john999

So you should get a check that would include some retro pretty soon. You have to wait for 6 months from the time the SSA concludes you meet disability requirements to get a check. That would have been in July 2008. So they owe you since that date is how I understand it. Did you have a lawyer? If so he gets some of the retro. If not you get it all.

If the VA is low balling you the best thing to do is to get yet another IMO to refute the VA decision and to explain why your mental condition is more disabling than the VA states. Just bury them with evidence. Any service connected mental disorder can get you 100% rating. The diagnosis really is not that important.

When you get to be 60 years old and you have a compensation check coming in every month to add to your pension or SSD it is worth it. My VA compensation is more than my SSA and pension combined.

You know if the VA could be forced to just list all the evidence in a claim decision that would be a major victory. How many have had evidence lost at the VA raise their hands? I learned in a hurry that the VA was going to either lose my evidence or just ignore it. Even when they list it they can put a twist on it that turns an expensive IMO into evidence against your claim. They have done that to me more than once by picking out two words from a three page IMO to deny a claim. In my recent CUE the VA refused to even address the issue I raised. Some here might not believe the VA is capable of doing these really underhanded things, but they are for sure capable of it. They can take one sentence of a claim and use it to hang you.

RSG You must have a CUE. The only thing I would warn about is the wording of your CUE claim. You want to get it exactly right.

Cowgirl I believe a VA decision is a administrative legal document in all aspects. You get paid based on the rating decision so it has that degree of legality. If you get a decision that says as of 2/2/2009 you are 50% disabled for a heart condition that is a binding decision until you change it via an appeal or the VA does a CUE on itself.

The ten year rule is for severance of service connection. You can't have your service connection severed after ten years except for fraud. In order to preserve a rating it has to be 20 continuous years of having that particular rating. For example, if you are rated 50% for 20 years with no reductions along the way then your 50% is protected.

In my experience the sicker a vet is the less likely he is to get the proper disability rating. This is because it takes persistence and knowledge to win at the VA. They don't give it away. I had to fight for every single rating or drop of compensation I ever got. The majority of fraud or gaming the system goes on at the VARO where vets are told stories like "your records burned up in the St. Louis Fire".

Carlie Right, would you conceive of letting a VA neruosergeon operate on your brain or spine? I understand they send most of those kind of patients out into the community on a fee base schedule. Consider what kind of doctor is going to accept the VA pay schedule. There are a bunch of very poor vets who are happy to have any medical treatment which gives some live specimens for young doctors to practice on while they learn their craft.

Get a CT scan done and that will show blockages. You can get this secondary to DMII. If you have it in the legs you may have it in the heart and brain. I got a 60% rating for heart disease secondary to DMII and it started with a CT scan of my leg.

Since most serious spinal surgery should probably be done by a neurosurgeon it is strange to find out that the busiest VAMC in the nation (Tampa VAMC) has only one neurosurgeon on staff. My shrink's daughter is a neurologist at the Tampa VAMC and she told him that fact.

Chronic wrist sprain is not a diagnosis. It is a way not to make a diagnosis.

We already have socialism for the rich corporations. Now what we need is socialism for the poor. AIG is asking for another 30 billion dollars. The banks are socialized already. All I want is a couple of million. Why is socialism such a dirty word when it is used to define a system that might help poor people? The rich have had it for years. Free enterprise and capitalism are myths that poor people die for while the rich sit back and count their dividends.

Vietnam Tanker Wait until the VA says that you are not a Vietnam vet or that they don't have your DD214 in order to deny your claim. This happened to me. I produced the DD214 myself and sent one copy to the VA and one to my congressman. I got a half-ass apology from the VA. Just never trust the VA to do the right thing.

I think they get points for getting us into in-patient programs. It is a way to bulk up and get a bigger budget and more people. The pain clinic put on the full court press to get me into their in-patient pain program. I can see it now...sitting around listening to relaxation tapes and doing yoga. What is my wife supposed to do for weeks while I sit in a lotus pose.

7 weeks of in-patient care at the VA for anything is too long. If you have seen the Tampa VAMC you would not want to be in that place for 7 weeks or even in the neighborhood (high crime). They had an in-patient pain clinic at Tampa VA and I said NO! I was in-patient there before and it was awful. They took me off my meds and I went into withdrawal.

No more shots for me. The steroids affect my sleep and make me eat more as well. I don't get much relief. I am already taking too much percoset. I have tried it all except oxycontin which I can't seem to get.

I took the morphine and it made me sick every time I took it. If you ask for oxycontin which is long acting oxycodone formulation they will deny you. I have been on methadone, morphine and oxycodone. None are adequate to my needs. Methadone is dangerous.

John You know when someone is messing with your spine there is no simple procedure. I won't let the VA do nerve blocks on me and I have had many. The ablation therapy did not work for me either. I had blocks in my neck and lower back and I got zip relief.

Vietnam Tanker When I finally got a copy of my C-File I discovered an issue going all the way back to my original decision. It was so obvious it hit me like a thunderclap. You never know what you might find in there when you start to look especially at old, final decisions.

The only testing I ever had at the VAMC was ink blot tests. The psychologist showed me ink blots and asked me what I saw. I told him I saw bloody body parts. He said I was a schizophrenic. This was after my tour in Vietnam. I guess he never heard of PTSD at that time.

Get a copy of the MMPI and have a psychologist evaluate the result. The MMPI is a pretty good test. I don't know what the term "exagerated PTSD symptoms" means. It could mean the doctor believes you are exagerating the extent of your symptoms or it could mean you have results that are higher for PTSD symptoms than so-called normal people. What the MMPI does is compare you answers to people who have definite dianoses of PTSD and other emotional disorders. The more your answers resemble theirs the more likely you have PTSD, or other disorders. Their are certain questions in the test to sort of weed out people who try to exagerate their symptoms, and also those who try to hide their symptoms. They are not all obvious.

One of the main reasons for asking for a DRO Hearing is so that DRO can associate a face with your claim. You may have the same evidence but the DRO gets a look at you, and that is important to my mind. Also, you can have your spouse or some other significant other testify about how your disability affects you. Sometimes just talking directly to someone who has the power to decide your claim can iron out misunderstandings to your benefit. Other times it won't matter because of the amount of retro involved, or because the VA has decided to dig their heels in the dirt. I recommend the hearing. I have had good luck with both hearings and reviews.

RSG I agree with you. Get the TDIU and then while you are counting your money you can file the CUE claim. The TDIU does not involve the legal issues and the tricky language that a CUE claim involves. You know the VA warns vets that a CUE is a "rare type of error" so you want to be ready with good evidence, and legal arguments. I know that my lawyer says I have a obvious CUE back to 1971, but others have offered up arguments that seem to deflate that idea, so I am hopeful, but I want to leave it in the hands of someone who gets paid to win these claims. The lawyers have every motivation to win because it is a jackpot for them since they get 20% of retro, and for me and you that means 20-30 years of retro. I believe there are many of us out there from Vietnam era who had terrible decisions full of errors.

Remember you can get 100% for mood disorder just as easy as PTSD. You already have 70% for mood disorder. Do you get TDIU?