Veterans’ Families Seek Aid for Caregiver Role

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Tracy Keil met her husband, Matt, in August 2005 between his first and second tours of duty in Iraq. They married in January 2007. Six weeks later, Staff Sergeant Keil was shot in the neck while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, and rendered a quadriplegic.

Because her husband, now 27, could no longer take care of himself, not even to get a drink of water, Mrs. Keil, 31, quit her job as an accountant to take care of him.

She tried to hire others to help her, a service that is paid for by the government, but after going through four workers in nine months she gave up. She said many of the caregivers from contractors on the government-provided list “were awful.” One did not know how to use the lift system that hoists Mr. Keil out of bed; another gossiped about the family’s private business.

But the real problem was that even the good caregivers could not help Mr. Keil live as he wanted. Regulations, for example, do not permit them to take him out of the house. “Matt is back to his old self, and we like to get out and about, go grocery shopping or a see a movie,” Mrs. Keil said. “He doesn’t want just a baby sitter.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/us/12veterans.html?th&emc=th