Veteran Caregivers Spill Real Support Ptsd Resources Reveale

Have there been any snags in the system? Not at all for us. None. None at all. It was so simple. You know, I hear a lot of caregivers say that they are afraid for the VA to come into their homes. They don't like that feeling. But to be honest, I mean, they just come in and they sit in your living room or at a kitchen table and they just talk with you. They do it out of convenience. And, you know, sometimes that may be hard to believe because, you know, we all encounter some red tape here and there. But really, the caregiver program has been incredibly smooth for us. I've seen the same thing. What type of what is it? How has it helped? you and your family? What benefit have you received other than the caregiver stipend, which they don't want to call cash, but it's cash, other than the mental health assistance, other than maybe the health insurance? A lot of people say that what has really helped is it's taken a lot of pressure off trying to find that extra dollar, or at least a lot of people say the reason it's helpful is because I don't have to choose to take care of my husband or maybe work full-time. I can work full-time and take care of my husband, so I don't have to make that difficult decision and it helps our families. How has it helped your family? Well, you know, financially it does help, but honestly for me the biggest help that I have received is meeting other caregivers in our area that I had no clue were out there. I thought I was all alone here in Michigan as a caregiver and I've been really blessed to meet some really great caregivers through this program. You know, I hear that a lot. Now, how many caregivers have you been able to tie in with? And you say you're really blessed to be able to tie in with these people. How's that going? What do you get from that tying in with other caregivers? What's the benefit to that? And do you think that network of caregivers is doing more proactive things because they're in the same type of program? Yes. Well, you know, you start out being a military wife anyways, most of us. And we already have that strong sense of military family. And then you get out of the, you know, your husband's out of the military and you kind of lose that feeling that you have family. So for me, the caregiver program kind of gave me that sense of a military family again. We're all in the same boat. all of us, we do look at each other as family and we get together for coffee or we'll do different events. With Voice of Warriors, you know, I do a lot of events with all kinds of combat veterans and they're caregivers. So, I think that the biggest benefit is just knowing that we have a family again. We're, you know, we're family. Outstanding. Okay, Patty, I got to run, but thank you for your time. Everybody go out there, check out Voice of Warriors. Thanks for everything you said today and please give our best to your family. Okay? Thank you, Boone. Next on the line, we have Samantha, 22 years old, one of the people in the caregiver program that's at the younger end of the spectrum and her husband, Travis, injured in the current war and that's what she's doing. She's taking care of Travis. As I understand it, Samantha, how are you doing? Pretty good. Outstanding. Hey, you've got a baby at home, or how many children do you have? I have a son that is two and a daughter that is 10 months. So you have two babies at home? Yes. Well, congratulations for that. And being a young mom, relatively young mom, two children, also a caregiver to your husband, there's a whole lot of responsibilities that go with that. Have you run into any snags as part of the caregiver program? Has it been pretty smooth? Is Have you gotten more than you expected or less than you expected? pretty good. I haven't went to any of the support groups that they have monthly, but I just emailed my go-to person, I guess you can call her, and asked her if it was all right to bring my 10-month-old because the family doesn't like watching her because she's still so little. And she actually just emailed me back and said that I was more than welcome to bring both kids if I had to. And I thought that was pretty awesome because most support groups you can't bring the kids in because as caregivers, some people some wives have difficulties with loud noise just like they're veterans. Right. Okay. Yeah, that's true. I mean, let's just face it. It happens. A lot of the loud noises, the hypervigilance, it does transfer from one family member to another if you're living in a home where PTSD is prevalent. Now, as being one of the caregivers and a mom on the younger end of the spectrum how is the mentorship from maybe some of the ladies that have a few years on you how has that been a benefit to you oh it's been a huge benefit a huge benefit if I didn't have for example your wife if I didn't have your wife on like Cdell or on Facebook where I can just send like anyone all like anyone that I can find if I couldn't send them a message and say hey I need a event for a few minutes, I think I'd probably get crazy. But since I have them and since I'm able to get a hold of them anytime during the day or night, it's been a huge benefit. And if I could make an observation on that, I know there's a lot of war fighters out there listening. There's a lot of apprehension. Oh, great. The women are talking. You know, it's just to bash us and all this other stuff. From what I have seen in the caregivers in the communities proxy to what I'm doing, there's not a whole lot of bashing going on out there. It's very, very proactive and focused on how to be supportive to the war fighter rather than, oh, he's a jerk and you deserve to leave him. And is that about right or am I off base there? That's completely right. I don't think I have ever read a statement where someone has said, you need to leave him, you need to get out. Outstanding. And the only... Now, I will say I have read a few where people are like, look, this is who he is now, and you have to learn how to accept it. Accepting it is a huge step as a caregiver to do because we want our guys to be 100%, okay? We want them to be healthy. And accepting it and learning how to go about doing it is like a huge step. And if the caregiver cannot accept it, then I think that they do need to step back. But we don't go around saying, oh my gosh, you need to leave him. He's horrible. No, we tell him accept it. And this is the way that you can learn how to accept it because you can't just get better overnight. Outstanding. Thank you very much for your time, Samantha. Give our best to those little babies and tell Travis we say hello. Will do and have a great night. Thank you. Stay safe. And we got to go to commercial break. This is KKFT 99.1 FM Talk, Fox News Radio. You are listening to Tipping Point with Boone Cutler. Let me tell you about a brand new pro They have right here for my journey home of Nevada. It's called help a veteran. That's right. You can help a veteran with only $250 and receive 10 free one minute spots on Fox News Radio. Your donation will also allow you to receive a free app for your business on your iPhone or smartphone. Plus, when you do this, you can dedicate a computer mouse monitor keyboard and it's already loaded with Microsoft Office and Windows 7 for the veteran of your choice. You can donate it yourself or you can ask My Journey Home of Nevada to actually give it to the next veteran on the long list of veterans who are trying to get back into the workplace and into society. Let me recap. Ten one-minute spots on Fox News Radio, Nevada Matters programming on weekends, plus a computer mouse monitor keyboard all loaded as well as a free application. Give us a call today. 775-827-890Z. Hey, this is Cheryl Walhorn Scott listening to Boone Cutler on Tipping Point. Why do warfighters listen to Boone? It's because it's the only place they can go to get the cold, hard, painful truth, and he knows they can handle it. Thank you for coming back to Tipping Point Boone Cutler. I want to say to everybody out there, money is the name of the game in a lot of games. And around here, unfortunately, I also need sponsors. So if you're interested in sponsoring Tipping Point Boone Cutler, please get in touch with me either on Facebook, Tipping Point Boone Cutler, contact me, contact the station, contact somebody. But if you want to sponsor the show, you want me to do your commercial, I'll say it. I do usually a pretty good job producing those things, and we will run it every week. Not only that, you will get replays in infinitum forever on you The next segment on the show is the newest segment of Tipping Point Boone Color, and that is the Shame on America segment. And Shame on America. This week's Shame on America, let's just say highlighted guest, Shame on the National Personnel Record Center for screwing up our records. That's right. Yours, Truly Boone Color sent away for a list of all the records they had there, my time in service, all my awards, all my decorations, any medals I've received. They came back and said, I've never even been in Iraq, never served there, no record whatsoever. Now, of course, I have my DD-214 and all they have is my first term of service where I got out in 1994. From 1994 to my discharge at Walter Reed, nothing there. Maybe I was a secret agent and it was so secret I don't even know about myself. How scary So this week we say shame on America to the lazy people, not everybody, just the lazy people that are screwing it up out there for everybody at the National Personnel Records Center because you're not only screwing me over, I've got 47 people commenting on Facebook saying you're hosing me too. Shame on you, National Personnel Records Center. Shame on you. On with the show, we have got Tori Shannon up next.