john999

You should probably file for chronic pain disorder as well. Have you ever seen a psychiatrist at the VA? If your knee is that bad that you can't sit for more than 15 minutes you must have pretty severe pain. What kind of pain meds do you take? Your medications affect your ability to work if you are doped out. Why did you lose your job? I would get a letter from my pain doctor to say that due to severity of pain and pain meds you can't concentrate enough to hold a job. As Berta says you may have other secondary disabilites due to that knee. Do you see a real orthopedists that could help you? If you want to win a TDIU claim you have to take it to them. Do you get SSD for your knee? How have you lived the last two years with no job? Your disability retirement should help your TDIU claim. Are you saying your former employer could find no accommodation for you? What you need to show the VA is that soley because of your SC conditions you cannot maintain employment.

Get the claims and worry about explaining it later. If you let a year pass before you file your psychosis claim it will be much harder to get it SC'ed. If you wait more than three years for discharge review it gets much harder. I think you need a lawyer or good VSO to help you. The more mentally disabled you are the more likely the VA is to nail your hide to the wall. How long has it been since your were discharged from active duty?

The next question would be would you really want the VA to be the ones who do your gastric by-pass? Do you want a medical student with his hands in your guts?

We get treated like this because people calling the shots never set foot in a VA hospital.

I guess you could try patient advocate, but be careful. Find some reason other than critical reason for getting a new doctor. I would not trust the VA with anything more serious than a hang nail. I would not trust them with the care of my feet if they were really bad. The next thing will be an amputation. Your husband needs to try and get medicare. My feeling is this kind of condition is too serious for the VA to treat. You need a real doctor. Find a way to get one.

TestVet Same thing happend to me but it was DMII. I claimed CAD secondary to DMII. The NP did such a poor exam that I got some more testing and the DRO gave me 60%. The NP did no testing at all. No stress test which was required by the rating schedule. She just made up the numbers and she was teaching another NP. I did not even get an EKG before the NP wrote her report. She said no history of heart attacks therefore no CAD. These are the poor excuses for exam doctors the VA uses because they want to save money. I have 60% for CAD and I have never seen a VA cardiologist.

You probably need to go doctor shopping on your own. However, since it has been revealed to me that you can be SC'ed for obesity secondary to a mental health condition you could win it that way. The VA says your apnea is due to obesity. File a claim for obesity secondary to anxiety and depression. When you win that claim file for apnea secondary to obesity. The VA has damned themselves out of their own mouths.

Would Nehmer apply or is that only for AO claims? A claim was filed for a condition the VA did not recognize so it was denied. Years later it did recognize it and the vet was compensated. This seem similar to a vet getting denied for anxiety and depression a few years after combat in Vietnam. He is denied since PTSD does not exist. A few years later he is SC'ed for anxiety and depression. Years later he makes a claim for PTSD. The symptoms of his anxiety and depression are consistent with PTSD. Shouldn't he have been SC'ed for PTSD back to the time he filed for his anxiety claim. In fact shouldn't he be compensated from the date he was DX'ed with symptoms consistent with PTSD?

You know this is very tricky. They can't just demand to see your records. However, being a cop with PTSD seems like a bad idea. I think you might talk to a employment discrimination lawyer and run the situation by him/her. The police may have some ability to know the nature of your disability to see if they can accommdate you. If you lie to them and they find out your job as a cop will be gone. Being an armed policeman is not like being a mailman. Not to say half of cops don't have PTSD from their jobs. Only their kids, bartenders and ex-wives can tell that. I think this would be adding a whole new level of stress to your life. One PTSD driven decision could put you next to the felons you would be arresting.

How about asking for a consult with a VA podiatrist?

If this is the case then VA should be willing to pay for lapband or gastric by-pass surgery. Since morbid obesity is a dire health hazard the VA should pay for the surgery. I wonder if they have ever paid for it?

Did you ever claim DMII? Until you claim it you will be pre-diabetic for life. I was pre-diabetic right up to the day of my C&P exam. I also claimed PN. The VA never DX'ed my with PN but the C&P doctor did. I got SC'ed for CAD by filing for it. The VA would not DX me with it until I filed.

Bury the VA with medical evidence. That is how you win with some certainty. If you lose an appeal or rating you read the reasons and basis and then hire you a doctor who will rebutt the denial point by point.

Definitely get your schizophrenia claim in within one year of discharge. Get the discharege upgrade review also. Whatever you do don't miss any deadlines for your claims or discharge review. You need a sympathetic VSO at your discharge hearing that understands how the schizphrenia could cause you to go awol. A letter from a doctor might also help. What would be even better would be if a shrink could be a witness at your hearing to explain your condition. The people at the hearing don't know psychosis from garden shears.

Do you have DMII? I got SC'ed for heart disease as secondary to DMII. That is the easiest way to get SC'ed for vascular artery disease, CAD or PAD. The VA plays this game where if you get DX'ed with CAD or any vascular disease a year before the DMII DX they will say you can't claim the CAD as secondary to the DMII. I think a good IME or IMO could defeat that since getting the official DX of DMII from the VA is not always that easy. You can have high blood glucose readings for years and never get the DX from the VA. If you have fasting glucose level of 124 you do not have DMII, but if your glucose is 126 you do have it. That is arbitrary. The VA found the problems in my legs by accident after I got DX'ed for DMII. I was looking through the VBM and noticed that the problems that we have are almost presumptive for DMII, so I filed a claim and got 60%. I guess the VA way of thinking is that until one of those clots breaks off and lodges in your heart artery you don't have IHD. Do you have to wait to die for widow to collect? CAD is what leads directly to heart attacks which is definition of IHD.

Sharon Welcome to your job. Just send combatants to separate corners. Advise them no biting, kicking, eye gouging, or hitting below the belt.

Find another lawyer! Most lawyers take their cut out of your retro. There are plenty out there so dumb this guy.

You could be rated for depression as secondary to the back injury. You can't get rated for "anger" or "alcoholism". You were seen by a shrink in the army. What do your SMR's say about your psychiatric care in the service? Did you get a DX of depression?

These new rules for PTSD really put a fly in the ointment. Are we really sure that only the VA can have the last say on a PTSD DX? As Larry was saying this puts the kabosh on IME's and IMO's to try and rebutt VA denials of PTSD. You can be loaded down with CIB's and three PH's and a Silver Star and the VA can still deny the PTSD DX. Many of us here would not have 100% or IU without IMO or IME evidence. I did not get my IU based on PTSD, but I sure needed private medical opinions and evidence for other MH conditions that were SC'ed. Where do you go for new evidence if the VA says you don't have PTSD? I did use a Vet Center and they did write a letter for me saying chronic and severe PTSD. I don't think the VA even read the letter. I was trying for an increase and it was all due to three IME's I got that rebutted three partial denials that ended with IU P&T. The largest number of claims for MH conditions is for PTSD and probably the largest number of claims are MH claims now. The VA has really put one over on the vet community maybe due to best intentions from Obama, but it could be a nightmare. Do you think Obama actually knew that this would be the outcome to make it harder for vets to get PTSD DX? I am not being political. I am thinking the political class does not want to pay for the results of these wars.

The wound in my foot that would not completely heal went bad in 24 hours. It went from a nuisance to looking like boiled beef in just a day. If I had waited a few more days they would have been cutting it off.

Do you see a psychiatrist and do you use the VA pain clinic? You want to go to these clinics and get the depression and chronic pain documented. The VA operates on documentation.

I have DMII and I had a minor procedure done on my feet in February. I got a staff infection. I still have pain in my foot even after surgery and three weeks of daily IV infusions. If E has any complications from getting toenail removed run don't walk to a real doctor and get that foot taken care of pronto. I had to go back to the doctors at least 5 times before I was diagnosed with the staff infection. If I had waited another week I might have lost my foot. As it was I had to have a plastic surgeon cut my foot open to the bone and have an open and draining foot wound for aboat a month. I would go daily to a wound care center and see other patients with DMII and foot and leg wounds that were not healing. The place was packed with people with wounds that would not heal. Then because the wound won't heal they get a antibiotic resistent staff infection and the nightmare begins.

What about getting treatment and DX of PTSD from a Vet Center? Will that act as official stamp of approval for PTSD claim? I know that back in 2001 the local Vet Center was recruiting anyone for treatment.

I wonder where was the DAV, VFW and American Legion when this regulation was handed down. I wonder if they read it like we do? They are only thinking of OIF/OEF vets fresh from combat. This was a Trojan Horse. Is there some clarification on this you could get, Larry?

The can of worms is your by claiming to have a rating for obesity. Obesity may be one of the side effects of your PTSD, but it is not a ratable disability. If it was every vet over age 60 would be rated for it some way or other. Every vet with a physical disability that restricts their activites would have a separate rating for obesity and they don't. In fact, the VA usually blames veteran's disabilites on being obese. You got a rating of 70% for MST/PTSD and not for obesity. The doctor may have thrown that in there but that is a symptom of PTSD like substance abuse. You don't get rated for substance abuse. When you say things that are not actually true in a legal sense it confuses people.