john999

The Gulf War Registry provides you with an exam whose main function is supposed to be to identify possible Gulf War conditions. It is a free exam and it might help you with your claims. I think the VA believes that if you are not getting treatment for a condition then either is is negligible, or you have improved. They also believe that you should be getting treatment at the VA for your disabilites. This is their mission. I believe you can sign up for the Gulf War Registry exam at your local VAMC. When VA's own doctors say your conditions are getting worse or expand your diagnosis the VA has a harder time arguing with that opinion. Sometimes you need to go outside the VA system to get independent medical opinions or exams to win claims. This often happens when your claim is complex or the VA low balls your ratings. The main thing is to stay in treatment.

The best way to start to document your disabilites is to start going to the VA and complain about these conditions. You can't expect to not go to the doctor for years and then believe the VA is going to increase your ratings. The way to generate new medical evidence is to see a doctor. Think of this as a long term project. If you are well enough to work and you have a retirement you are not going to starve. Use FMLA to go to the VA, and get all these conditions reviewed. When you ask for an increase the evidence will be there in your VA medical records in detail. You might want to do the Gulf War Registry exam.

If you can't work file for IU. You probably have a good claim for depression and chronic pain disorder in there somewhere. With all those problems how are you going to work and who is going to hire you? Unless you can do your own business it is going to be hard to hold down a job. Are you in constant pain? What medications do you take?

I think your claim is perfect example of an inferred claim for IU. The VA knew you were on SSD. They should have inferred IU. You are going to have to fight for the EED, of course.

Go to the VARO and bring all your documents with you and make your case to a human being. Otherwise, you claim goes on the pile with a million others. Many here have been unemployed and without income for years before VA makes a good decision. I would go to the VARO and tell them you are not leaving until you get help. If you get arrested at least you have a place to sleep. Your congressman might be able to help if you appeal directly to him/her.

If you are retired with 20 years getting a military pension then AO is considered for a combat/hazardous duty factor for those getting VA compensation and military pension. In other words, you can get your military retirement and 100%compensation for an AO disease separately. That is the only benefit I know of for combat related disability.

Pete My wife has accepted that I can't sleep. I feel like banging my head on the wall often (like now) because I am in a daze. I am trying to reduce amount of drugs I take so the first thing that happens is I can't sleep. One reason is that if you are taking meds your body speeds up to compensate. When you stop taking the drugs your body has to slow down to normal. It can take days. They call it rebound insomnia. I can take two oxycodones and be wide awake. When I was in the hospital for my foot operation I did not sleep for three days. I got shots of dilaudid and could not even nod off for an hour. My sleep has been bad for ten years. If you want to torture someone just deprive them of sleep for a week. Pretty soon you are in a trance of misery.

What kind of VA benefits?

Come Hell or high water get to the exam on time even if you have to start walking now!

DX means you have major MH issues. If you can't work file for IU. Have you had a C&P exam?

I sold stuff on Ebay for a short while. It drove me crazy. The customers complained about everything. They believe that they should not have to pay one penny more for S&H than the actual cost of postage. I lost money considering the time I spent and gas, wrapping and boxing products etc. Ebay has fees as well. They are the ones who make the real money just like the middle men in the antique business. Buyers and sellors that have to use a middle man get screwed.

Because of investments I made years ago I get some investment income. Sometimes that income pushes me into a category that triggers tax on part of my SSD benefits. However, with exemptions and deductions I still usually pay minimun tax or no tax. There will come a time when I will be taxed on my whole SSD since I have IRA's that will be drained one day. This will boost me into higher income bracket. I have a small disability pension from my old employer and that is taxable.

I would say this that if you are getting any kind of narcotic meds from the VA I would not discuss suicidal thoughts with a pain doctor. With a psychiatrist that is OK. The pain doctor is going to think you are going to possibly OD on his meds which puts him in a bad situation if you do. If you discuss suicidal thoughts with a VA doctor they may be reluctant to give you certain kinds of meds you can OD on. If I had serious plan or design to kill myself or others I would discuss it with someone in the MH field. A suicide or homicide cause so much trouble for loved ones anything is better. If you kill yourself you family suffers. If you kill someone else you die in jail. No one in the legal system cares if you are crazy. You most likely will be locked up for the rest of your life even if you are as crazy as a bed bug. Prisons are full of psychotics who killed someone.

JC I could not say it better. Throw the whole kitchen sink at them. I had three medical opinions, evaluation from voc rehab, letters from my wife and brother, SSD report, retirement disability from my job, and a report from a vet center saying I had severe and chronic PTSD. I had out-patient and in-patient VA notes as well. You just want to bury them with evidence. I had been seeing a VA shrink for years sitting on 30% and trying to work. It all came apart in 2001 and that is when I got serious. I also had been seeing a psychologist and private shrink. I knew I was not going to make it to the gold watch day.

Axis 5 of 65 is your GAF score. That score does not even come close to describing "borderline intellectual functioning" due to PTSD and TBI. A GAF of 65 means you have moderate impairment. Someone with PTSD and TBI is probably severely impaired if their intellectual functioning is boderline. This to me is typical of C&P exams. Get your own doctor who you pay to examine you and write a report. I think you should get 100% based on that exam, but the GAF does not line up with the exam description of Severe impairments listed. Does anyone else believe this vet's GAF lines up with the wording of this exam? It is as if the exam doctor has thrown a booby trap into the exam. How can anyone work with a Severe learning impairment?

I have never heard of a 0% rating for DMII. 10% is for DMII controlled by diet and exercise. That earlier claim Berta is taking about that was denied could be a big factor under Nehmer if your other secondary conditions happened after that. Either way you qualify for the IHD presumptive whenever that gets in the regs. The VA denied my claim for PN the first time because I had complained about pain in my hands before I got official DX of DMII. That is why I mentioned getting DMII dx'ed first. I got that fixed, however.

My pain clinic doctor said I had unrealistic expectations because I said a pain level of 3 would be acceptable. Next time I see them I will sure say 8-10. 5-7 is not an acceptable level of pain to have to live without treatment. Let those nurses and doctors live with a pain level of 7 and see if they can do their jobs.

If the VA knew you were on SSD for a SC disability then perhaps you have a good shot at getting the VA to make your effective date for IU the same as for SSD. The VA should have inferred this if they knew you could not work due to a SC disability. That might be the basis of a CUE according to the VBM. According to the VBM (vet's bible) if the VA knows that you have a SC condition that makes work a problem for you they are supposed to infer a IU claim. They never do it, however. For instance, a VA social worker notes you have a SC mental health condition that has caused you to be unemployed. This should trigger an inferred claim for IU. The VBM points out a vet who has bad foot odor due to SC problem as a barrior to employment. In 99% of cases the VA won't even consider a IU claim until you file the paperwork but this is wrong according to their own rules 4.16b.

When were you dx'ed with DMII? Your secondary conditions should all be dx'ed after the DMII dx in order to have smooth sailing for those secondary conditions. You can claim chronic pain due to PN. Just make sure you tell them the pain started after the official DX of DMII. DMII is the condition that underpins all your other claims and it should proceed them. After you get SC'ed for DMII and PN you should probably file a claim for chronic pain disorder and depression. I have been down this road you are on now.

I was taking clonazepam in a pretty healthy dose a while back. I stopped taking it because the dose was getting too high and I began to think I might not wake up. I went through some major withdrawl symptoms. Don't stop taking any of those drugs like xanex or valium or clonazepam suddenly, or you will have a problem. You will surely have rebound insomnia at the least. It is much easier to stop narcotics than the valium/xanex family of drugs. The VA pain doctors say that the less dope you take for any problem the better, but what alternatives do they provide?

The VA has an in-patient pain program. I have thought about it. The idea of being an in-patient at the VA makes me nervous considering what they did to me last time. I would need to withdraw from the drugs I am on now. These are the crummy options we have. Your PCP should send you to the out patient pain clinic. To tell you the truth I hate pain doctors. They are a bunch of frauds and the other half are crooked. It is a racket. The frauds want to do procedures and the crooks want cash for dope.

HS Were you in combat in Vietnam? What was your MOS? If you are going to claim PTSD you have to have a stressor. Just being in-country is not enough. If you were at some base that got attacked even if you were a cook then you might have a stressor if you believed you were in fear of your life, or saw others killed or wounded. If could even be something non combat related like seeing a bad accident or being in a bad accident. I would go easy on the drinking referrence unless you were drinking to forget some horrible incident you experienced. Being alcoholic is not a stressor and the VA won't compensate just for alcoholism.

You might try and talk to malpractice lawyer to see if you have a case. Do it soon since you have two years I think. Sue the doctor who cut your nerve if you can. I am sure it won't be easy. I tried suing the idiot doctor whose procedure ended with me have horrible staff infection. Nobody would take the case since they did not have to cut off my foot. When you sign to give doctor permission to operate you usually sign that you know the risks and accept them. Of course, no one really knows the risks. That is where the lawyer comes in to see if risk and result were in line.

If you watch the Military Channel on cable there are lawyers advertising to represent vets many times a day. I think it is 1-800-vet-help or something like that. If there is enough money on the line I think the lawyers could bring order out of chaos in the VA claims system. When you file a SSD claim it is very orderly according to my VA lawyer who also does SSD claims. He said he never saw a SSD file that looked anything like the mess of a C-File. I filed with the federal workers compensation system and it is sort of like the VA. Because FECA is small and the law excludes lawyers from getting part of any settlement (there is no settlement) nobody wants to touch it. That is where the VA has been until recently. Now that the lawyers can get 20% of retro it is a different world. If a lawyer thinks he can get 20% of a ten year VA retro award that is an incentive.

The VA should have based its original rating on your SMR's, current medical history, and the C&P exam. I think if an error occurred it would be the rating officer that made the error. The rater is supposed to look at all the evidence and make a rating decision. I don't think that if the c&p examiner failed to annotate anything in your SMR's that alone with be the basis of a CUE. It is up to the rater to examine the SMR's, medical history, and also to look at the C&P exam and see if it is adequate. If you could establish that crucial available evidence was excluded from the rating that might be a CUE. At least I am hoping so myself. For instance, the VA excludes your SMR's from a rating decision. Phil, Carlie and Berta know better than me but I will get the ball rolling.