Joseph Gross’ right knee was hurting.The retired Army staff sergeant, who lost his right leg below the knee in a suicide bombing in Iraq in 2005, was at the Akron Community Outpatient Clinic, at 55 W. Waterloo Road, for pain management.“I walk a mile and I’m out for two weeks,” said Gross, one of nearly 700 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have found comfort at the Department of Veterans Affairs Akron clinic in the days since the terrorist attacks a decade ago.“It swells up.”While at the Akron clinic, he spoke to doctors about a new non-narcotic medication they prescribed that seemed to reduce the pain from three growths that have developed behind his knee, and he spoke with experts on the prosthetic and orthopedic team in Cleveland about his problem.“It’s so convenient having it here in Akron,” Gross, 34, of Stow, said of the Akron clinic. He works full time as area outreach coordinator for the Wounded Warrior Project and visits the clinic regularly.He’s not alone.About 670 veterans who have gone to war since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are being treated at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center’s Akron clinic.The facility, built in 2004 with an annex added two years ago, is treating the most Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of all 13 outpatient clinics in the Cleveland VA system.“We are centrally located here,” Diane White, Akron clinic administrator, said, explaining why Akron’s clinic is so busy.To put that 670 in perspective, the Akron clinic treats 12,000 veterans total, the bulk of whom are Vietnam and Korean War vets, White said.The most common issues that bring the new group of vets to the clinic are muscular, skeletal, joint and back problems, said Patricia Hall, the Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom program manager.“Second are mental health, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, readjustment issues and traumatic brain injuries,” she said.“The jury is still out” as to whether younger vets are coming home with more psychological issues than veterans of earlier wars, Hall said.Veterans who have been deployed overseas receive free health care for the first five years after they return, she said.Programs aimed at newer vets include a psychiatric nurse practitioner who works exclusively with the group, a care management program that helps vets organize their care, and a caregiver support system that helps family members and loved ones who are caring for vets. Also, a suicide prevention coordinator works with all veterans, including the newest group.Eugene Vasser Jr., 60, a retired Army Command sergeant major in the Army Reserve and a Vietnam and Afghanistan war veteran, and his wife, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Vivian Vasser, who is a clinical social worker for the VA, both use the Akron clinic.“Service is fantastic,” Eugene Vasser said.In addition, in Cleveland, the Polytrauma Network, one of 22 such VA sites in the country, deals with vets who have traumatic brain injuries or have lost limbs in the war.The pace and speed of evacuation for service members with traumatic brain injuries have improved, as have methods to diagnose the severity of injuries, said Dr. Ronald G. Riechers II, a neurologist and medical director of the Polytrauma Team.Evacuation teams can take patients who suffer severe injuries to a hospital in Germany within 24 to 48 hours and “that is a huge factor in a lot of life-saving surgeries,” said Riechers, who graduated from the University of Akron and later
NEOUCOM.Neurosurgeons on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan are saving lives, he said. Surgery in which a portion of the skull is removed to allow for brain swelling is more common and is saving lives as well, he said.About 10 to 20 veterans with severe traumatic brain injuries from combat are being treated in Cleveland, he said.Dr. Clay M. Kelly, service chief for physical medicine and rehabilitation, said prosthetics for amputees “are really advancing,” even to the point where many service members who have lost limbs are remaining in the military.“A good percentage of them, once they get fitted with a prosthetic, are staying active in the military,” said Kelly, a graduate of Creighton University’s medical school.Many have a prosthetic leg for walking, one for running and one for climbing, he said.The VA’s White said the number of new vets seen by the VA should continue to increase as more troops are brought home.Because of the pain problems Gross has been having, officials at the prosthetic lab at the VA in Cleveland recently gave him a new foot, a $75,000 device known as an iWalk. They are working on making a new socket for the prosthetic.“It mimics tendons and calf muscles,” Gross said. It has helped somewhat and he hopes the socket will lessen the pain and make walking easier.He works with “two great teams” — orthopedics and prosthetics — in Cleveland, he said, and the next step could be more surgery. The last option would be to take the knee off.The pain he has had since 2008 has been a “bummer,” he said.“We’ll try everything,” Gross said, to get him walking comfortably again.Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.