Article (series): Canadian Armed Forces Veterans: Injury, Illness, and Disability

I wrote four articles from 2022 to 2023 for Wellness Together Canada, a government of Canada funded website which provides mental health and substance use support for Canadians. All four articles are meant to support veterans and currently serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces with issues specific to them.

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I can’t run like I used to. Let’s be honest; I never got more than six on the infamous Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) beep test, but there was a time when I competed in triathlon, when I was lean, strong, and fit. I was encouraged and supported by the fitness culture around me. If I got injured, I bounced back pretty quickly.

The CAF is an ableist community – focused on members at the top of their game. It must be because of the work required of it. There isn’t room for disability, no real tolerance of those who don’t meet the standard. You are either fit or unfit.

I got older. A disc in my neck began degenerating. Carpal tunnel made push-ups an agony. Things got harder, and it got harder to accept them. Learning to live with disability requires existing between fit and unfit, a no-man’s land where people slink around with their heads down, afraid that drawing attention to themselves will make them targets.

On the outside

Now I’m a veteran. Last week, I put my back out moving summer tires to the basement. By Saturday, the spasms were so bad that I could barely move.

I waited six hours on a hard hospital chair to finally get an injection that let me sleep through the night and a prescription to keep me moving. I was treated like an inconvenience, and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t muscle through it on my own. It was eerily reminiscent of my time in uniform. I didn’t want to accept that I needed help.

Service-related injury/illness

My back pain is probably a result of not lifting properly. My diminishing running ability is mostly a result of age and normal wear and tear. My degenerative disc disease and carpal tunnel, however, are not.

A service-related injury or illness is one that’s caused by something that happened during your CAF service, that is attributable to that service. If it continues to cause problems, Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) considers it a disability.

VAC defines disability as “the loss or lessening of the power to will and to do any normal mental or physical act.”

If the injury or illness that led to your disability is service-related, VAC should be paying for your ongoing care. The VAC definition of disability makes it sound like anyone who cannot touch their toes anymore has a disability. There is a catch though. You must have a medical diagnosis, and you must prove that your disability is related to your service.

What is disability?

It’s not something you just get over. You can work on it. You can live with its symptoms. But it’s still there. This is not the version of adapt and overcome that the CAF taught us.

I have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a disorder caused by exposure to a traumatic event or events. It can develop over time with repeated exposures. It can also be caused by witnessing trauma inflicted on another person, or hearing about a traumatic event that occurred to a loved one.

Like other disabilities, it is not a sign of weakness, and it does not just go away. PTSD requires treatment: understanding, patience, and compassion, and not just from your clinician. PTSD requires self-acceptance. This is who I am now. I can improve, but this will always be with me. This is what it means to have a disability.

Insurance

This is where it gets tricky. Who pays for treatment? You should have provincial health care, and perhaps you have the Public Service Health Care Plan, but neither covers everything. If you do not have a service-related injury or illness, your healthcare is paid for through your provincial insurance, or any private insurance you might have.

Sign up for a My VAC account and read more about disability benefits. You can also get more information about the process here [insert link to Transition article].

Get help

I was lucky that my CAF medical team set me up with civilian mental health clinicians before my release date. Not everyone is so lucky. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, call 9-1-1 or go straight to your nearest hospital emergency department.

Additionally, any veteran can reach out to the VAC Assistance Service at anytime, regardless of whether you are receiving other VAC services. The VAC Assistance Service is a phone line that “provides free, short-term psychological support with a mental health professional.” They can be reached at 1-800-268-7708.

Get a family doctor

I have a family doctor, but when my back pain peaked it was the weekend, and he was an hour away. Without a family doctor, a hospital emergency room or local walk-in clinic is your best bet for health care. Canadians can reach provincial/territorial telehealth services by dialing 8-1-1, except in Nunavut. There are also online resources like Maple, where you can talk with a doctor about your health concerns. Veterans who’ve been medically released from the CAF can access Maple for free for one year.

If you don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, find out if your province has a central waitlist. Ontario’s waitlist is called Healthcare Connect. Next, start calling health care clinics in your area to see if they’re taking patients. Ask them if they have their own waitlists.

Recovery time.

The military teaches us to push ourselves beyond what we think we can do, to test our limits and overcome them. In my triathlon years, I got a high each time I found that my limits were only in my mind.

It’s hard enough to take a knee, but how do you stay down when you’re striving to be better, stronger, faster, when your vision for yourself doesn’t match reality?

Take a knee

The normal changes that come with aging are hard to accept. Needing help for my back pain was hard to accept. Accepting disability is even harder – potentially as hard as having the disability to begin with – because we’ve been conditioned that it’s not okay to be unfit.

As I wrote in a previous article [insert link to transition article] about my last few years in the CAF, my mental health had been deteriorating, but I’d pushed myself hard to keep working. I was humiliated and depressed. I was seeing a mental health practitioner… or three. I was working part-time hours. My coworkers didn’t know what to say, and they didn’t want to pry, but I told them I was going to get over it. That I’d be back to work soon.

Unfortunately, my work was lagging, and I always seemed to need more time off. I had the courage to ask for help, and I advocated for myself when I needed space, but I imagine my boss was frustrated. He hired a contractor to help me get everything done, and we both eagerly awaited my new assistant’s arrival. By the time he got to my office though, I was told that that he wouldn’t be working for me anymore. I would be working for him, and only on the most basic tasks.

Stay down

I could have gone to the Transition Centre months earlier, but that would have left my position vacant. I thought my unit needed me. I hadn’t listened to myself, to my disability. I hadn’t admitted that I could no longer do my job.

Long story short, I went to the Transition Centre, got a placement doing staff work but eventually had to step back there too. Despite that they respected my boundaries. Despite that they advocated for me. They’d been understanding and compassionate about my limits, and they’d praised me for the work I did. I felt like a failure, again.

Service before self

At my old unit, I’d waited too long to stand up for myself, to put myself first. My service did not have to be marred by the firing, but I hesitated to let go, hesitated further in my placement. I had my fingers dug deeply into my vision for myself, for my career, like a crumbling old wall that I clung to.

We’re taught to put the job before ourselves, and I’d believed that an invisible injury wasn’t really an injury at all. It was just another hurdle to climb over. I could be fit again.

Any injury can be like that, physical or mental, any disability. Disability involves the grief process, and I was living firmly in denial.

Self-acceptance vs self-improvement

Maybe it takes longer to get around the block, or maybe you can’t run anymore. Maybe you have nightmares that keep you from good slumber, or maybe you’re too anxious to sleep. Maybe work looks different, or you can’t work at all.

Living with a disability is different but being different from others or different from how you used to be does not mean you have less value. It’s a different kind of adapt and overcome: adapt to your circumstances and overcome your conditioning. Now you use a cane to get around, or you do breathing exercises before bedtime. Give yourself time to mourn the person you were.

You cannot take a pill that will suddenly cure you, but there is hope. If you have a disability, seek treatment, but also find a friend or a group that understands what it’s like to live with disability. Adapt together. Mourn together. Reach out to Soldier On or Wounded Warriors. You are enough.