Daughter of Vietnam Vet Seeks Benefits From VA

Gina Montoya believes she is owed benefits by the federal government because of debilitating deformities that might be a direct result of her father’s service in Vietnam.

Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., thinks so, too. But officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs disagree.

With Udall’s help, Montoya is appealing to get the benefits she has so far been denied, but the process could take months.

“I can’t live like this anymore,” the 32-year-old Chimayó woman told the Journal, crying. “It’s not my fault I was born this way.”

The VA says a neurologist who reviewed Montoya’s case file found that, while she has a severe congenital problems, she doesn’t have spina bifida — a finding in conflict with that of Montoya’s current New Mexico doctors. And the VA says rules prohibit giving her benefits, because she wasn’t diagnosed with spina bifida at birth.

Meanwhile, Montoya struggles day to day at home in Chimayó. She’s low on butane, and her medical bills are piling up. Montoya lives in the house she once shared with her mother, who died 2 1/2 years ago.

Her mother’s death, Montoya said, spurred her to apply once again for spina bifida benefits under the Veterans’ Benefits Act of 1997. She had been denied previously, in 2004, and gave up until last year.

Gina’s father, Ray, was a soldier in Vietnam. He remembers loading barrels into trucks during his service, and remembers an orange band around the drums, from which the chemical inside got its name: Agent Orange.

The chemical was meant to thin vegetation in the jungles where Americans fought.

What’s known now is a terrible side effect of Agent Orange — some children conceived by servicemen after their exposure to the chemical were born with spina bifida, a condition in which the bones of the spine do not correctly form around the spinal column.

“I have legs,” Gina said. “I call them frog legs. They’re like nothing.”

Gina’s legs fold under her when she’s in her wheelchair, so she appears to have nothing at all below the waist. She’s missing several bones, she said, and has a horseshoe-shaped kidney. Her spine bumps out of her back. She said she lives in constant fear that an awkward fall from her wheelchair might paralyze her.

Gina learned to walk on her hands as a child and still moves that way sometimes. But they have been ravaged over the decades. She worked at the state’s Taxation and Revenue Department for three years, she said, but had to quit because of struggles with depression and pain in her hands.

“She gets a little worse, year to year,” said her doctor in Española, W. Murray Ryan.

Ryan diagnosed her with spina bifida. A physician at the Spine Institute of Santa Fe, who examined her last year, also listed her as “born with spina bifida,” a VA document notes.

Gina scrapes by on a monthly $700 Social Security check. It is a continual problem, she said, to decide which bills she must pay and which she can put off.

Under the Veterans’ Benefits Act of 1997, children of Vietnam veterans who suffer from spina bifida are entitled to monthly stipends of between $268 and $1,678, as well as enhanced health care benefits. There are about 1,000 people in the U.S. who receive these benefits, according to the VA.

The VA cites a regulation that “specifically states that the benefits are not available unless there is a diagnosis of spina bifida at birth.”

There’s also a record in her VA file noting a diagnosis of a different severe condition — spinal agenesis — when she was 7 years old.

The neurologist who reviewed her file and “all medical evidence” for the VA also concluded the birth defects Montoya suffers from are spinal agenesis, also known as caudal regression.

“Although some physicians seeing her have used the term spina bifida, the correct diagnosis is spinal agenesis, which is another disorder,” the neurologist found, according to a January notice from the VA.

Montoya said doctors first told her she had spina bifida when she was about 18.

A friend of Montoya’s suggested she contact Udall, and, in recent weeks, Udall’s casework director Roberto Vasquez has taken up her cause.

“This is such a tragic story,” said Marissa Padilla, Udall’s spokeswoman. “None of us had any idea how tragic until Roberto met with her.”

The senator’s stance on the matter is clear: “Her father’s exposure to Agent Orange when he was loading it into tanks in Vietnam … led to her deformities,” Padilla said.

The denial of benefits to Gina, Padilla said, “is, to put it mildly, just wrong.”

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Phil Parker at 505-992-6275 or pparker@abqjournal.com. Go to ww.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.

— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal

Photo Credit – eddie moore/journal
Cutline – Gina Montoya of Chimayó is seeking medical benefits from the federal government. Her father was exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.