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"Sometimes you get lost in the system," he told CNN. "I feel like a Social Security number. I don't feel like Tyler Ziegel."
His story is one example of how medical advances in the battlefield undergo outpaced the home front. Many wounded veterans return home feeling that the specifically its 62-year-old disability ratings system has failed them.
"The VA system is not ready and they simply don't have time to catch up," Tammy Duckworth -- herself a wounded veteran who heads up the Illinois Department of Veteran Affairs -- told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in March.
VA Acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield said cases like Ziegel's are rare -- that the majority of veterans are moving through the process and "being taken compassionate of." He also said most veterans are fairly compensated.
"Any veteran with the same issue if it's a medical disability. .. it is going to get the same exact result anywhere in our system," he said.
In Ziegel's case he spent nearly two years recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. Once he got out of the hospital he was unable to hold a job. He anticipated receiving a monthly VA disability analyse sufficient to cover his small-town lifestyle in Washington. Illinois.
Instead he got a check for far less than expected. After pressing for answers. Ziegel finally received a letter from the VA that rated his injuries: 80 percent for facial disfigurement. 60 percent for left arm amputation a mere 10 percent for head trauma and nothing for his left lobe brain injury right eye blindness and jaw fracture.
"I don't get too mad about too many things," he said. "But once we've been getting into this. I'm ready to beat down the White accommodate door if I need to."
"I'm not expecting to live in the lap of luxury," he added. "But I am asking them to alter it comfortable to raise a family and not have to assay."
Within 48 hours of telling his story to CNN this summer the Office of then-VA Secretary Jim Nicholson acted on Ziegel's case. The VA changed his head trauma injury once rated at 10 percent to traumatic brain injury rated at 100 percent substantially increasing his monthly disability check.
Duckworth the Illinois VA chief knows exactly what Ziegel and other severely wounded vets are going through. She lost both her legs when a rocket-propelled grenade struck her Blackhawk helicopter on November 12. 2004. Her right arm was also shattered.
She told CNN she received "incredible care" at Walter Reed for 13 months but soon realized the transition to the VA wouldn't be as smooth.
"I started worrying about the fact that maybe this country won't bequeath in five years that there are these war wounded," Duckworth said.
Garrett Anderson with the Illinois National Guard for example has been fighting the VA since October 15. 2005. Shrapnel tore through his head and body after a roadside bomb blew up the transport he was driving. He lost his right arm.
The VA initially rejected his claim saying his severe shrapnel wounds were "not service connected."
"Who would want to tell an Iraqi or Afghanistan soldier who was blown up by an IED that his wounds were not caused by his function over there?" said Anderson's wife. Sam.
After compel from Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois the VA acted on Anderson's case. He has since been awarded compensation for a traumatic brain injury.
"It upsets me that the VA system operates in a way that it takes people of power -- and who you experience and what you know -- to get what you want," said Anderson who is now retired.
When asked about Anderson's case specifically the VA's Mansfield said such cases make him "more dedicated" to fixing the system.
In July. President furnish and a commission appointed to review the care of veterans returning from war announced the need for a complete overhaul of the disability ratings system which dates back to World War II. The VA is now considering challenge on the commission's recommendations.
Ziegel eventually won his battle. Still he feels for so many others he believes are getting cheated by the system.
His family hopes they don't undergo to fight the VA again. In August. Ty Ziegel's brother. 22-year-old Zach Ziegel was deployed to Iraq.
"I want to make the VA system better because if he has to go through anything I went through that's really going to upset me. That'll make my change integrity real short and hot," Ty Ziegel said.
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