john999

I did not think VA compensation could be taken as spousal support. I know judges award child support to come out of a vet's compensation, but not money for ex-wives. If you have 70% and are unemployable due to that condition you should focus your IU claim on those facts only. If you give the VA a string to pull on regarding any NSC conditions they will find a reason to blame all your problems on the NSC things. You have major NSC issues. You need to put a firewall between those issues and your SC bi-polar condition. I had 70% for a SC condition and also had a NSC condition. My doctors mentioned the NSC condition in a report. The VA just jumped on that and denied my IU claim. I had to spend another year to get that straight.

Hoppy I am sure you are right on the fact that they pick the one most severe stressor to verify to save time and money. That fits the VA profile.

Hmmmmm..... if you take meds for HBP it seems you should be able to get something even if only 0%. 140/90 is the cut off for being normal. Really, that is high by any competent doctor's standard. If it gets over that your body is being damaged most like. Mine is up around that level without meds. If a real doctor sees you have 140/90 he is going to sound alarm bells if that is a consistent reading.

The way the AO regs are written for PN is like something out of Alice in Wonderland. You must have symtoms within one year of exposure and they must resolve within two years of exposure. How the heck do you win a claim like that, and what would be the %? This is for PN without DMII. I think you can have PN due to a back injury or other chemical exposure but you have to prove the nexus. My brother has PN (sensory PN). The doctors have no idea why. The most common is the stocking-glove type of PN. It feels like you are wearing a stocking on your feet or a glove on your hand when you are not. The bad kind is where you lose feeling or have raging nerve pain.

If the shooting was after your discharge you are mixing apples and oranges when you add that fact into your TDIU claim. Your TDIU or increase claims must be solely for service connected conditions. If you have PTSD from the shooting you don't really want to mix that in with your service connected bi-polar condition. Your claims have to rise or fall on service connected conditions. Don't count on anything the VA says until you have the letter in your hand. Your alcoholism due to the shooting and bi-polar gets complicated. You need to separate out anything to do with the shooting from your bi-polar condition. You don't want to mix these things together because you give the VA an excuse to say your inability to work is due to the shooting and alcoholism and not to your SC conditions. When the VA considers TDIU they will look at any NSC conditions and often say that is the real reason you are unemployable (in your case the shootings and your alcoholism).

You are making sense, Larry. That is the way it works. I was thinking in terms of IU. You can't be honestly claiming IU and also swear you are ready and able to work to get money from the state. The worst they would do is make you pay the state back if you were granted IU while collecting unemployment.

I wonder what sorts of problems the OIF/IEF vets will have due to some environmental issue? It takes the VA years to actually make these diseases presumptive. Look at Agent Orange. They are still adding diseases 40 years later to the list. The only thing the VA admits regarding children of AO vets is spinabiffida(spelling?) The disease has to hit all the lights on the IOM pinball machine.

I think the way it usually works with unemployment is when you apply you swear you are able and ready to work. You can't get IU and unemployment from the state at the same time usually. However, since it takes months and maybe years to get IU I would apply for unemployment insurance and appeal if I am denied. Probably half the people that are actually unemployed don't qualify for unemployment insurance. The states hate to hand out unemployment and will often BS you about being qualified. When in doubt....appeal!

They may have deferred the TBI increase while waiting for new evidende. Maybe they are going to set up a new C&P exam. I would make an Iris inquiry and ask why my TBI is deferred. If I did not get an answer I would file a NOD and tell the VA you disagree with the decision to defer your increase because they have all the evidence they need to make a decision. At least this may help get them to get off their asses and make a decision. You can't go anywhere unless they decide yes or no. It is one of their games to stall and run you around until you let some deadline pass.

I think the answer would be "yes" if you have a doctor say that you cannot work solely due to your SC conditions. You might be 70 years old, and want, and need to work even if you are getting SSA. If you can't because of a SC condition then you should get 100% or IU.

Understand that the C&P exam doctor is working piece rate. He just wants to get to the next vet, so he can make more money. Then the idiots at the RO get hold of your evidence and anything can shake out of it. As long as your facts coincided with his PTSD checklist you should be ok, but with the VA who knows. If the VA did not screw up cliams there would be no BVA or COVA.

Bob That is why I filed a CUE all the way back to my original rating date of 1971. The VA treated me like an infection, or something they scraped off their feet. They said I had schizophrenia and depression and I got 10% SC. On its face it is absurd since I was unable to work and they knew it. Every time I saw a new doctor they came up with a different diagnosis. When I asked for an increase they said I was a personality disorder, and I was lucky to keep the 10%. Many combat vets were DX'ed as personality disorders when they were suffering from PTST or other conditions. They did this to get out of paying compensation. They are probably still doing it.

Could you get a double major in computer science? You would be in high demand. Minor in Chinese and you could write your own ticket.

I am 70% and IU for a MH issue, and I get to see a shrink once every three months. That is not therapy. Me and my shrink agree not to even call it therapy. It is a med check and a chat. I probably have the best shrink at my VAMC and he tells his masters he will not sign off on giving therapy. He says it is a lie to call it therapy since he cannot see patients on a weekly or even monthly basis. You can't work on long term issues if you only see a shrink four times a year for 20 minutes.

You can only believe what you get from the VA if it is in black and white. Homeless vets, widows and orphans are no big deal to those guys. They are just worried about the bottom line. The VA is a machine. It slices and dices.

It is hard to imagine that the VA stepped into the heart disease cow pie. It will cost them many millions of dollars. I bet they try to parse it someway to exclude many. If they stall long enough the IHD vets will be dead soon. I wonder what the AO type disease will emerge from the OIF/OEF wars? 2 million military members have walked through those places in the last 8 years. We know about Gulf War Disease, but we don't know about what comes from these new wars.

You would be mad to waive a physical assessment at discharge. The military should do a full physical, but you know why they don't do it? They might find something not in the records....arrgggghhhh.

For me it was the echo, then the stress test, and then another echocardiogram. They look at your heart before the stress and then after the stress from either chemical or treadmill. My tests at the VA were totally screwed up, and yet I got 60% for CAD. You have people looking at your tests in the VBA who have no idea what they are looking at. The heart cath is the sure way, but that has risks all its own. If the doctor pierces your aorta while poking around you will die. Doctors bury their mistakes. I am sure the VA would say "It was God's will" sorry 'bout dat.

First you apply for the insurance and then apply for the 100% waiver. If you want 20,000 you have to pay for the extra 10,000. I did not like ChampVA at first, but it came in handy when my wife had an operation. My wife has BC/BS and it is primary. ChampVA paid co-pay and deductibles so she paid nothing on a 36,000 bill. If and when your wife gets medicare the champva will be the secondary payer. It works well at hospitals, but I find many doctor's offices won't take assignment of ChampVA.

After 15 years from discharge you have to get permission of the BCMR to ask for an upgrade of your discharge. I had my general under honorable upgraded to honorable, bu this was within a few years of my discharge. I recently tried to get the character of my discharge changed to a medical discharge. The first thing they did was to point out that more than 15 years had passed since discharge, and dismiss my appeal out of hand. You do need a lawyer for this I think since so much time has passed.

10% to 30% is a big victory. It is rare for someone to go from 10% to 100%. Usually, we go 10%-30%-50%-70% and then IU or 100%. With 30% the vet gets benefits for his spouse meaning a few more bucks every month.

Well, you need a letter from your doctor saying that you are unemployable due to your SC conditions. Then you submit all your evidence and the TDIU form and wait. You could be waiting up to six months or longer.

You know one of the first places artery disease shows up is in the legs. If you have DMII as a SC condition and you complain about pain in your legs the VA might do a CT scan of your legs. This will show artery disease possibly and if it is in your legs it is probably in your brain and heart as well. I had a lump on my leg and the VA did a CT scan. I was SC for DMII at the time. The CT scan revealed artery disease. I got this SC'ed as secondary to the DMII and they DX'ed it as CAD. This is sort of a back door approach.

I have filed for a number of secondary conditions. There is a chance that some exam doctor is going to opine on your primary condition and the VA will use that to try and reduce you. If you have really good evidence on the secondary condition I think this is less likely to happen. It is when you leave yourself open to questions that you get in trouble. If you have a secondary condition that might affect you health in a serious way I would file for it.

The heaviest concentration of AO use was in III Core which includes the areas around Saigon. The Saigon river area really got it good, and this is a very heavy population area. The Vietnamese are the ones who really must be suffering. I can't think of anyone getting Vietnam Campaign Ribbon who was not actually in Vietnam. The Vietnam Gallantry Cross is a Vietnamese medal. I don't know if you had to be actually boots on the groud to get it. Did infantry troops on the DMZ in Korea get the CIB? I was thinking anyone with a CIB during the Vietnam era had to be in Vietnam, but I could be wrong. My DD214 specifically has a section for overseas duty. Typed in there is Vietnam with the time I was there. That can't be disputed.