john999

If your claim was on appeal form orginal date of filing you should have got retro back to that date.

If you don't want to go to the VARO I would just wait for the rating. You have had your C&P so you should get a rating pretty soon. They will get your information together evetually. You have your copies so just lie low until your get a decision. What you don't want to do is create any complications since you are probably weeks away from a decision.

Are all USMC's evidence related to service connected issues? You don't want to mix any NSC issues that you might use for SSD with your VA claim. These are separate systems. TDIU must be solely for SC conditions. I waited about a year for my TDIU after I filed for it. That was because the VA found one issue that was not SC and said that this was the reason I was TDIU even though I had 70% and was on SSD. VA is just for SC and SSD is for all conditions that make you unemployable. You probably know this but keep it in mind. Waiting for TDIU while the VA crawls along is the hardest part. I waited 5 months without a penny coming in until I got SSD. It took another 7 months to get TDIU. Make whatever moves you need to make to make sure you can wait without major damage. If you can get into IRA or 401-K or home equity loan that is one way to do it if you must. Nothing makes the VA move faster except having good evidence and having everything organized so the VA rater does not have to think. When they are looking at your claim they are looking for certain things and for defects. They would reject a vet who has one foot in the grave if the vet gives them a reason.

I think you do need to go to the VARO in person and take all this stuff with you. You need to talk to a human face to face. Your stuff is probably at the VARO but is in transit from one desk to another. Just send everything to them via certified mail/return receipt. Unless you want to hand carry it this is all you can do. They will get the C&P eventually, but nothing you can do is going to speed them up. Don't expect anything to happen fast especially over the holidays.

You can open the AO Prostate cancer claim but you will only get compensation from the time it was diagnosed. I think you get a higher rating while being treated for the prostate cancer and then it drops to residual rating when it is cured. Do you have DX of PTSD from VA doctor? Why were you denied for PTSD back in the day? Was it a stressor verification problem?

Check your VCAA letter. If it does not mention all your claimed conditions something ain't right. It means to me the VA is letting some of your claims just fall through the cracks if they don't list them in your VCAA letter. I think when many conditions are claimed the VA will often just ignore some of them. This will result in a denial if you let them slide. Conditions that are not denied or approved are considered denied if they are not mentioned in a decisoin. It is dirty business but has been discussed here before.

Should get the checks on Friday.

I don't think you can get a second SMC for loss of creative organ since you have one already. I could be wrong. If you are depressed due to chronic SC related pain the doctor has to say that. If you have PTSD you need a dx of PTSD from the VA. You just have to connect everything to service connected conditions. I think I would hold off on all those ablations, surgeries and such. I had all that and I still hurt. The more I had the worse I got. I will tell you that the more pain meds you take the worse the pain gets. I know that may seem crazy, but I was on morphine, methadone and oxycodone. The more I took the worse I got since it messes with your sleep. I am taking much less now and I hurt less. I am trying to get off all that junk. I do back exercise and that's all. I do use the lidoderm patches and that seems to help.

You say you were anxious. Does that mean you feared a hostile action while you were helpless? Did you see other soldiers being brought in badly wounded? These are the kinds of things that might serve as a stressor. Just having a painful broken leg and being on dope probably won't do it.

The mood disorder, chronic pain and adjustment disorder will be grouped together and you get one rating for all of them. Are you saying that because of chronic pain you are depressed? Is your chronic pain related to a current disability? See, you have to connect everything you claim with direct service connection or secondary to a SC condition. Your other disorders must either be secondary to the current problems or there must be something in your service medical records about them. You have to have an actual diagnosis in order to get compensation for a condition. If you have chronic pain disorder I can understand the depression part. I think the C&P doctors will make some sort report about these conditions and state they do or do not believe they are service connected. Then you will have to get more medical evidence if they deny or lowball you. Did you have high blood in the service? I bet chronic pain could cause high blood! You should be able to get the SMC for loss of use. I don't see how one doctor can do a C&P for all these conditions. What are you saying is secondary to what SC condition?

Generally speaking, when you get mad at a VA employee you are just beating a dumb animal. It is not worth your heartburn. Be nice and just persist. I find the system pretty inhuman, but just get your money and go. It takes too long and vets suffer. This is the American tradition to treat vets like dogs except after WWII.

Oh, yes, Chronic PN would need very specific medical proofs to get connected for AO. I think you would be fighting an almost impossible uphill battle on that. Spec. Kelly knows about that. If he can't get it then nobody can I think. Drink a gallon of OJ before next blood work and maybe they will DX you with DMII. They still will claim that the PN is not connected to the DMII because it came before the DMII DX. There is medical and there is compensation. When it comes to compensation the VA is just a bean counter with no conscience.

Iron If you have IHD it should be good news. If you still have a DX of congestive heart failure that could be a problem. IHD and congestive heart failure is not the same. Your service officer is really ignorant and should be out of a job. Just hang in and see what happens. If you are at least 160% you should be getting SMC "S". If you did not get it that is a error.

While you are collecting OWCP you can file for OPM and when you get it you can choose to continue to collect OWCP. Once your OPM is approved then you can file for TDIU but it must be solely for VA disabilites. You want to keep your OWCP, OPM and VA evidence separate if you can. Keep the claims separate and use separate doctors if possible. OWCP will want to know about any VA disability. It gets complicated, but as soon as your OPM is approved you should file for IU. If you are not working for the USPS anymore or have been fired due to disability you can file for IU.

St. Petersburg is just as bad if not worse.

last time I got retro it hit the bank a few days before I got the letter. I got exactly what I asked for in retro. It was good.

Do you have a lawyer for the SSDI? I think it is hard to wait, but you probably just should let the TDIU claim make its way to a decision. There is no way to hurry these people. You must understand that having an appeal in August 2010 is not a long time ago in VA terms. I don't think anything unusuall is happening except you will probably get your TDIU if you can wait.

The American people say they support vets, but they vote for people who want to cut the budget and shrink government. The first to be cut are benefits for the poor, homeless,children and the sick and disabled. That is because they don't vote and don't have money to contribute to politicians. In my state our new governor wants to cut benefits to the unemployeed. The governor elect is a well known thief, and should be in jail for stealing from medicare. Florida is teaming with homeless vets. They often sleep in the woods in tents.

Do you have a service officer? You never get the same person twice on the 800 line so keep calling, but be low key and very polite. The person you talked to is a worm. They sadistically enjoy making vets suffer. They are everywhere, but don't give them power. I would say to contact your congressman but that might slow things down even more while they investigate (they will take the VA's word). Maybe the IG's office can help, but you must keep your cool. If you show anger that will just reinforce what this jerk said about you.

My rating didn't even make sense, but I got TDIU. If you expect the VA to do things in an orderly and logical way forget about it. In my rating decisions it often looks as if an sixth grade drop out wrote it up. The thing is to get the highest rating you can. If they say you have two head and grant 100% then that is OK.

Jhawks I am sure many of the VARO's have huge backlogs. Where did you get this information? I want to know what the St. Pete VARO backlog is now. I wonder how many claims are sitting and waiting to go before the court of vet appeals.

Berta I think the fact that the VA does not list or consider all the evidence is not considered a CUE in and of itself by the VA. In my BVA decision the BVA freely admitted that my doctor's report was excluded from a rating decision. However, they went on to say that I could not prove that my doctor's evidence would have undebatably changed the outcome of the rating. They said anything the VA said made the rating debatable. Now this is not what I believe or what my lawyer believes. The VA did not do any sort of evaluation of me that addressed any questions relating to my degree of disability. My doctor's report addressed all these questions. The BVA, however, chose to give credance to a few notes made by a VA psychiatrist when I was an in-patient rather than a medical report made on a VA form that my doctor completed. The BVA even changed my DX to reflect what my doctor diagnosed instead of the VA's DX. The BVA seemed to say they could not reweigh the evidence, but they reweighed it and gave me a new DX which was much more unfavorable than the one the VA gave me. The VA said me and my lawyer were just complaining that the decision was not fair and that was not a CUE. I think because my CUE means 30 years of potential retro they just denied it.

The judge must think that all doctors are whores which is what most doctors think of lawyers. Does the judge think doctors work for free and that only free opinions matter. The doctor that does SSD exams gets paid by the state which has an interest in saying "NO". The SSD judge gets paid does that mean his opinions carry little weight. I think these judges are just stalling. They must be acting on orders from above. They have a backlog as well as the VA.

Saddletramp I would work hard on getting that PTSD rating increased. What is passed is passed I think in your case. So much time has passed that you should try and just work on increases and that IHD claim. Are you able to work? If you are not able to work I would file for TDIU. Are you getting treatment for the PTSD?

I would wait for the rating. If it is not what you think it should be then you can raise these issues on appeal. It really depends on what the doctor concludes about your stressors and if you MST/PTSD is service connected. If the VA accepts your stressors then I don't see a problem.