Sure.
Mr. Harris's story about the veteran who passed away is one of my fears for my children. If the veteran is still alive, families receive medical benefits only if the veteran approves it. We don't have independent medical benefits and we don't have independent dental benefits; when I quit my job, I left all that behind. Family members don't receive a VAC file number. We should have a VAC file number. Children of deceased veterans, spouses, and widows should all be given a VAC file number. If something were to happen.... It's a gauntlet for us families if something.... Heaven forbid that sometime it's my husband, because we don't have access.
For their entire lives, our children have grown up with a father who has PTSD. Everyone wonders how this affects them. There's a research paper. Ironically, it was written out of Bosnia. These children struggle, but no one knows what impact having a father with PTSD has on them. I'll briefly read this to you. It says:
...children of the veterans reported significantly higher levels of conflict in their families; families of veterans with PTSD experienced more problems in parenting as well as marital relationships [and] children of veterans with PTSD showed more behavioural problems than children of veterans without PTSD, including aggression, delinquency, hyperactivity, and difficulty in developing and maintaining close friendships. ...In conclusion, the influence of secondary traumatization of wives is significant.
Yet for me to get my kids help, I have to go through my husband, through his case manager. I'll tell you right now that we stopped case management. We deal with resolution officers. The last time we dealt with a case manager was the day I was sitting at my dining room table and my husband took off for 45 minutes. I didn't know if he was ever coming back. I had that case manager call me. I was crying to him, saying, “I need help, I don't know where he went.” He'd left his keys, his phone, and his wallet on the dining room table, and took off. We live in the middle of 80 acres of woods. Where could he go?
The response I got out of his case manager, and why we don't deal with him anymore, was, “Oh well, you can call the RCMP. There's nothing I can do. I can't help you.”
The RCMP will only get involved if they're gone for 24 hours, yet I'm sitting there thinking the worst-case scenario about my husband. What am I going to tell my kids when they come home if their father is not here? This is what we struggle with as primary caregivers: the what-if scenarios. He disappears in the woods, and I think he's gone to kill himself, because you don't know what their headspace is.
For these children to not be able to have access to basic medical services.... I had to fight for my daughter to get psychological services. These children are vulnerable. You don't see that. VAC doesn't see that until I'm sitting in a case manager's office crying because my daughter got caught up with an online predator because she was vulnerable. She was looking for a father figure because her father is injured. He has issues with interpersonal relationships.
I picked up and moved my family. We moved. I put in the plans to build a new house and we moved and built the house in four months, just so my husband could have a sanctuary that will help him. We have horses. They help him, but he still has issues. He doesn't want to deal with people. He can't. If he gets into a confrontation.... Do you know what his psychiatrist said? The psychiatrist said to him, “If you find yourself in a confrontation where you feel that you're going to become aggressive, call the police to protect the other person.” When he goes into a rage, he blacks out. He doesn't know when he comes out of that rage what has happened.
I have broken doors in my brand new house. I had a hole in the wall in my brand new house. The house wasn't even a year old. They go into rages because they are frustrated. Now my husband has lost his licence. He can't drive anymore.
We are playing with medications, trying to figure out what works for him. Well, one medication made him think he was Superman: “Oh, I can move a refrigerator off the back of a pickup truck in flip-flops.” Yes. He fell off the back of that truck, with the refrigerator landing on him. He ended up with a subdural hematoma—a bleed in the brain—and a severe concussion. He was hospitalized for 24 hours. The only reason they released him after 24 hours was that he was coming home to me, or else they would have kept him in for a week.