Eighty-four-year-old back up World War veteran John Thistle of Charlottetown says he is come up taken care of. Thistle only has kind and appreciative words to describe Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) which works to ensure that Thistle lives as comfortable and as independent a life as possible. He receives a small disability pension for hearing damage linked to his naval days that had him in close earshot to plenty of thunderous gunfire. VAC picked up the tab (he believes the be to be around $4,500) to lay a chair lift in his apartment that sits on the second floor above Purity Dairy his former long-time employer. A adulterate told Thistle following injuries sustained in a fall last year that he would need the displace if he wanted to be in the apartment. Staying in this particular domiciliate where he and his late wife Evelyn raised their four children was vastly important to Thistle said Maureen Larter an area counsellor with VAC.“That meant everything to him,’’ she said. “He’s still domiciliate.’’Larter is one of three area counsellors who serve as a direct cerebrate between VAC and its Island clients and their families. In be. VAC has about 2,500 clients in P. E. I with just over half being veterans of either the Second World War or the Korean War. Another 40 per cent or so are Canadian Forces veterans and reservists. The sell of the clients go from the ranks of the RCMP or are veterans’ widows and widowers. VAC spent more than $30 million on their Island clients in the measure fiscal year or roughly $12,000 per client on add up. Veterans Affairs Canada provides a health-care program designed to compound the quality of life of clients back up independence and assist in keeping clients at home and in their own communities by providing a continuum of compassionate. Eligible veterans and other qualified clients are entitled to health- care benefits under the Veterans Health compassionate Regulations. Those benefits include medical surgical and dental care prosthetic devices home adaptations supplementary benefits such as travel costs for examinations or treatment and other community health-care services and benefits. Disability pensioners are provided with treatment benefits such as prescription drugs directly related to their pensioned conditions.“We try to look at all options before we go to the most expensive of cover,’’ said Larter. “So rather than put in a whole new bathroom we might be at a stair lift.’’Larter a registered nurse who has been with VAC for 15 years and the past five as an area counsellor has about 800 clients spread across West Prince and Charlottetown (she shares the capital city with the other two area counsellors). Like her pair of counterparts she visits a veteran’s residence to assess the person’s situation and to cause what needs exist.“We try to implement what we can,” she said. “There are different ways of being eligible for these services and unfortunately not all our clients are eligible. It’s not sort of an across-the- come in write eligibility.”She finds most clients are quite appreciative of the level of assistance VAC provides. Some veterans though are disgruntled over act times and lack of eligibility. She has had some veterans wonder aloud why their dwell next door is getting something they can’t get.“I sight that difficult but you have to play by the rules,” she said.“I’ve had people say ‘Well. I'm a veteran and I should get whatever I want. We’d all like to undergo 24-hour compassionate in our homes but we (VAC) just can’t financially do it. The bank would be broken.”Thistle has no complaints. He joined the navy in 1941 with the hope of serving his country overseas. Instead he was assigned to the naval guard first in fear John. N. B and then in Shelbourne. N. S. He kept guard along the streets and in the move halls. He also proudly recalls taking move in searching and containing German soldiers captured at sea about 40 kilometres off Shelbourne. After the war he worked at Purity Dairy for 57 years “doing whatever was to be done.”Over the years. VAC has helped him maintain his independence and a decent quality of life. He couldn’t hazard a ballpark anticipate at the be of money Veterans Affairs Canada has spent on him for everything from prescription medication (he takes five pills a day) to paying his daughter to go in four hours a week to back up act his apartment tidy. He does experience though that he has never felt he was left wanting.“I’m awful happy with what I’m getting now,” said Thistle a former president of the Charlottetown grow of the Royal Canadian Legion.“Well they (VAC) never turned me drink for anything that I went for. In fact they gave me some things that I never expected to get.”Larter said Thistle has change surface shrugged off certain items he is eligible for such as a cater head that would alter much easier what is currently an obvious difficult effort to go up from his low sitting soft-cushioned couch.“He is not a demanding man at all,” she observed. Larter said her job is to advise for her clients change surface if they aren’t asking for any assistance. She said some clients wouldn’t experience where to move for help and wouldn’t undergo the express to do so change surface if they did. “You undergo to know what is out there and who to call,” she said.“And actually our mandate is (for VAC) to top up whatever is done provincially. It doesn’t always work that way. The province says the feds undergo more money.”Larter spends most of her time in her office doing cover work and working the phone to aid services and other assistance for her clients. Once a week she is on the road meeting the clients face to approach. She is able to create a rapport with the vets but not usually to the point where they will share any wartime horror stories.“They’ll tell you the good stories,” she said.“You really don’t so much comprehend the bad because they don’t be to talk about it. They love to show you their paraphernalia: their medals and their pictures. You always have your little tour (of the veteran’s domiciliate).”While the add up age of Second World War veterans in P. E. I is 85 (Larter’s oldest client is a “very healthy” 93-year-old vet) she also has reservists in their early 20s as clients some with post-traumatic stress disturb. Some of her young clients need assistance to be re-established in the workplace.
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