john999

Do you hate medicare as well? Do you give back your SSD checks? Oh, God, it's socialism....eeeeekkkkk!

There are a few diseases that are presumptive for the children of RVN vets. Other than that it will be a struggle.

Cannon Cocker Hoppy is putting on a clinic for you with his answers. He sounds like a lawyer/doctor. You are getting your money's worth. If your records are silent on treatment or diagnosis for a mental disorder there are only two I know of that can be SC'ed years late. That would be depression secondary to a SC physical medical condition, or PTSD with verified stressor. Panic disorder was and is probably one of the most misdiagnosed disorders. I think it is closely related to PTSD, but there may not be just one stressor. It may be a life time of stressors that break under the last straw like the camel's back. If the last straw is some event in the military then they get to pay. The military is a great place to produce an acute phase of panic since they force you into situations the panic disorder person would avoid at all costs otherwise.

It never got to the court to set precedent, so every vet who has PN and was exposed to AO has to prove it all over again as in this wild eyed case of VA acting rationally. It was chronic PN that was claimed more than 30 years after exposure and it gets SC'ed. Actually, the PN could have been caused by anything given the time frame. Half the cases of PN the cause is unknown. People just get it and I know it can be hell on earth for some.

Berta, by the time the symptoms for AO PN show up and you file the claim you no longer have the symptoms. How can anyone win such a claim? Two years is about the time it takes to file a claim and to get a rating especially in the old days. When did AO PN even become presumptive? All vets who filed for it would have been past the two year point long ago unless they filed for it within one year of service.

I believe you need to be careful when you claim PTSD because contrary to many opinions it is the hardest claim to win. If you have a diagnosis of depression secondary to SC medical condition go with that and leave the PTSD behind. Do as Rental suggests and feel out your doctor to see if he will help you.

Here are some other PTSD social problems: homelessness, alcohol and drug abuse, spouse abuse, lack of being able to feel emotions, restlessness, rootlessness, crime, and suicide. I know the generation after WWI was called the "lost generation" because they had lost all faith in the social order.

T&B I think you are on your way to IU. Yout got 70% and the VA has your application for IU and your SSD for the SC condition. That is pretty good evidence for IU, but you have to wait until you get it in writing. Sometimes the VA turns on a dime to deny or approve a claim. Did you include the doctor's letter you have from SSD in your record to the VA? Is there anything in your SSD records that is not SC? They will pounce on that.

That is the strangest C&P exam report I have seen for a while. OCD with anti-social traits....? What does that mean. OCD is a mental disorder, but anti-social traits point to a PD. I don't understand how this guy breaks down the GAF into parts. PTSD is the main Axis One disorder. I think the examiner is trying to leave room for the VA to make a PD diagnosis to account for some of the vets problems. The exam doctor is equivocating and that puts his whole exam in doubt. He says the alcoholism and OCD are not part of the PTSD diagnosis. That is strange and does not really make sense. What are the anti-social traits he is speaking about?

I believe that many of these anixeity disorders are covered up or ignored by vets because the vet actually thinks he is losing his mind. I could not explain this to the army psychiatrist I saw. He just sort of looked at me.

Wings Did this vet have a statement from a doctor that he was unemployable due to his SC condition? It does not sound like a very helpful decision for vets who don't have the required percentages for IU.

The easiest way to rebut a bad C&P exam is to get your own medical opinion to refute each and every mistake or lie in your exam.

I live just a few miles from a AFB. I never go there for anything. I got the I.D. but I don't want to wait in line. At the gate there is a guy about 50 feet back hiding in a little bunker with a automatic rifle aiming at the people driving into the base. I hope he is not high on drugs.

Heh, heh, or maybe the girl sitting across from me. Actually it hurt after about 40 minutes. They say on viagra label that if your woody lasts more than four hours go to the doctor.

Apply for the official TDIU. Don't wait for the VA to infer IU. That could take ten years or never. If you were going to get IU for the PTSD I bet you would have gotten a 70% rating and not 30%. As it is now you don't have percentages for IU according to VA thinking. Are you relying on just the C&P exam? Vets who get IU fastest are usually vets with their own private doctors writing an opinion that they are unemployable.

You need your own doctor to look over your SMR's and connect the dots and refute what the VA has said in your rating.

I used to get one in HS Spanish class every morning. I prayed to God I would not get called in front of the class to recite. It has a life of its own.

The SSA gives you a self report thing to fill out. You want to describe yourself as a basket case. You want your doctor to describe you as a potted plant. This is the way to get SSD. Most still need a lawyer. There is no SSA fund set aside for us. There is only a direct transfer of employed to disabled/retired. That is why the able bodied hate the disabled and think we are fakers. If the money from SSA had been invested in T bonds there would be trillions for us now. As it is they pinch every penny. I think it will get worse so get it while you can.

Cavtroop Your picture of how you felt when you got home brings back memories of the day I arrived at Travis AFB and then took a taxi to the airport. It seemed unreal to me. I told some guy that I was just back from Vietnam. He looked at me and said in a bored voice "Far out!". Nobody spit at me or accused me of being a baby killer. I just walked into a void. I ended up in the nuthouse three weeks later while on leave. I was coming unglued. I got out of the nuthouse, and the bastard of a doctor called the military and told them I was AWOL. After I went back to duty MP's showed up at my mother's house wanting me. She put a flea in their ear. I went downhill from there. Nobody wanted to hear one word about Vietnam. I went to college eventually and my service in Nam was just a topic I did not raise. I was not afraid to talk about it but no one was interested.

If the VA believes that you have a concrete plan to kill yourself they have a duty to protect you from yourself. I mean to commit you on the spot. If they think you are going to kill someone immediately, or have such a plan then they have a duty to call the cops. All doctors have this responsibility.

When AIG needed 170 billion dollars the government came up with the money. Vets are not as important as crooked bankers and Wall Street manipulators. I say pay all the claims now. Why the hell not? The "bank" is already broken. Let them print the money like they will do to bail out Wall Street. Who deserves the money more....CitiBank or a disabled vet who can't pay his mortgage? We are dropping 3 or 4 billion dollars a month in Iraq rehabbing their desert.

Bob I think things are better than 40 years ago. That is a kick in the ass and the head. A claim was made on my behalf over 35 years ago. You should see the rating. What a joke. Two pages, no discussion, no reasons and basis, no appeal rights, no nothing but a rating for a "nervous condition" whatever that means.

The VA processes claims like the way plants grow. You have to have the slow motion photography to detect the claim's movement. You know they just don't give a shit. That is what it boils down to because we are not important to them. Vets are just the ghost in the machine to the VA. We are dead men walking.

The VA is going to grant your claims back to the date you filed your claims. If you had filed claims up to a year after you got out they would go back to the day after you got out of the service. If you have not had an exam or gotten VCAA letter that included shin splints then I bet you don't get rated on them. You need to find out what happened to your shin split claim.

There is a vet with my same first and last name in my Primary Care team. I get calls for him and they have mixed up my records with his more than once. One time the VA told me they could not do a dental procedure on me because of my stroke. What stroke? They had some other vets records mixed in with mine. What if I went to the ER (never happen) and they believed I had a history of strokes? No where else has any hospital or doctor done that to me. Other hospitals do cut off the wrong leg every once in a while, but it hits the news. I bet it happens at VA hospitals but never gets into the news.