john999

I can't tell anyone what I did in Vietnam or I might go to jail for being a skate. My career was spent avoiding my career.

Ain't nobody's dirty business how my baby treats me, ain't no business but my own.

I had the MOS 11B1Y for a while. Does anyone know what that is?

Hey, run it by a VA lawyer regarding the CUE. There might be something we missed. You can reopen your claim with any new evidence of increased disability. Get a letter from a doctor saying your disability has increased and send it along with a letter saying you want an increase. The VA should schedule you for a C&P exam, and you should get a VCAA letter. No VCAA letter and something is wrong. After you get the VCAA letter you can start gathering new evidence from any source to bolster your claim.

If I were really fatally ill with ALS I would like my doctor to give me versed and overdose me on morphine or something. The versed hits you and you go out peacefully. You feel no fear or apprehension after the versed. I great way to hit the afterlife if the government would let us. I like versed and have had it before prior to surgery. You may be afraid before you get it, but after they could cut off your leg and you would not care. My kind of drug.

I think these VSO's have informal rules not to poach each other's claimants when they are on appeal. I had DAV and wanted to change to VFW because of a particular service officer. He would not take me because he said they did not take claimants after the appeal process starts. They all stink so why bother anyway? You end up doing all the work yourself if you want to win.

Be sure you make it to that exam regardless of how dumb you might think it is. If you refuse the exam you automatically lose.

It means your disability was the result of combat. They get these things mixed up all the time. They give most a 2 even if they got shot.

You still have to prove it was service connected but if you do within one year of discharge your effective date is the day after discharge. Unless you condition is presumptive like agent orange conditions you still have to prove it.

TS How the heck did this vet get into the military being retarded. I know the Army was desparate for soldiers during Vietnam, but that is going over the line. They did take many criminals. The deal was either jail or the army. I do know that no one failed the PT test or the rifle range when I was in Basic. If someone could not shoot straight the Drill Sarge would take that person out to the range by himself and he would pass. They let us grade ourselves on the M-16 during the one week preparation for RVN at Ft Riley, KS. It was winter and we lay in the snow shooting the M-16. Great traing for the jungle.

TS There is a regulation that someone with 100% schedular can't be IU. He could ask for 100% P&T. 100% is a higher rating than IU. I don't think you can ask for a lower rating. I can't quote the reg, but I have heard the same issue discussed here before because some think IU is a more secure rating than 100% schedular. That is probably true since the only way to prove someone is no longer IU is for that person to have gotten a job. 100% schedular unless P&T can be reduced based on symptoms. IU being a separate rating from 100% is a recent invention. In past years anyone with a mental disorder who could not work was 100%. They changed that some years back. My thinking is that if the VA were to know that a person who is 100% for a mental disorder is going to school on the G.I. Bill he might get called in for a C&P exam. IU means you can't work, but 100% means you can't do much of anything if I understand the way the VA thinks. There are vets here who are 100% who we know are capable of plenty, but there is a prejudice against vets who have emtional problems. A vet with a 100% physical disorder can go to shcool and even work no problem. Look at Max Cleland.

If you are rated 100% schedular you can't be rated IU at the same time. If the vet is reduced to say 70% in the future he should be considered for IU if he is not able to work.

When you say mentally retarded do you mean someone with a mental score lower than the standard? I know that toward the end of the war the military would take anyone with a pulse. Mental retardation is not a mental disease. It is not compensable unless it is caused by some event in service like a brain injury. Retardation is like a personality disorder in the eyes of the military and VA.

I had a simple DMII AO presumption claim. It took about a year to get a rating. However, I had secondary conditions. It has taken an extra three years to get decent ratings on these issues because they all had to be appealed. The appeals of low ball ratings and denials will kill you. There are no time frames on these appeals.

You can't claim a CUE until you get a final decision. If your claim is still on appeal then you can't claim CUE. I think you need an IMO to show that the left knee was the secondary cause of the right knee. You have to overcome the notation in your records that you had surgery on the right knee when you were 18.

The Perfume River runs around Hue. It must have been an exotic and beautiful place. I was never there, but just the name "Perfume River" conjures up some images of Vietnam in my mind. I was down south not to far from the Rung Sat. I think they used to do B52 raids in the Rung Sat sometimes because I was about 10 miles away and it like an earthquake. Vietnam is one of the most beautiful countries on earth especially before the bombing. The 9th Infantry used to go into the Rung Sat. It was a vast swamp. The VC went to ground there so close to Saigon. It was just 25 miles S.E. of Saigon. Utube has a film of troops in the Rung Sat crossing streams up to their noses in water.

You have to have the official diagnosis of DMII to get compensated. What is the definition of high fasting glucose? The definition of DMII is a fasting glucose level of 126 or above. Anything lower is not considered DMII. Now if you HB1AC level is high enough that would do it also, but you need the DMII diagnosis. I have been there.

Why not just use your own compensation money to attend classes instead of waking up the VA monster by asking for G.I. Bill. If someone puts two and two together they are going to question your 100% rating if you can go to school. You are not IU. You are considered 100% schedular. You might be able to get away with it. Just never tell anyone at the VAMC or VARO that you are getting 100% and using G.I. Bill.

According to the VBM anything in your record that the VA knows about that might be seen as a roadblock to employment could infer IU. Just having a bad smell because of a foot condition could be seen as inferred IU according to the VBM. The VA has a special working definition that rules out about 90% of people who have inferred claims. They insist that you must have the percentages of disability (60% or higher) to be considered. If you are on SSD for a SC condition and the VA knows it that is an inferred claim for IU, but the VA won't infer it. They will let you die before they will infer it. I know a guy who was on SSD for ten years but the VA continued to rate him only 50% for the same condition. He had to file a claim for IU and get an IMO to get his IU. Even in that case the VA fought it.

The fighting in Iraq was kind of like fighting in Hue or Tet in Saigon. It is house to house with enemy running all over the place and shooting from roof tops and gutters. It is not heroic war, but bloody and confusing. I can see why these guys are nervous when they come back.

This chronic back pain is really wearing me out. All modes of therapy have really failed so far. I am just holding the line with dope, but it is failing. What are some alternative treatments for chronic pain? I am going from doctor to doctor seeking a cure. I feel like some of these quacks are taking advantage of me with nerve blocks and all this other crap. I take oxycodone and vicodin and I just get some relief. The VA has failed me and so have the private pain doctors.

867-5309 Jenny I got your number. I read it on the wall....Tommy tutone. Utube has a great video of this group doing that song.

Did you get a C&P exam for DMII? The VA should have given you the exam and if they said you had DmII and were in RVN then it is just definite that you get SC'ed for it. The only question is what percentage. You cannot underestimate the incompetence of the VA. Now you have to waste your time filing an NOD etc. This is just criminal to me.

That is going to be a very difficult claim to win. Even as secondary I don't see it. There are fat people who have DMII and fat people who don't. How do you explain that? That is what the VA will ask.

The way to take the strain off these troops might be to reinstitute the draft so the professional soldiers get a break. I see that many of the KIA's are now E-6 and above. The backbone of the army is being destroyed. Why can't every American help to do these missions if they are so important? If there was a draft the wars would not have dragged on for 8 years because the public would not have tolerated it. I think what is keeping the military afloat is the bad economy. What other choices do HS graduates who are not going to college have these days? Not many good jobs for someone with just a HS diploma. A college degree is worth what a HS diploma was worth 40 years ago.