Loki

Same location. Saw Ms Littlejohn. Small world, huh?

Sounds promising from what they said, if that is what she indeed puts in the report. Who did you see? Hubby had his depression exam today, and we think it went well, better than we expected since we had previously heard poor reviews about the examiner he had. But she was very nice to him and very professional, and had all his doctor's records from his primary care doc right in front of her, and was referring to them when she asked him about different things. She seemed to accept his primary care doc's diagnosis, even though he's not specifically a psych doc, he's an internal med specialist, but she realized that his doc has known him for a long time before this all started and knew that there were definite changes in him and in how his life was affected, and she mentioned that she could see that it definitely was affecting him. I think it helped that his primary doc was very specific in what changes he saw in my husband and specified what effects it was having on his life and work, every single time he had an appointment, and always stated that both the physical symptoms and emotional symptoms were related directly to his prostate cancer. I think maybe he's dealt with VA stuff before, because he documented hubby's records very well in that regard at every visit. She spent an hour and 15 minutes talking with him, and told him he should have been getting someone to talk to since he left Vietnam, and asked a lot of questions about his experiences in Vietnam and afterwards, especially about work history and previous marriages and stuff, and and said that it was very obvious that the physical problems that he's having especially recently have been affecting mental outlook and his employment and income and daily life and social life, and talked to us BOTH about resources that the VA has that can help like vocational rehab and therapy and stuff, for both recent and past issues, and said that while it may take a while to get in, and that we may have to keep after the VA, if we stick it out, they will help him. So it seems very encouraging, but of course we don't know what she actually wrote until we can see copies of the exam. He said she spent a LOT of time typing in between each question, so I'm guessing it wasn't just a quick "everything's ok" report, huh?

Wow. Where are you located? They use QTC here in Atlanta as well, and my husband's last exam was only 10 minutes and two questions, no exam, regarding his request for increase of residuals from prostate cancer treatment. Doc said everything he needed was already in the file, so he didn't need to do an exam. Not very encouraging, given that the prior exam 2 years ago did not go so well, doc didn't care to listen to him and didn't include anything my husband tried to tell him in the reports, which resulted in the VA thinking hubby is "cured", which is why we're having to go through this all over again. QTC won't give you copies of records, they say you have to request them from the VA 90 days after the exam.