Many are likely to view getting shot as the worst thing a person could experience, but former Lance Cpl. Matt McElhinney said getting turned over to Veterans Affairs care has been more painful than anything he experienced on the battlefield.
McElhinney, who served as a machine gunner with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, wrote a detailed account about what landed him in VA care on the social media website Reddit. He was deployed to Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010 when a bullet missed his body armor, made solid contact with the small of his back and tore up his insides. The grisly piece ended up on the website's "best of" section.
"It felt like a sledgehammer hit me in the back, my stomach felt like the worst incontinence imaginable," he wrote. "Then you paradoxically try to resume your task in the fight, until you realize your own bodily dysfunction."
Despite the intense pain, McElhinney said it was nothing compared to the pain and frustration he later faced when accessing VA health care. Now on disability from his job as a forger in a steel mill, McElhinney has taken to writing attention-grabbing accounts of his experiences to help encourage VA reform.
"The worst thing that ever happened to me wasn't getting shot, the worst thing that happened to me was getting handed over to these people," McElhinney said.
McElhinney left Afghanistan nearly five years ago, but has never fully recovered, he said. His health is still on decline following a handful of surgeries. Two of the lobes in his lungs have collapsed and he recently had an appendectomy while under the care of VA.
The frustrations with slow diagnoses and waiting for appointments compound his physical problems, he said.
"If the VA was a fire department, they would come to your house, tell you that it's burning, come back in three weeks with paperwork, and then come back later and throw on a bucket of water," he said.
His hope is that no one else who served their country has an experience like his, McElhinney said.
"They need to remove the stress from this situation, and the stress is the fact that they're screwing Marines over," he said.
McElhinney was sent back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, after he was shot, and he said his frustrations grew there. He was told he couldn't get into a Wounded Warrior Battalion, he said. So about two years later, he transitioned out of the Corps — a process he described as "agonizing."
Now in the hands of the VA, he said his care has slowed significantly. He's been given suggestions to try yoga or self-help groups to help him relax and cut his stress, but it felt misguided, he said.
So he turned to writing, sending letters to members of Congress to detail his challenges. He also started a humor-focused Facebook page for veterans where people can gripe about their frustrations with the VA. The page now has nearly 30,000 followers.
Those efforts have gotten the attention of people who can help his situation, he said.
"Making this Facebook page was one of the only reasons I got any care, and my VA stuff got handled," he said. "As soon as I started a Facebook page sharing this stuff, people came out the woodwork."
McElhinney recently got private health care. While he's still on the mend, he said he has a sense of confidence that he's in good hands.
