john999

If you get denied I would hire a lawyer. This is standard for most and is an industry. Did your doctor say you were disabled for at least one year? That is really a key statement.

Even claims that I won were full of errors. I don't raise a fuss if I get a good rating, but neither my psychologist or myself could follow the logic in my TDIU claims or the claims that were for mental health reasons. A 12 year old doing a term paper had a better grasp of English than the rating team on most of my claims.

For presumptive agent orange the only question is percentage for your DMII and residuals of the prostate cancer. You will get the service connection pretty easily and probably pretty quickly by VA standards.

Cool I think you should file a NOD. You are banking on what the 800# people told you. You have a effective date to lose. We have been over the reconsideration vs NOD argument and time clock many times here at Hadit. If you file a NOD I think the VA will just go ahead and finish your reconsideration, but you will cover your ass.

If I were you I would stay in one place until all claims are done. If you get denied on the CUE I would think about hiring a lawyer. It may not be a CUE. You should also see if you can get the BCMR to award you a PH. This would make a lot of problems go away. I got a feeling that once you prove the wound to your foot came from hostile action all other claims will fall into place. Were you ever seen or did you ever make a claim for a mental health condition of any kind before you claimed PTSD? The Navy discharged you without noting this injury to your foot? I just wish there was some way to get you compensation back to the time you were discharged with this injury. I got a feeling there might be a way since the VA did not make an attempt to get your records. I am speculating on that and wishing you had filed any sort of claim within one year of getting out of the Navy.

I think there is another way to go at this besides a CUE. If missing service records are obtained I think another VA regulation can grant SC and effective date. Someone else will chime in on this. Did you get a Purple Heart? I wonder if there is not some way to get this effective back to the date of discharge. Was this noted on your ETS physical?

Either get new evidence to rebutt the C&P or get a new C&P. If you get a new C&P based on this stuff from the psychologist you may get the same decision. You need new evidence to rebutt the bad stuff. It happened to me also. This is when I got two new medical opinions. It was worth the cost.

Carlie I think if your dad had a will then it has to be probated. That is unusual for a father not to leave his kids something. Did you hire a lawyer to look into it? I helped with my cousin's, aunts and mother's probate.

If you want this system to change you are going to have to agitate, agitate, agitate as Fredrick Douglas once said about civil rights. Congress runs the VA and they are the ones responsible for its faults. I always wonder why vets are not marching on their local VARO with pitchforks. When we pull out of Afghanistan look to see cutbacks in the VA. You think it is bad now? After Vietnam only the dying would go to the VA for treatment. There are going to be cutbacks in the military and the VA is going to feel this down the line. Waiting a year for a decision is like a few days in VA time. I am just giving my opinion here. With an all volunteer military only .5 percent of the population actually serves these days. Vets are losing clout in the future. Get it while you can.

My problems really started at age 20 while I was in Vietnam. I went through about 15 years of stops and starts and then worked until I was 51 at the post office when I was fired and hired a lawyer to get my retirement. I did assume I would work until I was 62 since I would have had 30 years with my military time. However fate had other plans for me. I drifted lost in space for years after I got out of the army. I did go to college and got a useless degree. They only thing I ever liked doing was going to college. During all this time I has severe depressions that would knock me out of the box. If you ever saw the movie "Jacobs Ladder" you will understand the reason I was able to work at the USPS. No thinking required and all I had to do was show up. This I could do until I got hurt on the job and got back on the shitlist. Then I found out how bad of an employee I had been sort of like the army.

Since it has been six years I think you will have to go before BCMR. You need a lawyer. If your case is black and white these people are OK, but if there is any grey you need expert help. I was denied for a medical discharge. I felt I was treated with a gross lack of respect. I was granted a disability rating within one year of discharge and they just laughed at that. The thing is what do you have to gain? Tricare maybe and that is about it. You can't get medical retirement pay and VA compensation at the same time since you did not retire after 20 years or did you? Only about 3-5% of discharges are changed by BCMR. This was told to me by a lawyer friend of Alex Humphrey who posted here long time. Plus you have to pay the lawyer out of your pocket. I would run it by a lawyer who does these things and see what he says about your chances and potential benefits. It could be worth the money you would pay? Without a lawyer I think you will be spinning your wheels. The discharge is assumed to be valid until you prove otherwise. No benefit of doubt. Were you getting treatment for PTSD in service? I was in treatment for medial reasons when I was thrown out and into the loving hands of the VA.......splat! You probably should have gotten a medical and so should I if the army was doing their job, but their real job is to save money, and get rid of broken down soldiers cheaply.

I don't know. My lawyer is hoping that the BVA will have a change of heart since they have already been slapped on the wrist by the court.

The CAVC remanded my CUE back to the BVA because BVA used the wrong law to deny my claim. The errors persist at all levels of the VA claims process. I have to wait for details to be posted at the CAVC site.

I just found out via my lawyer's assistant that my CUE was remanded back to the BVA from the Court due to the BVA using the wrong law in part of their decision to deny. I have to wait for details. They are playing ping pong with my claim. This is another good reason to hire a lawyer. If the BVA uses the wrong law to decide a case then you really need expert help since they are no experts.

If you are asking the DOD for any money benefit I think you are going to need a lawywer. The BCMR and Discharge Review boards are not nearly as veteran friedly as the VA. I went to a board many years ago and got an upgrade, but this was within a year or two of my discharge and it cost them nothing. The boards look at the facts as they were known at your discharge. If you were able to do your job at the time of discharge then you are probably out of luck. However, if you want to try I would give it a shot. How long have you been out of the service?

Pete I think it is because the standards for CUE are high and the lawyers don't want to put in work on something iffy or maybe they just don't understand it. My lawyer told me if he lost my CUE he would never do one again because all the cards are in the VA's hands. I may lose mine after 5 years. I don't think he will get paid unless he prevails.

There was a national guard guy here a while back who was DX'ed with severe PTSD. He had orders to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan. I think we got him out of it. He was willing to go back and somehow thought he would be better off back in the combat zone. I think this guilt or disordered thinking may be part of the syndrome. The fact that the guard would send a severely emotionally ill soldier back into combat is depressing.

I never heard of a 10% rating for IHD. Did you have a heart attack? Did you get a stent? I think the VA is getting creative with the ratings. If you have any significant heart problems it is usually 60% or 100%. I went from 0% to 60% on appeal. Did you ever get a C&P exam for heart disease?

Yas, yas, yas the VA sold their souls to the devil long before Robert Johnson did ha,ha. I think you have to ask for your C-file in writing. It takes some time but if you have a copy of the decision where they made the error that would probably be enough to get started.

My due process rights were walked on all to hell. I never got appeal rights. This is 1973. There are some missing records but I have never been able to find . Probably would not help me anyway since the military doctor was a pimp for the command and probably would have done anything to keep from being put on a plane to Vietnam. Many of what we consider due process now the BVA said are duty to assist. This can't be part of a CUE. Plus the flash that "no matter how unfair a decision is that can't rise to a CUE". They told my lawyer that we were just complaining that the decision was not fair. We are since they did not consider any of the evidence that would have helped me get a higher rating. We must avoid any inkling of " a reweight of evidence of record". We are not asking them to reweigh it since they never weighed it to begin with and admit that. There are at least 6 issues we are bringing up including due process. You can't have due process if the agency only considers evidence from a VA doctor and excludes evidence from my private doctor who saw me for 6 months while the VA doctor talked to me one time for ten minutes. They even used a statement from some unnamed orderly that I "seemed to get on with the other mental patients". This they say trumps my doctor's six months of observations. The VA used to actually send doctor's a form to fill out with DX, prognosis,discussion etc. This they ignore and decide the rating based on hospital notes. I was originally DX'ed with a "nervous condition,unspecified". What the hell is that? That could be anything from "shell shock to hydrophobia". The old decisions are just pretty awful.

Do you have a record of a knee injury in service? The longer you wait to file the more the VA is going to say this is just natural process of aging and that kind of crap, or they may try and blame it on some other event in your life. Be careful what you tell them about yourself. For instance, if you had an accident that involved your leg ever so slightly they will jump on that to say that is why your knee is shot now.

Sqmdae There is nothing to develop in your SMC claim. You are either entitled to it or not. I think the VA is trying to BS you around on this. I got mine back in a month. I just quoted Bradley V Peake and pointed out my ratings and dates. They called it a CUE since I should have got it in 2008. If I had not claimed it (which I am not supposed to have to do) I never would have gotten it. Phil When you finally get the inferred S that will pay for your travel trailor and trips to Florida. WAC The VA are pros at cheating vets on these things especially effective dates.

If you can prove that the VA had medical records that are favorable to you and that they did not use them in your rating decision that is the basis of a CUE. You need your C-File for that to check. When I looked at my file and noticed that they had not used my doctor's report even though it is in my file I smelled a rat. I don't know if I am going to win this thing because of all the Catch 22 stuff the VA relies on to defeat us. They have been getting away with these things for decades. After WWII I think thousands of vets were discharged from hospitals with significant ratings and then a few years later the vet gets a notice saying he has been reduced. Most of them just took it.

WAC I never heard of TDIU until I posted on Hadit. No VSO or the VA ever discussed any of this with me and I have been SC for 40 years. Never have I heard a VA employee utter the word SMC. I think they are told to never volunteer any information a vet might use to get compensation. Big secret.

Yulooking I have that problem with the trapezius and it is my neck. They like to call these things strains as if they will get better by themselves. I have pain in the romboids as well. That is referred pain from herniation and stenosis in my neck. I think it is c5-6 as well.