{"id":65276,"date":"2016-04-15T10:22:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T14:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65276"},"modified":"2016-04-15T10:37:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T14:37:28","slug":"border-patrol-agent-cant-be-stationed-in-texas-for-ptsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65276","title":{"rendered":"Border patrol agent can&#8217;t be stationed in Texas for PTSD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie and Andy11M send us a link to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/story\/news\/2016\/04\/14\/veteran-texas-reminds-me-afghanistan-please-dont-send-me-there\/83040846\/\">Detroit Free Press<\/a> about Anthony Gazvoda, a soldier still in the Michigan National Guard who went to work for the Homeland Security Department as a border patrol agent. They stationed him at Laredo, Texas;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He&#8217;s suing the Department of Homeland Security over a job assignment in Texas, saying the dry, hot state reminds him too much of Afghanistan, and it&#8217;s too painful to work there.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, Gazvoda served a nine-month tour in Afghanistan, where he worked as a road clearance specialist. His job was to go ahead of everyone else during missions, draw out the enemy and engage them in gunfights. He was shot 34 times and earned an Army Commendation Medal with Valor for rescuing a soldier from a bombed-out Humvee, while under enemy fire.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>After a few months in Texas, Gazvoda began having panic attacks and sleep issues. He visited the VA there but to no avail. He took an unpaid administrative leave and moved to Michigan, where government doctors would eventually diagnose him with PTSD and recommend he not be stationed in Texas. They found a number of similarities between Texas and Afghanistan: Both were hot, dry and heavily populated. Both also had non-English speaking residents, which doctors concluded was another trigger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gazvoda asked to be reinstated last year, and he asked for a compassionate reassignment to be near his doctors. Homeland Security denied his request and gave him three days to show up at work. He got a lawyer instead. I&#8217;m no doctor, but I&#8217;m thinking that he needs another job, because whenever I think of border patrol agents, I picture them working in a hot barren terrain, you know, along the southern border. If that triggers his PTSD, another occupation seems appropriate. Then again HSD, should take his problems into account and there are enough positions in more hospitable climes, I&#8217;m sure they could accommodate him, if they really wanted to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie and Andy11M send us a link to the Detroit Free Press about Anthony Gazvoda, a &hellip; <a title=\"Border patrol agent can&#8217;t be stationed in Texas for PTSD\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65276\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Border patrol agent can&#8217;t be stationed in Texas for PTSD<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}