WACO, Tex. -- Building 7 on the campus of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center here is called Blind Rehab, a special unit for aging vets who have macular degeneration or diabetes-induced vision problems.
But this past year, Blind Rehab began to see a new type of patient: veterans barely past their 20th birthdays, blinded by gunshot wounds and bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"These soldiers now have flak jackets and armor that protect their bodies and keep them alive, but we see traumatic limb injuries and traumatic head injuries," said Stan Poel, chief of Blind Rehabilitation Services at the Waco hospital. "Those are the things that are presenting a challenge to the VA."
These are also the kinds of patients the Department of Veterans Affairs now projects will flood an already overtaxed and underfunded health care system that treated more than 5 million veterans last year.
"Our number one priority is returning service members from the combat theater . . . and to provide world-class health care to veterans, as well as benefits," Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said after a tour late last week of the 127-acre Waco campus, whose neighbors to the west include the huge Army base of Fort Hood, with 41,000 soldiers, and President Bush's ranch in Crawford.
"The increase in demand for our services from what we projected is up 126 percent," he said. "We have to obviously be prepared to ramp up."
The Waco hospital, with its well-kept pre-World War II red-brick, red-roof-tiled buildings, has provided health care for veterans in central Texas for 73 years. Now it is on the chopping block, scheduled along with 17 other VA hospitals to be closed or downsized as part of an agency plan to restructure the health care system. A 1999 government study found the VA was spending $1 million a day on buildings it did not need, and in 2003 a government commission recommended closing older, underused hospitals, including the one in Waco. The Waco facility is part of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, which also includes a hospital in Temple and outpatient clinics in Austin and five other communities.
For the past two years, Waco officials, residents and veterans groups have been fighting back, emphasizing the importance of the facility's specialized blind rehabilitation, psychiatric and post-traumatic stress disorder units; the large and aging veteran population (Texas has the third-largest population of veterans in the country with 1.7 million, a third of whom received VA health care last year); and, now, the wave of veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who will need its services.
"They guaranteed so many years ago that they will take care of [veterans], and I would say they're pretty much going back on their word," said Ron Peterson, 35, an engineer with the 91st Engineer Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood. Peterson used a day off last week to provide a motorcycle escort for Nicholson's visit to Waco and to register his support for keeping the hospital there open.
Peterson was deployed to Iraq from January 2004 to this February. He was wounded twice, receiving the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and an Army Commendation Medal for valor in combat.
"They're not ready for everybody coming back," Peterson said. "They're trying to shut everything down and they're going to need PTSD units. The guys aren't seeing the things they saw in Vietnam, but they're seeing a lot of stuff."
This year, the post-traumatic stress disorder in-patient unit in Waco has seen more than 75 new cases of veterans from Operation Iraqi Freedom. The 15-bed blind rehab unit, which has helped 106 blind veterans this year learn skills such as how to use a walking cane, cook and negotiate e-mail, has a wait list of 73.
