John Shaubach with his step-daughters
Smaller newspapers are covering the many issues facing disabled veterans as they profile people in their communities. The York (Penn.) Daily Record followed the journey of a local woman as she tried to help her brother, a veteran with disabling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Melissa Gieniec, the local woman, traveled to Alaska to try to help her brother after a frantic phone call from her sister-in-law about his worsening PTSD. Her brother, John Shaubach, served 22 years in the Army as part of the 82nd Airborne Division. His leadership in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan earned him a pair of Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.
Shaubach's story is just one of thousands because estimates from the Department of Veterans Affairs are that one in four veterans from the Iraq war will suffer some form of PTSD.
Two trips to VA-run PTSD treatment centers did not help Shaubach; in fact, one seemed to aggravated his symptoms because it was built next to a base with the war noises of live-fire and helicopter exercises.
Before leaving Iraq in April 2004, Shaubach said he watched soldiers die in numerous roadside bombings, sometimes for missions that had no military objective. He has a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and chronic body pain from the explosions.
Gieniec and Shaubach's wife took him to numerous doctors and VA clinics with little success.
"There was an incredible sense of hopelessness that this was never going to end," Gieniec said. "To hear it and see it firsthand was overwhelming."
Finally in early May, the VA declared Shaubach homebound and 100 percent disabled, and he is receiving some of the medical treatment he needs.
He's currently being treated for his PTSD at a VA clinic in South Dakota and Shaubach tells his wife that it feels like a good fit. The hospital backs up against a forest and he and several other veterans can spend hours walking in the quiet woods.