Army Vet Loses Limb After VA Treatment

It started with a broken leg while snow-tubing with his daughter. It ended with amputation.

Army veteran Sgt. Daniel Dennis is a husband and father who has suffered pain and stress for more than two years. The Veterans Administration in Syracuse, New York, he says, is to blame for the loss of his leg.

Dennis, 32, enlisted in the Army when he was 17, and was stationed at Fort Drum in Upstate New York. He deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, but after an IED incident he received a medical discharge under honorable conditions.

But it was not the injuries he suffered overseas — back, shoulder, head and neck injuries — that have put his future at risk. It was the treatment for a common spiral fracture of his right tibia after his service was completed that threw him into what he calls an “unbelievable nightmare” of an experience with the Syracuse VA.

Dennis spoke with LifeZette prior to his amputation. His leg was removed Oct. 11, and he faces at least one more surgery, a new prosthetic leg, and rehab.

When LifeZette reached out to the Syracuse VA for comment, a representative cited patient confidentiality and said the office had no comment at present on the case.

“I injured my leg snow-tubing with my six-year-old daughter on Jan. 18, 2014,” said Dennis. “I was at my father-in-law’s at Lafayette, New York. I was standing at the bottom of a double hill to slow my daughter down, but when she came down my foot must have been planted too deep in the snow, and it snapped my tibia when the tube hit me.”

Since Dennis receives health care through the VA, he was taken by ambulance to the Syracuse VA Medical Center. He had X-rays taken and was put in a full leg cast. “I was told right then and there that 95 percent of the breaks like mine need surgery to be corrected,” he said.

Even so, after his next set of X-rays on Jan. 24, he was told, “People die in surgery, and my leg was doing just fine,” he said.

“Finally, I requested a copy of my medical records and my X-rays, and I looked at them and saw myself that I wasn’t doing fine,” said Dennis. “I got an MRI and the woman who performed it said, ‘I can’t believe you are walking on this.’ That was on a Friday — on that Monday I went to see an orthopedic doctor, and a physician’s assistant said my leg was healed and I was going to be discharged.”

[lz_infobox]Sergeant Daniel Dennis has detailed his struggle with the VA on a Facebook page entitled, “One Leg to Stand On.” [/lz_infobox]

Dennis pushed for a second opinion. “Things didn’t improve, though, because I still needed the VA’s approval on everything, and this dragged out the process. My leg has to be amputated due to the VA’s lack of care at every turn, even in handling my paperwork.”

The following years were a series of misdiagnosis, misinformation, and increasing pain, according to Dennis. A plate that was put in his leg in 2015 for stability and to realign the leg — which was more than 13 degrees out of alignment — just made things worse.

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After the plate was put in, said Dennis, its hardware soon broke. Dennis made an appointment with Syracuse Orthopedics — outside the VA but paid for by the VA — and doctors there immediately ordered the hardware replaced and the wound cleaned out. A “wound vac” (a vacuum dressing to promote healing in acute or chronic wounds) was put into his leg at this time.

“I had a pic line put into me [a portable IV pump] for antibiotics, and I was on that for an extended period of time,” said Dennis. “Among other setbacks, it took the VA five days to get me my oral antibiotics. Infection set in.”

The infection moved to the leg bone itself, and Dennis was soon under the care of an infectious disease specialist. “The infection was severe, so I was offered several options: amputation, or cut off four inches of my leg. I believed amputation to be the best bet, because all the other approaches would possibly allow the very serious infection a chance to spread.”

“My leg had to be amputated due to the VA’s lack of care at every turn.”

Dennis said the past several years have put a huge strain on his marriage. “My wife has done so much for me, she’s been so strong,” said Dennis. He is also a father to four girls ranging in age from three to 10.

“Trying to be a husband and a father has taken its toll,” said Dennis. “My youngest daughter, who is three, only knows me as, ‘Daddy, here’s your crutches.'”

Dennis used crutches and a wheelchair, but the shoulder injuries he sustained in Iraq make both painful. “Even using crutches at times becomes unbearable,” said Dennis before his amputation surgery. He walked on the bad leg now and then — “a lot of the nerves [were] shot,” he said.

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Dennis has been unable to find a lawyer who will go up against the VA, or any local news media to cover his story. “No lawyer wants to put out the money up front to go against the government,” he said. “And had there been more pressure on the VA regarding my case due to some media coverage, maybe I would have my leg. At first they seemed interested — but no one wanted to tell my story.”

The VA is treating Dennis’ leg as a service-connected injury and is not offering any compensation. “Their stance is, ‘We’ll just give you disability for this, and lump it in with your other injuries,'” said Dennis.

Dennis is currently unemployed, a situation he attributes to what has happened to him.

“I’ve lost my job, not only because of my leg, but because the VA wasn’t filling out my disability paperwork correctly,” he said. “They put the wrong dates on my paperwork. I was a lead production welder. Two weeks before I was terminated, I would have been promoted to manager. It was a great career, and I would have been able to do it on crutches or in a wheelchair, but that’s over now.”

“The VA is really good at the illusion of helping vets — take the Choice program, for example, where vets can go outside the VA for care,” said Dennis. “No one understands, though, how much red tape you have to go through to get that care. It is an absolute mess trying to get paperwork or anything else dealt with by the VA.”

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LifeZette checked in with Dennis after his amputation. “I’m good so far,” he said in reply the day after surgery. “I just had my bandages changed — not feeling so good. But I’m getting there. The VA has not contacted me, even after the hospital told them I was having surgery. Not sure I will hear from them.”

Yet Dennis remains surprisingly optimistic — and said he was grateful for Syracuse Orthopedics and the support of his devoted family and friends. “Bitterness doesn’t get you anywhere. I am concentrating on moving forward. And I am telling my story for other veterans who are in pain and struggling in a broken system. I just want to help others.”