I appreciate Peter Apo’s most insightful comment calling for compromise on the contentious issue of installing the 30-meter telescope on Mauna Kea.
But I regret to say, Peter, sometimes dire circumstances dictate that compromise of any kind is not an option.
I wish to explain this by sharing the fate of life and death that my husband and I met when his terminally ill condition was treated by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is an institution that has received a lot of negative publicity.
But I think the way the VA decided Chuck’s terminally ill case may provide insights into a fair and reasonable process that decision makers could profitably consider when trying to resolve the intricacies of the TMT issue .
The VA used a three-step process.
The first—and most important—step began one day when Chuck and I were discussing his terminal illness with his doctor at Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center in Honolulu. I mentioned casually to the doctor who worked for the VA that Chuck’s Marine Corps service records showed cardiac abnormalities occurring a year after his departure from Vietnam in 1969.
The EKGs taken at his annual physical showed readings and doctor’s notes that Chuck and I didn’t understand. In Vietnam, almost half a century earlier, Chuck had been stationed at the strategic Danang Air Force Base, used for US planes to spray the deadly defoliant Agent Orange over the vast jungles of South Vietnam.
When I told the doctor about Chuck’s heart abnormalities, she gave me a surprised look, knowing that the Marines expected all of their troops to be fit and ready at all times.
“You mean the Marines let him stay on duty?”
I nodded yes and whispered, “Vietnam.”
She nodded in understanding – the Marines needed troops because the Vietnam War was still fighting.
The VA doctors then reviewed Chuck’s full service record. They had done that much earlier in a non-life threatening problem.
On that subject, they had determined that Chuck’s hearing loss in Honolulu was largely due to his service in the Korean War as a mortar squad officer engaged in heavy combat when he was fresh out of college and a second lieutenant. So the VA sent him a small monthly sum as compensation.
A few days after I found out about the heart abnormalities, the VA doctor called me and told me that Chuck had coronary artery disease. It was classified as “ischemic heart disease” – one that had been diagnosed in so many Vietnam veterans that the VA was believed to have been triggered by the deadly Agent Orange.
“Did I want to file a lawsuit?”
Definitely yes for Chuck’s irreversibly damaged heart. The VA settled this claim, finding that Chuck was 50% disabled.
A broken heart
So, in the crucial first step, the VA itself decided that Chuck’s exposure to Agent Orange resulted in his damaged heart. Yet we all knew that the VA doctors couldn’t undo the damage done by Agent Orange, any more than any of us today – to quote Chairman of the Board of Regents Randy Moore – “injustices going back 129 years” that inflicted on the native Hawaiians can wipe out .
Second, Chuck and I filed a lawsuit arguing that his Agent Orange-damaged heart was linked to his terminal illness because the heart pumps blood, nutrients, and oxygen from head to toe and also the nerves affected. By then, Chuck had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy — damaged nerves in his toes that contributed to his falls.
To make that claim, we had to show that his damaged heart had contributed to or exacerbated his terminal illness. How much evidence did the VA ask for?
Except that it was “highly likely” that his damaged heart was related to his terminal illness. I have calculated that this represents only 50.01% more of our medical evidence over the often negative VA reviews.
So we gathered evidence from medical measurements taken during the six days that Chuck spent in 2012 in the emergency room and on the so-called “heart floor” at Queen’s Medical Center and filed it in a notarized photocopy of the 283-page audit report .
I felt that Chuck had been given a good shake by the VA.
In the third step, when the “more likely than not” assessment was ambiguous, the VA directed that the more favorable reading of the evidence should be focused on the injured party – the veteran. With Chuck, the VA applied this rule when in doubt, “generously and benevolently” reviewed all the evidence, and gave him an additional disability of 30%.
Not long after this finding, Chuck passed away at Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center. His death certificate reveals that his Agent Orange-damaged heart actually contributed to the terminal illness that caused his death.
Chuck died peacefully in my arms. We had such a blissful life together that I could not regret his departure and his escape from suffering. I too felt at peace. Although no one could have prevented his death, I felt like Chuck had been given a good shake up by the VA.
Thus ends the saga of fateful – even fatal – circumstances where compromise is not an option.
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