David Morgan is just a regular kind of guy. He’s a U.S. Army veteran from the 1980s. He left the Army and built a career in the construction trades.
He’s got a family, a son who is a senior at North Kitsap High School, and a wife who works two jobs so that the bills get paid when Morgan’s carpentry jobs don’t come in.
On his next birthday, he’ll be 50 years old. He lives with constant back pain and he just wants to know what’s wrong with him so he can get treated.
“I’m a 50-year-old carpenter who can’t move that fast,” he said. “There’s not a lot of work for me but I take what I can get.”
Morgan is one of thousands of veterans who are waiting on the Veterans Administration to review his claim for disability benefits. After being rejected once, he’s submitting an appeal.
His first claim was submitted in July 2012 and it took 14 months for him to get a rejection.
“I waited 14 months and all I got was a piece of paper telling me that they didn’t have enough information from the VA examination to make a decision so they were denying my claim until they got more from the VA,” he said. “But when I went to the VA, all they did was take an X-ray. I asked to have an MRI and they said I didn’t need it.”
Frustrated with the process, Morgan sought the help of Rep. Derek Kilmer’s office and through vet rep Nicholas Carr in Kilmer’s Tacoma office, he was set up with another doctor’s appointment with a physician that contracts with the VA.
Kilmer’s office receives from one to three requests for help with VA matters each week, said Stephen Carter, spokesman for Kilmer. Responses to Kilmer’s staff from the VA can take from a week to a month, he said.
According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the backlog of claims is improving. Claims take 125 days to process, and anything that takes longer is classified as backlogged.
In 2010, 2011, and 2012, the VA received 1 million claims per year. There are a total of 3.9 million veterans receiving disability benefits at an average cost to the government of $54 billion dollars each year.
The VA estimates that the backlog of claims is at 418,500, and that number was tabulated as the federal government shut down in early October.
Of those waiting in the backlog, 37 percent are Vietnam veterans, 21 percent are Iraq and Afghanistan era vets, 24 percent are Gulf War vets, 11 percent, like Morgan, are peacetime vets. Another 7 percent fall into the “other” category.
In some cases, appeals can take up to four years.
But Morgan can’t wait that long.
“I’ve been told that I should get my VA benefits if I can,” he said. “But I’ve also been told maybe this could be an L&I (Labor and Industries) claim. But L&I won’t look at it until I’ve exhausted my chances with the VA.”
That’s because he said the back pain stems from bad landings when he was a paratrooper in the Army. He went in at age 18 in September of 1982. Time at bases in Texas, Alabama and Georgia led him to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was part of the ammo supply unit in charge of a quick reaction force. In all, he made 29 jumps. It was on a jump over the Cicely Drop Zone when a newbie didn’t know the wind currents and blew into him, causing his chute to collapse and he landed hard on a runway.
“He turned right into me,” Morgan said. “It was one of those feet, butt and head landings.”
Soon after that, Morgan left the Army with three years of active duty. He admits he had some bad times in the military but left with an honorable discharge. After that, he worked trimming trees, hanging sheet rock and, for a time, was a commercial fisherman in Alaska. He settled back in the Central Kitsap area and began working construction.
“I had a hand in building most of the schools on Bainbridge Island,” he said. “And we worked on fire stations. Whenever there was work, I was working.”
But because he went from job to job and company to company, he doesn’t have a long history with any one company. He was a union worker for some of that time, but can’t really pin-point an exact injury to file an L&I claim.
So, he said, he’s been instructed by the DisabledAmerican Veterans representative to pursue getting his VA disability.
“I just want to get it fixed,” he said. “When I went to the doctor the first time, he offered me pain pills and told me to lose weight.
“To me, that wasn’t what I needed. I need to know what’s wrong with my back and how to fix it ­— or if it can be fixed.”
Waiting 14 months to find out nothing doesn’t sit well with him.
“It’s like I’m having to beg to get someone to look at me,” he said. “There’s gotta be a better way to treat people. I thought my service to this country was supposed to mean something. I thought there were benefits for my service.”
Morgan has an appointment soon with the doctor and with a mental health expert to see if he has some delayed PTSD symptoms from his service.
He wonders if he’s being treated differently because he did get into some trouble when he was on active duty.
And it’s crossed his mind that he might be at the bottom of the list because he served during peace time.
Meanwhile, Morgan waits.
“I’m a patient person, but I can only take so much,” he said.

If you have had an experience with the VA regarding disabilities that you want to share, email lkelly@soundpublishing.com