Looking up from the ground, it felt surreal. My ears were ringing. The sun was blinding. It felt as if I had been asleep for hours. Looking to my right I saw a silhouette begin to cut through a thinning cloud of smoke. He appeared to be moving in slow motion. Soon, he was standing above me, helping me to my feet. We took turns running back to cover.
Moments earlier, I had been sprinting to an alleyway as my squad of Marines engaged a team of insurgents in Nabu Agha, Afghanistan. A rocket-propelled grenade struck a telephone pole next to me and knocked me unconscious.
Because of the blast I suffered a traumatic brain injury. That event in Afghanistan, paired with my previous deployment to Iraq, led to my diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in 2011.
I allowed both my PTSD and brain injury to manifest upon returning from Afghanistan in 2011. My symptoms of PTSD ? paranoia, insomnia and panic attacks ? were destroying my life. The signs of my brain injury weren?t making life any easier. My balance was unreliable. My memory was nearly useless. My cognitive deficits were taxing.
By late September, I was tearing my family apart. I decided to get help. My treatments included prolonged exposure therapy and both vestibular and cognitive rehabilitation.
After five months of therapy, my doctors unanimously agreed that I would be referred to the Integrated Disability Evaluation System because of the extent of my injuries. IDES is a joint Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs program that is intended to streamline disability services and determine a service member?s fitness for continued service. It was started in 2007.
My referral to IDES meant that my conditions would be evaluated in order to determine whether I could continue to serve in the Marine Corps. It was the recommendation of my doctors that I be medically separated from the armed forces. I agreed.
Before IDES was put into effect, service members were evaluated solely by the Department of Defense to determine fitness for continued service. After separation, they were further evaluated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to determine a disability rating. Now, service members are given a disability rating before their discharge. By pairing disability evaluations, it now takes longer for service members wanting to move on with their lives to be discharged.
The Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs have hailed the IDES system as a cure-all for the military?s disability system but the design of streamlined services has recently come under scrutiny. A recent Government Accountability Office study says that IDES processing times have climbed since 2008 while service members? satisfaction and the percentage of cases meeting timelines has declined. Only 19 percent of active-duty cases are completing the process within their established goals.
I am the anomaly in this system. I am a satisfied member of that 19 percent and someone who made it through IDES in an expedited manner.
It took 173 days from the time I was initiated into IDES until my receipt of initial results. This is far less than the average case processing times, which the Government Accountability Office reports reached 394 to 420 days in 2011. My receipt was also far less than the target case processing time of 295 to 305 days in the same year.
On Sept. 19, 2012, the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs both determined that I was 100 percent disabled and unfit for continued military service. I will be medically retired from the Marine Corps on Dec. 30, 2012. Upon my retirement, my medical care will then be provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In order for there to be more success stories like mine, the G.A.O. suggests that the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs work together to develop, monitor and modify time frames for completing the IDES process. The accountability office also recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs continue to increase its rating staff despite more than tripling its staff from 262 from 78 in 2010.
With the report exposing insufficient medical exam resources and summaries, as well as lackluster documentation, it may come as no surprise that out of the nearly 19,000 IDES cases enrolled last year, just over 7,000 were completed. The Government Accountability Office reports that 66.3 percent of active-duty service members are dissatisfied with the outcome of IDES.
It is not just the Government Accountability Office that sees errors in the IDES system. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, also disagrees that IDES is a success story. In a letter sent to the deputy secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs, she wrote, ?I am not convinced the Departments have implemented a disability evaluation process that is truly transparent, consistent, or expeditious.?
Despite being in IDES for only six months, it felt like a long process. Although the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs worked cohesively for me, I know I am part of the minority. Many other service members are struggling through the system on a much longer timeline and with much more dire outcomes.
Thomas J. Brennan is a sergeant in the Marine Corps. He served both in Iraq and Afghanistan with the First Battalion, Eighth Marines. Now 27 and still on active duty, he is stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He is a member of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Follow him on Twitter at @thomasjbrennan.
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