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The Hardest Role I Have
Ever Played: Veterans Caregiver
By Jacqueline Zaleski Mackenzie February 10, 2016
I feel like a failure some days, because some days I am just a wife. Today was one of those days. My Purple Heart Awarded 100% service-connected disabled husband had that look when he came out from his bedroom. Although most nights (since 1969) he has nightmares, some leave him rattled with lingering discomfort for hours or even days. I could tell that today was one of those l-o-n-g recovery days just beginning. Yet, unlike the role of a mother that I played in years past, I cannot just kiss it and make it better. He has to fight this battle alone. All I can do is watch from the sidelines. If there is anything I can think to help him, I do. Many nonmilitary friends tell me that I have lost myself in the process of trying to make his life easier. However, I do not agree. I grew up a USAF Brat 22 moves in 22 months between first and third grade made quite an impression on this only child. I knew that my Dads job was real different. Dad worked under General Curtis, The Home-wrecker LeMay. I felt like I was always the new kid. I did not have a home; I had a place on the base where the school bus dropped me somewhere in the states. The only number I was forced to memorize in kindergarten was my Dads service number: AF xx-xx-xx-xx; knowing the street I lived on, the phone, or even the state would have been a waste of time as once we moved in and the next day had orders to leave again. I also knew that my Dad was different. After serving in WWII and the Korean Conflict, he was not the same man who was there when I took my first steps. He was certainly not the same man who broke down when his only son, at only four days of age, took his last breath. That kind, gentle, caring man had somehow become angry most of the time, way more demanding, and usually simply looked unhappy. He also had chronic stomach problems after the wars that he did not have before he served in them. The only family we kept in touch with during all those moves was my beloved Uncle Stanley. He was like a brother to me. I idolized him. After he finished M.I.T. he enlisted in the USAF to become an atomic cloud tester. Then, he headed off to the Vietnam War. I saw the same transition in Captain Herman Stanley Moore that I saw in my father. Today they call it P.T.S.D.; I call it hell on earth. Fortunately, my uncle did not suffer for very long, he died when a USAF plane he was flying lost a wind at 500 feet in 1964. Then, I thought I’d never recover from the grief of losing him; today, I know that I will not. Experts on relationships say that we marry what we know. That must be true, because when I (finally) married the right man for me, he was a USAF Veteran. When I met former Captain Mackenzie as a Veteran, he was a brilliant underemployed lost soul with a multitude of health issues that he had totally ignored since he returned from Vietnam. He had been trained, like my Dad and my Uncle to suffer in silence. So, that is what he had done for over three decades. Yet, the years of nightmares, verbal outbursts, and other ills had taken their toll on him mentally and physically; he had become a loner. When I came into his life, he was no longer able to ignore his health. I am a major advocate for natural healing. His rating took years to receive (he had filed in the now infamous Phoenix Veterans Center where about half who apply die before ever being interviewed), but finally he was awarded a 100% service-connected rating for a string of health challenges. Since then, my job has been to make his life as comfortable as possible. Yet, regardless of how well prepared I felt I was the play that role, I failed. I never have the VA Crisis Line phone number too far away from my reach. It is my lifeline. Our lives for the last two decades have been managed by both medical doctors advice and psychologists suggestions. I have no family and few military friends because we have always looked for a way to make the nightmares and his health issues less invasive, based on the advice of experts. Many years were not kind. We lived in an RV and looked for places where we hoped that the nightmares would not find us; no such luck. We lived off the power grid, away from any neighbors or any sounds of civilization; there were still nightmares. We lived in a remote village in Mexico in a life of service to economically marginalized and disabled kids; the nightmares were still there. The last decade the diabetes got worse (now he injects insulin at least twice a day), the VA inserted two heart stents, he suffered two strokes, and Agent Orange scarred lungs meant 24/7 oxygen when living at a high altitude. So, in August 2013 seven Mexican doctors told us to make yet another move He’s a heart attack or a stroke waiting to happen at this high altitude, cold outside air temperature, and the dust. This time the move was to sea level, clean air, and even temperatures year round in Ecuador, South America. Some people might think it is heaven, but not this veterans wife. I adored the peace of our last three locations. Yet, we cannot afford to own a car, so, we have to live in the city to access public transportation. Therefore, now we live in a fish bowl because most of the world’s population apparently loves the beach. I do not; it is way too noisy night and day. He gets out once a week to go to a men’s luncheon, most the rest of the time he sleeps a very restless sleep. My job is to be there for him 24/7 in case he needs me, and stay as quiet as possible to not bother him. When he is awake, I amuse myself by calling the Foreign Medical Program and trying to get reimbursed for service-connected medical care or Rx that he has taken since 2002. The Foreign Medical Program ignores my requests by listing an endless list of reasons why my applications were again (for nearly a year) rejected. In the last eight years, the Foreign Medical Program has paid only one hospital claim and two refills of prescriptions claims. As my beloved husband can only stay awake a few hours a day; I have a lot of alone time to think about more ways to keep him at peace. However, I usually fail at that too. I am a human being, I have my own ambitions, desires, dreams. Few of my goals include being abused by those assigned to help make his life more tolerable. His has not much of a life for one who gave so much to his country. At least I have the VA Crisis Line to call to ease my pain; he has no one.
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Jacqueline Zaleski Mackenzie. I am a 69 year-old veteran's wife,
daughter and niece who lives in Ecuador, South America due to my husband's service connected health challenges. I gave my
US voting address, but we do not live there. I completed my PhD at age 63 to enable me to support us financially, but after
400+ job applications being ignored, I gave up. My field is teaching disabled children. I have a CFI in single engine airplanes,
but I no longer fly. My full time job is caring for my 75 year-old husband.
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