Ricky

Joe, calm down my friend. You DO NOT NEED THE AWARD LETTER TO FILE YOUR FORM 9. The perfected appeal should address the issues in the SOC. If you have the SOC then you have everything you need to submit your form 9. Based upon your post you should argue for a higher rating on your feet and then argue the ommission of the items that you feel should have been addressed in it.

Thank you sir. I have not seen any posts from veterans with dejerine roussy. It is a rare condition and although it can be caused by injuries to the spinal cord it normally only affects stroke patients who have had a stroke within the thalamus. Eventhough I have filed a form 9, the VARO gave me a DRO hearing that I requested over 18 months ago. The DRO seemed to understand the condition and commented that without doubt I should have received the 6 months worth of 100 percent. I thought she would have issued a rating fairly quickly and given me the 6 months of 100 percent while holding in abayance the other items on the appeal but that has not happened so far. Therefore, it appears that she will issue a rating on all the items at the same time and it will probably be quite a while before I hear something. She also commented that she did not understand why the original DRO did not provide a seperate rating for each area affected by the condition. Even if she fails to rate me as loss of use for the arm and foot at least it will be a step in the right direction if she corrects this and provides some type of rating for each body system that is affected by the condition. This claims is really messed up. I have actually been given two DRO reviews. The first was a copy and paste job from the original rating. I raised so much heck about my due process (the DRO hearing) after filing my form 9, out of the blue one day in Feb 07 I got a letter stating that I was to report to the VARO for a DRO hearing. She told me while I was there that she is reviewing the entire claim and would issued a decision. I certainly hope that sine I filed my form 9 18 months ago they have already given it a docket number instead of just letting the claim sit there in the VARO. Bob, if I can figure out how to scan and attach things I can/will send you a copy of the SOC, and a couple of the statements from my docs they prepared for my hearing. Ricky

You are right Six. The army will promote you at the drop of the hat. But beware, if you pick the hat up the wrong way or put it on your head crooked they will take a couple of ranks fairly quick.

The results of the exam are sent back to the VARO that requested it and it is placed into your file. The results of the exam will be used by the rater to assist him/her in reaching a decision on your claim. Glad to hear that you had a plesant experience with the VA medical guys. Although you will read about the horror stories with the VA they do do some things right and should be given credit when credit is due. As to your question on the time - it is hard to tell. Could be 60 days or it could by 2 years. It all depends on the backlog at your VARO. If you are a new veteran your claim will be given priority over the claims from other veterans who served before you. Not your fault this is just how it is. I suggest that you sit back and rest. If you have not heard something in about 90 days inquire about the status of your claim via the iris inquiry system on the VA web site. Iris is an email system in which your inquiry will be sent to the VARO handling your claim. The VA is pretty quick if you use it. Welcome to Hadit and thank for your service. Stick around for we have many expert independant service officers who will help quide you through the VA maze that you have just entered.

Sledge, I wish you the best of luck. I really wish you would not call it a court. If it were a real court they would have the power to over rule the decesion and award your claim. As it is the only thing they can do remand the claim back to the BVA and tell them how to fix the problem. Court, nope, it is only another office which catches BVA legal mistakes and tells them how to fix them so the denial at least meets the intent of the law.

I think the C&P files cause a lot of problems also. In my latest one which was used for my appeal several of the statements in it were a cut and paste job from my very first exam with the VA. Important things such as my blood pressure readings. I have a copy of the reading they took with their little machine in July 05, however, the exam findings were totaly different. When I researched it I found that the BP readings reported in the July o5 exam were those taken and reported in my Dec 2000 exam. I have not found any way to get it corrected so I sent in a copy of the readings they took and recorded in July 05 but in the rating they used the ones reported in the exam from 2000. Apeal, apeal, apeal I guess that is what they want you to do!

Six-I have followed your posts and consider you and expert in this area. I suffer from a service connected right thalamic stroke. As a result of this I have been diagnosed with Dejerine-Roussy syndrome. I will not post the total effects for the post would be to long. My Neuro and PCP have provided statements and medical opinions that the Dejerine-Roussy has caused me to have a complete loss of functional use of the left arm/hand and left leg/foot. I wear as full contact AFO to assist with walking and use a cane. I can not grasp or hold items with the left hand. I currently have an appeal pending for loss of use of the left arm/hand and left leg/foot. My question/concern is that this is not supported by EMG. The nerves from the arm/foot read ok. However, when the signal reaches my brain, within the thalamus, it is mis-read causing my problems (strange pain/loss of propreceptional sense). This syndrome also cause a severe spike in pain in the thalamus from real pain such as that from a normal EMG. The neuro has provided this in his statements (provided that this is not normal PN). Will the lack of an EMG be a problem? The reason I ask is that in most Loss of Use cases I have read, they speak of complete paralysis of a specific nerve. I do not have paralysis in the nerve it is in the thalamus where the nerves meet and transmit their signals to the specific parts of the brain. My problems with this syndrome are: severe pain which feels like a wild animal is tearing the flesh from the bones; burning like the body parts are in hell; pain which feels like the parts are going to burst from swelling eventhough no swelling is present, unbearable shooting pains etc.. All of this is effected by tempature changes, the wind, stress, real pain, viberations etc.... Yes I do feel pin pricks, boy do I feel them, they feel like someone has stuck a knife into my foot or hand. However, the funny thing is I can not feel the hand or foot or tell where they are at. Neuro has done the frey hairs test to diagnose but refused to do the EMG because the real pain from the EMG would drive me crazy and he said the nerve conduction would read as normal since the nerve is really not damaged. In 05 when I had the stroke my daughter filed the claim. The SCed the stroke and dejerine roussy. They gave me a 10 percent rating. They failed to give me the 100 percent rating for six months for the stroke and although they said they were SCing the dejerine roussy they did not provide a rating for the areas it affected, face, arm/hand and leg/foot. The appeal has asked for the required 100 percent for six months and a rating for the face, hand and foot. I amended the appeal and asked for a 100 percent rating due to loss of use of both hand and foot but this EMG thing has me worried. Any comments? Wow, this is a pretty long post for a one handed guy! Thanks a million

Thanks guys. I also started on the old board. The rank thing was an Army vs Navy thing hahahahahaha. I could care less if I was ranked as a navy wanna be as long as a couple of my posts provided good advice to a needy veteran. Anyway, I argue the rank thing with my son all the time - he is in the Army Air Corp, also known as the Air Force. He tells me all the time that the Army promoted me every time I dropped my hat hahahaha.

Wow I finally hit post number 500 and I am still a chief petty officer. If this was an army run site I would have made General by now hahahahahahahahaha. On a serious note I thank Tbird for the opportunity to be a part of such a great veteran family and for providing a site that has provided me with invaluable information and guidance in the processing of my VA claim. I also want to thank my Hadit family for their time, assistance and sometimes bitting their tonuge when my meds are kicking my butt and I get a little testy. Although multitudes have helped me I send a special thanks to guys and gals such as Berta, Pete, Six, and Vike for their providing me with expert advice on navigating through the VA maze. Although I sometimes did not want to hear what you had to tell me, after kicking the dog and spitting on the wall I knew that you knew what you were talking about! God bless each and every one of you. Both my family and I thank you from the bottoms of our hearts. God bless this great country. Ricky

Don't know if this has been posted before or not but it is a pretty good site. It has a bunch of links with valuable information. Hopefully this will work. http://groups.msn.com/SocialSecurityDisabi...eranslinks.msnw I do not know how to post a link so I guess you will have to copy and past into your browser - sorry guys and gals.

Pete - the entire VA acts like you are stealing something whether it be benefits, medical care, meds etc... You know they take money out of the checks of va employees each pay period to fund the VA hahahahahaha

I said this many time before. Can you spell DAVID CHU. His and those like him have a mission and that mission is to rid the service of those broken soldiers who can no longer function without any cost to the services. It is sad that our troops are still being treated in this fashion. They go fight at the drop of a hat to insure the freedom of this country but when they get broke Chu and his buddies kick them to the curb like a piece of trash. What does the American public allow this to continue? My only guess is that such actions do not affect them. If it was their son, daughter, husband ect..... then they would care and scream like a eagle. But for those who do not have anyone who serves and gets broken the simply say 'gosh thats not fair, poor guy" and then go on to their cheese tasting event or crawl into a warm bed with their sweetie and think about what they are going to have for lunch tomorrow. We have always been a people like this. If there is no direct effect on us and we tend to forget quickly and go on with our pampered lives. WWI, WW2, Korea, VN, GW 9/11 no direct effect then we say wow that was bad, direct effect then we fight like wolves. Its a sad state of affairs but it is true.

Berta this ideal sounds good to me also. However, it makes me worry for I see the VA using this to decrease ratings. Lets face it we are no longer factory workers so physical disabilities seem to fit more into the work enviornment today. I see VA taking a veteran who is a carpenter with a physical disability that provides him with I/U and retraining him. At this point I forsee them then reducing his I/U, putting him in the job market based upon his new training and saying we have done our job. This would allow them to give him a 10 percent rating for his physical disability cause it no longer affects his ability to work, and a 10 percent rating for the effect on his social life. Even if he could not find employment they would simply say hey we have retrained you, given you a rating for the effect on your economical ability and 10 percent for the effect on your social environment - if you can not get a job sorry charlie we did what we were supposed to do. I think I understand what the IOM is doing but the disability commission and the VA are Satan and his demon buddies all rolled up into one and will attempt to use this recommendationto their advantage. The bottom line is THIS COULD BACK FIRE ON THE VETERAN COMMUNITY!!!! Just my opinion

I sent a request (fax) to my RO for some updated Cfile stuff. They told me it would take 4-6 weeks. In the cover letter, as always, I thanked them for there service to the veteran community. They called me about 10 mins after receiving the fax and told me they appreciated the thanks for the service and if I wanted they could fax the requested records that day. I told them that would be great. The fax was received about 2 hours later.

Sometimes C&P exams are a good experience. There are some good doctors within the VA system and there are bad ones just like in the civilian commumity. The same goes for the employees at the RO's most are great people and really try to help veterans. However, there are many who just do not care. A majority of the problems with the Va are at the management levels especially when the management position is an appointed one or the person holding the managment position is expecting some type of appointment at some ponit in their career. Glad you had a good experience and especially glad you posted it for others to see.

Hey Pete, how do you figure they will have to treat attorneys better than they do us. The Ro's have no shame and incompentence is incompentence. The attorney will be no better getting around incompetence than we are. For example - we have been filing our claims. Most of us breath, eat and sleep Title 38, CFR 38 and Va internal operating guides. What I am saying we know the law. In the filing of our claims we use the law to obtain benefits. The idiots at the RO either do not know the law or simply fail to follow it. This goes on for years until someone at the BVA unscrews what the RO has done. The RO idiots is not repremanded, does not receive a decrease in pay, does not receive any negitive action. He/she simply goes on their merry way to the next claim and they receive a pay increase along with a merit bonus. Now what is going to make them act any differenty when working with an attorney? The attorney is not going to have direct access with the idiots - he/she will have to do just like us and correspond with them on the issues. During the claims process he/she will file the claims and appeals quoting the law and telling the idiots what they should do (just like we do now). He/she will not be able to slap the idiots for issuing an inadequate SOC - they can not shoot them, they can not do anything to them nor can we. See its all the same process so once again I ask why will they treat attorneys any different? As a matter of fact I expect a lot of animosity between the VA and a claim that is being persued by an attorney! Anyway it does not matter to me personally. The law says you can only use an attorney if a claim or NOD is submitted after Jun 07. My appeal has been pending for close to 3 years now so I guess I will still have to go it alone (except for the advice of my Hadit buddies). I hope that after this appeal I NEVER EVER have to deal with the VA again.

The court says that the effective date of a claim to reopen will be the date of the request to reopen the claim. You stated that in Oct 06 you requested to reopen so the effective date will be Oct 06. Alex is right.

I do not know about responsibility for the death - however, since he was service connected for DM and stroke was listed as a cause of death DIC will be no problem. Oh we are dealing with the VA so let me restate that, the veteran is SC'ed for DM the widow SHOULD not have a problem with the DIC. DM is a leading cause for CVA and any doc worth his oats should provide a letter tying this together for her.

The excel spread sheet has nothing to do with the rating VA has given you. It is simply a tool for veterans to use in calculating their overall disability rating. Given the percentages you have posted your rating is 50 percent. Now since the "nice VA lady" said it should be higher then maybe it will be. You will simply have to wait on the award letter but please do not misunderstand what the excel calculator is for.

Being able to hire an attorney is great. But do you really think the idiots at the RO are going to treat an attorney any better than they do us. This is actually probably going to give them the ammo they need to push the backlog to 1.5 million claim and be able to blame it on the veteran.

If you hope to obtain SSDI then you must quit work. A claim filed while working will result in a denial based upon not meeting the basic requirements of SSDI.

les - what was your ROM on the joint?

Pete is right. The only way to succeed with a claim such as yours is to obtain more medical evidence tying your condition to your service. You stated your va records all say this what specific records are you speaking of and why did va deny your claim. If you will provide this someone on here will be able to assist you.

It could raise it if the limitation of motion meets a higher rating requirement. I do not understand why your appeal would go back to a rating board. If it is in appeal and under DRO review then the DRO will make the new decision on the rating.

filed orgional claim may 2006 granted 30%ptsd and mdd sept 06. filed for increase 28 of oct o6. quit working april 06.my pc doctor said unemployable june o6 due Was the original Sept 06 decision appealed - you said you filed for an increase in Oct 06. This is hard to understand for the normal course would have been to NOD the Sept 06 decision vs filing for an increase. If you appealed the Sept 06 rating within the required time limits then it appears the effective date should have been May 06 the date of receipt of the claim. If you did not appeal and somehow began a new claim????? then the effective date would have been Oct 06