorities. Unhappily, those are the facts. And it should just start with staying away as far as possible from the sick call as practiced by the American Army.
E. E. CARR
December 30, 2012
Essay 729
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Kevin’s commentary: this is upsetting. For a country that claims to love its military and where everyone “supports the troops” it more often than not seems like we sure as hell don’t. Ugh.