Injured veteran's insurance benefits halted

by **Spider** Wed 18 Dec 2019, 8:37 am

Injured veteran's insurance benefits halted over questions whether she can work

Published Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Injured veteran's insurance benefits halted Image

Kelsi Sheren, a military veteran who began the jewelry company Brass and Unity, is seen in this image.

TORONTO -- An injured veteran had her insurance benefits temporarily pulled just days before Christmas after she says Manulife mistakenly determined she was capable of working.

Kelsi Sheren served in Afghanistan in 2009 and was medically released from the Canadian military in 2011. She founded the jewelry company Brass and Unity in 2016, but says she does not take a paycheque from the business and instead uses it as a way of coping with her post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’m not employable and that’s why I do what I do,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.

“I’m just the face of it, because it’s my story that the company’s built on,” she added. “This is my therapy. This isn’t anything else.”

Sheren said she recently received a call from Manulife, where the representative told her that her insurance payments would be taken away because it appeared she had a successful business.

“I won’t be able to pay my mortgage and I have a three-year-old son right before Christmas,” she said on Monday.

Sheren receives payments through Manulife’s Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP), which offers income protection to military members who are released for medical reasons or who qualify as being “totally disabled.” The plan is also designed to provide skills training to military members with the goal of obtaining gainful employment.

“We pay into this. We’re owed this,” Sheren said. “They put all these stipulations on you and if you don’t follow them, they drop just you. That’s how quick it happens.”

After CTVNews.ca reached out to Manulife, Sheren was informed that her benefits would be reinstated, but only until the New Year, where they would then be “re-evaluated.”

In a phone interview, Manulife spokesperson Shabeen Hanifa said the company has been in contact with Sheren, but is unable to comment on the situation.

“We strive to do everything within our powers to serve our customers and we have been in ongoing contact with this particular plan member to provide the appropriate assistance,” she said. “We do take the responsibility of protecting the privacy of our customers very seriously and so we can’t discuss the specific details of any individual.”

Brass and Unity offers a variety of fashion accessories, but is most known for creating bracelets and necklaces featuring recycled shell casings. Twenty per cent of net profits are sent to veterans and charities that support veterans, while the remainder goes back into the company.

On Tuesday, Brass and Unity was featured on the CBS daytime television program “The Doctors.”

Sheren believes Manulife cut her SISIP payments because these television appearances and her public persona make it look like she gets paid by a successful business, while her medical records and tax returns indicate otherwise.

“They Googled me and made their decision based off of outside perception of what social media looks like, instead of looking at my doctor’s eight years of paper work,” she said.

Sheren said that while she can handle this situation, losing these payments could be life-threatening for some of her fellow veterans who are in a worse position.

“I’ve got enough of a support system and fortunately I have that, a lot of people don’t,” she said. “This is a chronic problem that nobody talks about.”

“What if this was somebody that (Manulife) called and did this to and they had nowhere to go?”

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/injured-veteran-s-insurance-benefits-halted-over-questions-whether-she-can-work-1.4734581#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=Facebook&_gsc=WtJB5ze

by Rifleman Wed 18 Dec 2019, 9:22 am

And very sad to say this is not the first time this has happened to a VETRAN there are countless stories throughout the veterans community that this exact thing has happened they do not give to craps about your welfare the only care about one thing MONEY !!!! what a bunch of ass hats in this company

by **Edgefore** Wed 18 Dec 2019, 1:59 pm

Company to Help Other
Veterans

HEALTH & WELLNESS on 3:00 AM PST, December 17, 2019

Video https://www.thedoctorstv.com/videos/how-one-veteran-built-a-company-to-help-other-veterans

by **Trooper** Wed 18 Dec 2019, 6:41 pm

This is her side of the story. It's hard to comment only knowing one side of the story. But if what she is saying is correct, The CDS should jump in and change the policy given more notice to SISIP clients before termination of benefits. I realize she is doing something good for fellow Veterans, which is great, but does this go against policy. The annual questionnaire for SISIP does require you to report hobbies. Did she report this as a hobby? The other thing she explains about her condition of PTSD. She claims this company of hers helps with her PTSD. Is this something her doctor agrees with? From what I read thus far, it looks like someone from SISIP may have jumped the gun halting her benefits. However we do not know what SISIP knows, so when they re- evaluate her in the New Year, hopefully we get the answer of what the final decision is, so we can get educated on what we can, and cannot do regarding SISIP.

by Rekert Sun 09 Jul 2023, 3:59 pm

Canada's push to euthanize veterans with PTSD is 'disgusting, unacceptable and infuriating', says female artillery gunner who spent six months on the front line in Afghanistan

. Kelsi Sheren enlisted in the Canadian military, aged 19, and was sent to Afghanistan - a harrowing experience that left her with severe PTSD

. She has since become a vocal opponent of Canada's relaxed euthanasia laws - including to veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder

By WILL POTTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM . 9 July 2023

Army veteran Kelsi Sheren was a fresh-faced 19-year-old when she first set foot on the combat field in Afghanistan. It proved to be a life-altering experience.

Six months later the Canadian artillery gunner was 'still shaking' on a military helicopter heading home after witnessing one of her comrades being blown to pieces after he set off an IED in the field as their battalion moved from compound to compound.

'That was my first exposure to watching someone die. And that was my first exposure to having to clean up what was left of someone,' Sheren told DailyMail.com.

The experience, she says, 'broke part of my brain'. It took witnessing that horrific death 'for the reality of what we were doing to hit'. She was plagued by the memory of scrubbing her comrade's remains off her hands - all the while ducking heavy fire.

Once home, she turned to therapy - and realized she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sheren made it her mission to help other veterans and has been an outspoken critic of the Canadian government's relaxed attitude to euthanasia - including its push to make it available to veterans plagued by PTSD.

'It's disgusting and it's unacceptable,' she said, arguing that authorities would rather euthanize a soldier than foot the bill for their recovery.

Canada has the world's most permissive assisted suicide program. The country is on track to record some 13,500 state-sanctioned suicides in 2022, a 34 percent rise on the 10,064 in 2021, according to Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition's analysis of official data.

Canada's politicians are currently weighing whether to expand access to include children and the mentally ill.

Critics have argued the approach is a 'slippery slope' in a country where red tape makes it easier to access doctor-assisted suicide than it is to access benefits and help.

Sheren is enraged by the 'unacceptable' and 'infuriating' law. She says she personally knows almost a dozen veterans who have been offered euthanasia by authorities, a 'disgusting' approach to 'people who were willing to put their lives on the line... then you have the audacity to tell them it's better if you just die'.

Sheren - whose experience is detailed in her new book, 'Brass and Unity', published by Knox Press on July 11 - has made it her mission to help other veterans.

Her ordeal began as an aimless 19-year-old in 2009, when she enlisted in the army to find purpose in her life. She immediately knew, however, that her experience would be daunting in the male-dominated military.

'I knew there was going to be a point in time where I was going to have to show up in a different way than most people would,' she said. 'But it was exciting to me.'

As a high-level Taekwondo fighter before her military days, Sheren said she 'loved the challenge' and relished the chance to 'be the underdog'.

But while on a mission with the British military in Afghanistan in 2009 - which she only joined because the team needed a female 'cultural support' officer - her life would change forever.

The battalion was moving from compound to compound under heavy fire, with Sheren acting as an artillery gunner to keep the enemy at bay.

As the crew approached a dirt road, one British soldier moved ahead of the pack, sweeping the area with a metal detector before the others moved through.

When he brushed a stack of logs, a hidden IED exploded.

'We were fighting an enemy that wanted every single one of us dead... by any means necessary,' Sheren recalled.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, Sheren knew something was wrong. She felt panicked and confused, and screamed uncontrollably when she struggled to wash the fallen soldier's blood from her hands.

From that moment, she admitted, 'the rest of the operation was very different'.

As the team pushed on to the next village, Sheren said she became distinctly aware her mindset had shifted negatively, without realizing it was the first symptoms of PTSD.

'I very well knew the way I was feeling and acting towards Afghan people now was disproportionately angry and violent,' she continued. 'My compassion, care, empathy, patience - it was all gone.'

When she returned home to Vancouver from Afghanistan, Sheren was met with a wave of emotions, unsure how to grapple with her new reality under the shadow of post-traumatic stress disorder.

She said she simply 'couldn't really feel anything', and when she checked-in with herself, she drew a blank. 'I wasn't happy. I wasn't sad. I wasn't tired. I was just enraged,' she said.

Sheren said she was first offered a fleet of pharmaceuticals designed to mellow her out or put her to sleep, but the drugs sent her off balance and she quickly knew they were not for her.

Instead, she set about testing several therapy techniques with varying success.

Notably, she claimed experimenting with psychedelic drugs was particularly helpful, as it helped her break down her mental barriers and understand her illness.

Her main outlet, however, proved to be art therapy, with the objective nature of the craft allowing her to 'shut my brain down' and focus on what was right in front of her.

After making bracelets from bullet casings, Kelsi decided to launch a business - which quickly grew and was backed by celebrity clients.

She now counts numerous A-listers, such as Ellen DeGeneres, Beth Behrs and Kevin Hart, among her fans - the latter whom she credits to her success after a chance meeting.

Hart advised her to change the name of her business from 'Wearables' to appeal to male clientele. She came up with 'Brass and Unity', and the name has since spawned a growing following, a podcast, and, now, her book.

After overcoming her own mental health battle to build a new life for herself, Sheren has focused on helping others.

Her current fight is at home in Canada, against permissive euthanasia laws. The practice has been legal since 2016, and it has been aggressively expanded to over 10,000 'assisted suicides' in 2021.

But Sheren said she personally knows almost a dozen former military servicemen who have been offered euthanasia by authorities, which she slammed as 'disgusting.'

'When you take people who were willing to put their lives on the line for you, for your safety, then you have the audacity to tell them its better if you just die... it is one of the most disgusting things,' she said.

'It's unacceptable, and it is one of the most infuriating things to come down from the Canadian administration in the last decade.'

Other critics of euthanasia are sounding the alarm about Australia and the Netherlands, as well as Canada, where assisted suicides are becoming easier to access.

The warning comes on the heels of revelations that the Netherlands euthanizes otherwise healthy people with autism, and as Australian officials debate whether to let children as young as 14 end their lives in the nation's capital.

Matt Vallière, director of the Patients' Rights Action Fund, a campaign group, said the mostly western governments that allow assisted suicides send the message that 'people with certain disabilities are better off dead.'

'Every expansion of assisted suicide and euthanasia simply adds additional subsets of people with disabilities to the group of those who qualify or makes it easier, quicker, or cheaper for them to get it,' Vallière told DailyMail.com.

People who need support are shunted into a 'utilitarian death-funnel,' he added.

Euthanasia, a lethal injection administered by a doctor, is legal in seven countries — Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain — plus several states in Australia.

Other jurisdictions, including a growing number of US states, allow doctor-assisted suicide — where patients take the drug themselves, typically crushing up and drinking a lethal dose of pills prescribed by a physician.

The numbers of people opting for assisted suicides has risen steadily in the countries where it's allowed.

The Netherlands in 2002 became the world's first country to allow doctors to kill patients, at their request, if strict conditions were met.

Nearly 60,000 opted for the procedure between 2012 and 2021, official figures show.

Daily Mail

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