john999

No, I have been disappointed by all of them! Learn how to win your own claim. IF you just hand your claim over to the DAV or VFW they just run with what you give them. It is ok to have them along at a hearing, but you must do the leg work to produce the evidence you need to win your claim.

Did you IME have your SMR's and did he review them? It sounds like he did but he should include a clear statement in the record that he carefully reviewed your service medical records. 1987 has been 25 years ago so you need a good IME/IMO in which your doctor connects all the dots.

Soldiers die without a scratch on them from blast concussion. This happened so often in WWI that it is just common knowledge. You don't have to be hit on the head. When you are near a blast the blast wave makes your brain slosh around inside your head thus causing damage. What kind of crap is the VA selling. I saw a documentary called " Where Soldiers Come From" and it was about four country boys who went to Afghanistan in a NG Unit. They almost all suffered from numerous IED attacks and got TBI's to various levels. All the guys came back screwed up to some extent. The ones who don't have TBI have ptsd.

I don't marijuana is a miracle drug? It won't cure PTSD. It is not a cure for cancer or cancer pain. It helps with side effects from chemotherapy.

If it is a chronic condition with a least a 10% rate then you should be SC'ed for it, but you must claim it within a year of discharge. How long has it been since you were discharged? If your VA doctor says you have major depression I would ask for an increase in your 10% rating. Trusting your VA doctor to have done a Full Workup may have cost you. What is BPII anyway? If you claimed it and you have the decision has not become final I would appeal it. By not appealing these decisions they have become final. Was anyone advising you on how to file a VA claim? John

Amicus You are right. If a patient has a problem with a med they should take it up with their doctor. I was just pointing out some of the prejudices I have run into at the VA over the years. What I resent the hell out of is the VA blaming me for have drug dependence when they, and only they, prescribed these drugs for me for the last 7-8 years. My VA has a alternative pain program in-patient but you must already be clean of the addictive drugs they fed you for years.

Since you are under FERS you must apply for OPM disability and SSDI. If you can get 100% or TDIU and OPM/ SSD then the money is OK. If you retire just on OPM and get SSD then you will be eating beans and an occasional hotdog. I make much more on TDIU than SSD and OPM combined. To get SSD you must not be able to do any sort of gainful employment. To get TDIU you must be unemployable due solely to your SC conditions. Are you retired military? If you are younger than 30 you will probably have a hard time getting SSD unless you are stone deaf. Depending on your age it is probably best to keep working and contributing to our TSD and to your SSA.

The VA also hates drugs of the Valium family. I think they are called Benzos for short. If you suddenly stop taking Clonazepam or Valium or Xanax you will have a very dangerous withdrawal. I did it before out of ignorance and I was jumping out of my skin. The VA does hold it against you if you take any of the Benzos. When I went to the pulmonary clinic to try and get Provigil the fact I take Clonazepam for SC anxiety and Percocet for SC pain put me on their sh*t list. Now everyone at the VA wants to blame the medications the VA prescribed me for years as being my big problem. I wonder if I can sue the VA for getting me addicted to all these drugs. Could I file a 1151 claim since my brain chemistry has been changed over the decades of use of the VA approved drugs? John

I had shoulder surgery and I have never regained strength in that arm. I cannot even do a push-up because the weak shoulder and arm will collapse. I guess that is success? I don't even think the doctor knew what he was doing except it was under worker's compensation and he wanted a paycheck.

I once had two claims going at the same time. One was for a psychiatric increase and one was for TMJ. The VA got the IME's for both conditions mixed up and denied both saying that a dentist could not opine on psychiatric condition and a shrink could not DX TMJ. If it were not so sad it would be funny. I also was granted just 0% for heart secondary to DMII due to C&P exam by an APRN. This idiot was training another APRN when she was messing up my C&P. I just sent in an appeal and low and behold I got 60% without taking another C&P. The APRN did nothing but make guesses instead of asking for tests. If I were not used to these outrageous exams and decisions I might have just walked away in disgust. I did that 40 years ago and it cost me many thousands of bucks. If you walk away and attempt to CUE something decades later you are usually up &^%$# creek because the law has changed 20 times. As long as a decision is according to the rules even if the rules are a gross injustice you are probably out of luck. I am still smarting from my CUE being denied by CAVC. All they did was put a rubber stamp on an injustice. Disabled vets are tiny minority and nobody gives a &^%$ except other disabled vets and their poor families.

I think the VA's providing drugs and not providing psychotherapy is not good. These things go hand in hand. In the last 30 years psychiatrists have just become drug pushers. The ones at the VA don't do psychotherapy at all. That is left up to social workers and some counselors. These people have neither the education or skills to do psychotherapy at a high level. In many cases giving patients anti-psychotic drugs like Risperidone is the only way to help them. This is the first step. Next comes intense psychotherapy. Otherwise, people have a way of getting off their anti-psychotics because of side effects and they end up in trouble again either with the law or society. In Florida if a patient comes into a mental hospital ward they rush to get the person stabilized on some drug and then discharge them with a bottle of pills in their hand. In a month the patient forgets to take the pills and is right back in the nuthouse or jail. The VA does the same thing.

I had an extensive lesson on the CUE system of busting a vet's azz. I would worry about getting a proper rating now and forget the CUE stuff. I left the Army a dumb 21 year old and got a 10% rating. This was in the bad old days when the VA could just ignore your evidence, and get the janitor to say you were fine and the BVA would take their word. It is a little better now but it is still a butcher's shop. With a chop, chop here and a chop, chop there your claim is reduced to 10%. Really, the biggest difference in vet's ratings is due to the internet and vets talking to other vets. The VA still denies good claims everyday. The difference is the vets know what to do.....NOD, Appeal etc. In my day you were just dependent on those incompetent VSO's, or do it yourself by finding out about the regs on your own. John

I don't think it is political except in the sense of VA politics. The VA takes their cues from what happens in D.C. If the government wants a war on drugs then the VA will be right behind them. I am sick of being denied drugs at the VA that could help me because of the war on drugs. I cannot get Oxycontin which would help me since it is a time release form of oxycodone. The new longer acting form of hydrocodone will most likely not be prescribed at the VA. I had to get drugs to help with my OSA using my own insurance because VA said I was taking opiates. This is just BS. The entire situation was "cost". The VA did not want to pay the cost of my Provigil. The VA is glad to prescribe me morphine or methadone which are two truly dangerous drugs because they are cheap. They are hypocrites pretending they are against opiates when all it is is the cost factor. They screwed up and prescribed the Fentanyl patch for me and then fired the doctor who prescribed it. Fentanyl is expensive.....bad dog.

I will ask my private pulmonologist if my OSA could be related to SC conditions? I am having new sleep studies done both day and night because I am so sleepy during the day even with Cpap. Pulmonologist are concerned with fixing your OSA and not doing reports to help you get SC from the VA. If you have stuff in your SMC's that documents OSA then it would be a lot easier to get the doctor to do an IMO. If you want them to stick your neck out and say that PTSD or Gerd causes OSA I think that will be harder unless you have a guy like Dr.Bash. I take this drug called "Provigil" which is supposed to help me stay awake during the day. The problem is it causes me to hyperventilate at night.

I don't think the government has the right to determine what people put in their bodies. Only when they commit crimes to get substances should they go to jail. Pot could generate billons in tax revenue. Most of the hysteria about so-called narcotics is just due to ignorance and government propaganda. This is my opinion. Way back in the 60's and 70's the government established methadone clinics and drug treatment. When drugs became more of a minority problem (crack) all that went down the drain. Opiates by themselves are just not harmful. In the 19th century many well known people were addicted to cocaine and opiates. Then government decided to exclude Chinese immigration and since Chinese used opium then opium became illegal.

Yes, if you are not working you should get 70%-100%. Probably 70% since the criteria for 100% is active psychosis as I read it. Vets with 70% for any mental disorder usually can't work. I think any vet who can't work due to mental disorder should get 100%. This is just the VA trying to slow down 100% payment rate and forcing vets to file for TDIU. I got 70% and had to wait over a year to get TDIU even though I had SSD. My IME's indicated 100%, but the VA low balled me as usual.

Opiates by themselves don't do the harm the VA is talking about here. NSAIDS and Tylenol are dangerous drugs and are the ones that damage the liver. If you take more than about 3000 mgs of Tylenol a day you are probably hurting your liver. Opiates have been around for many thousands of years. Opiate addiction is not the same as use of opiates for pain. If you can live without opiates you are probably better off no doubt, but they are not the boggyman the VA makes them out to be. Alcohol is addictive and we tried making that illegal and that was a total and costly failure. Making most opiates illegal without prescription has led to the War on Drugs which has filled our prisons with sick people. Just because a tiny group of people abuse opiates is no reason to make them so hard to get that people must suffer. Why is there this hysteria about opiate abuse when millions of Americans abuse alcohol with fatal consequences on the roads every day? John

Wow, they continue to factually screw up and deny your husband's claim. They don't even know that your podiatrist is a VA doctor. When the VA does not want to grant TDIU they will do anything to deny. I was rated 70% and was on SSD, and VA denied my TDIU because I was on opiates for SC conditions. They said I was unable to work due to opiate addiction and not to SC conditions. I won that but it took another year. I feel for you.

My CUE was a due process argument. If the CAVC had of agreed with me then they would have opened up the CUE argument for many thousands of vets who filed claims before 1990. They were not going to do that. Sometimes laws need to be rewritten, but the CAVC is not the place for that. As Lotz says the CAVC just decides if due process has been followed. Due process at the time of my claim said that the VA could take a vet's evidence and flush it down the toilet and if you did not have the wherewithal to NOD that decision too bad.

I had a GAF of 50 for bipolar disorder and "other" and I got 70%. The thing was that I was on SSD for that issue. If you are working it is hard to get over 50% for any mental disorder, but we have vets here who have done it. A vet here works for DOE and just got 100% and the feds are making his life easier. John

If you are totally lost in VA maze I would hire a lawyer if you have been denied on a claim and have filed a NOD. I have not have had such great luck with lawyers but the DAV, VFW or AL are hopeless. The VFW once argued that my real problem was that I had a personality disorder on top of service connected schizophrenia. I lost that increase. This was about 30 years ago, but I don't think they have improved.

That one word "undebateable " will knock about 98% of CUE claims. The error in a CUE must be undebateable. Almost any legal error is debateable. That is why we have courts of law. Only the VA has such a concept as "an error must be undebateable". I have said it before, but you can have five board certified M.D.'s on one side of a debate, and one medical clerk on the other side, and if the medical clerk is on the VA side your CUE will fail. The debate may be on your ability to work, and if the clerk said you could and the five doctors say you can't then in a CUE you lose. This is a chimera and a sham. John

The law in Florida is that if you are a felon or have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution under the Baker Act then you can't own a firearm Just because the VA gives you a DX of PTSD is no reason for the government to take away your guns or all that other U.N. Black chopper stuff.

,If you are seeing a psychiatrist they will just try some medications on you to help with anxiety, sleep problems, and depression most likely. If you want psychotherapy you have to see a social worker or go to a group.

My so-called FDC has taken almost 9 months and is still at gather evidence stage. My claim is for an increase. It is pretty cut and dried. Also, just because your evidence is before the VA does not mean they have to consider it. They may have to list it, but they can twist it, misrepresent it, and just ignore it. John