Terrell County Vietnam veteran’s treatment indicative of VA scandal

ALBANY — Concerned that he was still passing out and suffering through panic attacks despite treatment at the Veterans Administration clinic in Dublin, Vietnam veteran Neil Thompson decided to make an appointment with a non-VA-affiliated endocrinologist.

“When he saw all the medication I was on, the first thing he told me was to throw out all the pills I’d been prescribed from doctors at the VA clinic,” Thompson, a retired insurance executive who now lives in Terrell County, said. “I was up to taking 30 pills a day. He reduced it to four, and I’ve been doing much better since he treated me.

“That’s basically what they do at the VA clinic, they medicate you.”

Thompson is one of thousands of veterans whose treatment at VA-run clinics is at the center of a national scandal that has rocked the Obama administration. The Vietnam veteran’s story is one of misdiagnoses, lost test results and failure to recognize potentially life-threatening health issues, many of them associated with his contact with the Agent Orange defoliant during the war.

“They took a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test at the clinic and my level was at 4.0, which is an indication of possible cancer,” Thompson said. “They told me they’d check my levels again later. I went back a few months later, and I told the doctor that I had trouble sitting because of a knot that was developing. They did the follow-up PSA test in September and told me they’d get back with me. I didn’t hear from them by December, so I called to ask for the results. They told me again they’d get back in touch with me.

“When I didn’t hear from them again after a few days, I called back. They said they had no record of me taking the follow-up test. When I took another test, they told me the PSA level was 6.7, and it could indicate prostate cancer. I went to an outside urology clinic when the pain in the knot persisted, and the biopsy they took proved I had prostate cancer.”

Thompson chose to have treatment at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany rather than at a VA facility.

“I’ve been through 25 radiation treatments and had a seed implant that pretty much knocked the cancer out,” Thompson said. “I can’t help but wonder what the treatment would have been if the cancer had been diagnosed when I first showed signs of having the disease.”

Thompson is a proponent of a plan that would distribute health cards to veterans and allow them to seek treatment outside VA clinics.

“But that would wipe out a whole federal agency, so they’re not going to do that,” he said.