{"id":5711,"date":"2014-05-30T21:45:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T21:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5711"},"modified":"2017-05-27T01:12:07","modified_gmt":"2017-05-27T01:12:07","slug":"next-va-visit-will-um-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5711","title":{"rendered":"Next VA visit will be, um, interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>They had to schedule my next visit to the Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center in Amarillo amid all this turmoil.<\/p>\n<p>They just had to do\u00a0it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be there Tuesday morning, just as the sun is coming up. It&#8217;s a routine visit, but it comes in the midst of all this national discussion\/debate\/quarreling\/backbiting over the care veterans have been getting.<\/p>\n<p>Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has quit as the scandal keeps roiling over the deaths of vets in Phoenix, Ariz. The system is a mess. Wait times are unacceptably long, so long in fact that it cost those Phoenix vets their lives &#8230; allegedly.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll go in early Tuesday and will sit in a waiting room with other vets. Gosh, I wonder what they&#8217;ll be talking about. How it&#8217;s President Obama&#8217;s fault? How the system has been messed up for decades? How they&#8217;re happy with the care they&#8217;ve gotten? How they hope the Creek medical center here in Amarillo isn&#8217;t among those where patient care is being delayed beyond all reason?<\/p>\n<p>You know, that last item &#8212; the status of the VA center here &#8212; has been on my mind.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a fairly new VA enrollee, having just gotten into the system a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>So far, I&#8217;ve been deliriously happy with the treatment I&#8217;ve gotten. It&#8217;s been prompt. My wait times for routine visits have been minimal. The staff has been respectful &#8212; and they have expressed thanks for my service to the country, inconsequential as it was.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been blessed with excellent health. I have no serious medical issues. My visit Tuesday will be routine, or so I am presuming.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, none of the issues plaguing the system apply to my own health needs.<\/p>\n<p>It is my sincerest hope that it will remain that way after I leave the VA hospital.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They had to schedule my next visit to the Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center in Amarillo amid all this turmoil. They just had to do\u00a0it. I&#8217;ll be there Tuesday morning, just as the sun is coming up. It&#8217;s a routine visit, but it comes in the midst of all this national discussion\/debate\/quarreling\/backbiting over the care &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5711\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Next VA visit will be, um, interesting<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1618,4795,5077,5083],"class_list":["post-5711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-eric-shinseki","tag-thomas-creek-veterans-medical-center","tag-va","tag-va-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21935,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions\/21935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}