john999

Yes, definitely file for depression as secondary to the back condition. You need a doctor to write a letter saying your depression is secondary to the SC back injury. What kind of meds do you take for depression? If you don't take meds the VA won't believe you are depressed. It is very common for people with back injuries and chronic pain to become depressed, however the VA really demands that a mental health professional make the connection. Do some research on depression. I have some back and neck problems. I take pain meds and the meds alone depress me. I trade relief from pain for chronic depression.

Just be sure you file your NOD on time. All the evidence in the world means little if you miss appeal dates. I had heart condition rated at 0%. I filed an appeal and got some new evidence. I got 60% just on benefit of doubt. To go from 0% to 60% basically due to just filing an appeal is a big deal. You know most vets don't even follow through with basic NOD. If you can get a specialist to say the fumes more likely than not caused your headaches you may have something eventually. I say "eventually" because the VA is great at twisting and ignoring evidence.

The VA has to consider all the evidence in the record. However, before 1990 there is no way you could prove the VA did or did not consider your evidence. Your C-File could have ten IME's in it, and the rater could have denied your claim, and never even mentioned any of your evidence before 1990. Now they have to mention the evidence as in listing it, but they still don't have to consider it. How do you prove they did not consider it? It is like proving a negative. In my CUE the diagnostic code for my condition was changed between the time I filed and the time it was rated. When you find that glaring error in your file that is 40 years old you have to consider all the rules have changed since then and probably not in your favor. Also, when the VA looks at your evidence they can give the same weight to the opinion of some goon working as the ward clerk as to your best IME in the CUE realm. When you try and go back in time to fix an injustice the entire weight is on you. Duty to Assist does not even arise in a CUE. When you have claims that may open up the process to thousands of pother vets in your situation you can be sure the VA is going to oppose. It will be easier to get money from GM before their bankruptcy than to get money from the VA.

You need evidence that you cannot do even sedentary work due solely to your SC disabilities. Just because you cannot use your degree, or do physical labor won't get you TDIU. You want to prove via medical evidence that there is no job you can do because of your SC disabilities.

You are lucky the possible CUE happened after 1990. I tried to use Cushman V Shinseki for excluding my IMO from my rating in 1973. Is there a difference between excluding and altering evidence? The VA thinks so. Because my CUE happened before 1990 I cannot prove or disprove my evidence was excluded even when the BVA admits it. This is VA justice.

Did Bipolar DX exist before the military? If she discusses bipolar she needs to say that PTSD and bipolar are comorbid. They exist together and make each other worse. She needs to explain how your military service was cause of PTSD and caused precipitation of bipolar. She needs to say that all your mental health issues are directly were caused by military service. No speculation about bipolar before military. What conditions are you claiming?

Just say your childhood was great. Everything was fine until you got blown up in OIF/OEF. Did you file for TBI and PTSD? If you have any symptoms of TBI you should file. TBI is insidious in its symptoms and prognosis. Many thousands of vets from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam had TBI's and these injuries affected their lives. I don't know exactly what you filed for but PTSD and TBI come to mind immediately. I think you will win your claims. If you tell them any information about pre-military that could be twisted to support personality disorder, or any pre-existing condition it will haunt you the rest of your life. I can attest to this directly. \ John

Yes, if your SMR's support a military DX of OSA. I wonder about connecting OSA as secondary condition to SC conditions. You probably should have filed a claim for OSA within a year of discharge. Just getting the DX within a year is not enough as I understand it.

I think about 500,000 FDC's are sitting and gathering dust just like the old system. Mine will be a year old in June. The VA totally screwed it up I am sure. I write them an IRIS and what I get back sounds like a different claim. John

I contribute to my congresswoman's election campaign. I did ask her to inquire about my claim. Is she just gives me standard response she won't get a dime form me in the future, and I will give her a piece of my mind. She probably does not really give a &^%$. I write my representatives all the time telling them that they are whores and liars. I probably will get no wet kisses from them now. Part of their miserable job is to help their constituents with problems like VA claims. If they don't do this they don't deserve your vote. I know what they deserve but I can't say it here. John

I have gotten message from Ebenefits for the last eight months that they are waiting for "5103 Waiver Request". I got so mad I contacted my congresswoman because I also live in Tampa, and all my records are at the Tampa VA Hospital. My VARO is St. Pete. How long does it take to get records from Tampa VA to St. Pete? This is all BS since my claim is just sitting gathering dust. I was 10% for DMII and I had to start taking oral meds last year. This is criteria for 20%. This is not rocket science but I suppose if you are the VA and waiting for old RVN vets to die why rush their claims? John

If you could get an extra 60% then you could get housebound which is an extra $300 a month. I got TDIU and about five years later I got an extra 60% for DMII and secondary conditions. I got housebound using Bradley v Peake.

If you are going to claim it as secondary on its own then you will still need a letter from a doctor to make the nexus most likely. If you just throw it up to the VARO they will find a reason to deny it.

You know back in the day I went to a group and it costs me $15 a session. The group really helped me. There were other vets in the group. One day I was ranting about something and one of the other vets blew up and told me he was tried of me not listening to what the others were trying to tell me about myself. I was shocked. It got through to me. I started to get better after that. It never would have happened at the VA. Mental health treatment is almost non-existent these days. All you get is drugs. Drugs never helped me. Human contact and talk helped me. John

The Ugly get 100%.

I also remember that VBM describes a vet who had TDIU referred for a skin condition. If you skin condition creates a barrier to employment that should be a referred claim for TDIU.

I would try and get a depression claim going due to all the pain and disability. If you can get that claim up to 50% then I don't see how they can deny your TDIU claim. I don't see how they can deny you for the AS since SSD has said that makes you completely disabled. I was rated 70% for a single condition and the VA denied my first TDIU claim, so they can do anything. I was on SSD and LTD for the 70% condition when I was denied. I got numerous IME's to beat that.

Jon They did the same thing to me in 1972. They never heard of PTSD. They had heard of panic disorder, depression and dissociative disorder which all are related to some degree to what is now called PTSD. It was easier to just say I was a schizophrenic instead of looking beyond immediate weird symptoms. I kept telling the Army and VA what kind of symptoms I was having all of which indicate dissociative disorder, but these people just wanted to say I had some personality disorder and residual schizophrenia. The treatment I got in the Army and at the VA was so poor when I got out of the Army I spent a few weeks in the VA rubber room and did not go back for 20 years. They got everything wrong and caused me a world of grief. I had to pay a private psychologist for the rest of my life to deal with issues that started in Vietnam. If I had continued with the VA I would have ended up in an institution or one of those "Will work for Drugs" guys. I had an awful reaction to the anti psychotic drugs they put me on and stopped taking them immediately.

You need a letter from your private doctor saying that your leg problem is secondary to the SC back condition. Same for the depression if it is not SC. On secondary conditions the VA will not connect the dots. I have had three secondary conditions connected to DMII. It took letters from doctors every time. I had a VA PCP who at that time would really help me. She wrote perfect letters to connect the secondary conditions. Now new doc won't do squat because of change of policy I guess, or lack of guts.

I helped get my old buddy from Vietnam get SC'ed for PTSD and AO conditions. I looked for that guy for years. I found all my close buddies from Nam and two of them got SC for AO.

Chronic means you have it and it is not going away, so I would say a DX of chronic PTSD is worse. I had vet center counselor write a letter saying I had "Chronic and severe PTSD". I don't think the VA even considered it.

I had C&P exams where the only questions the doctor asked me was "Are you hearing voices?", and "Are you working?" It seems the shrink has made up his mind you have PTSD, but who knows what rating you will get. Are you able to work? That is a BIG factor in ratings. If your PTSD is so bad you can't work then you get 70%-100% usually. The shrink does not do the rating. The VARO does the rating. I would try and get a copy of the exam.

I would try and pay off that house note as fast as I could and resist the temptation to buy that big, new house you have always wanted. When you are debt free it is good to stay that way as a disabled vet.

I had an IME 40 years ago that declared I was 100% disabled. The VA just ignored it, and since they did not even have to list evidence in those days you never knew if they even looked at it. I can tell you that the NOD is the most important few lines of script you will ever file in your life. Due to my own ignorance and VA's mailing my decision to the wrong address I missed a chance to challenge the awful decision I got back in the day. I am sure many vets fail to appeal decisions even in this day and age. The VA can deep six an IME/IMO for any number of reasons. You have to consider that a vet who files a mental health claim is trying to prove they are mentally/emotionally ill. This, in itself, is a pretty humiliating experience. Before the concept of PTSD was accepted by the VA mental illness claims were really like a brand of shame. The VA assumes you are shaming to get money. The C&P doctor's assumed the same thing. You might have some VSO who would look at you and say "You look ok to me. Why are you asking for an increase?" Before the internet it was just you and your VSO against the VA with limited knowledge available. I remember my VA doctor telling me I would never be able to get more than 30% for bipolar because I was not psychotic as in seeing things and hearing voices. The army combed out numerous months of treatment records and army doctors failed to even DX conditions I had while at the same time telling me there was no treatment. They lie to a 20 year old kid to save a buck and these people say "Duty, Honor, Country". What honor I would say! Doctor's who lie and misrepresent conditions to make their commands happy so they don't get sent to a combat zone.

It might be worthwhile to file claims on anything you think might be caused by AO because even if you lose today the diseases may be added to the presumptive list later and then Nehmer might apply if the VA has not done away with it by then.