john999

Many a veteran is cheated on effective dates. One trick the VA does is to make your effective date the date of your C&P exam. This is wrong! Sometimes they will tie your ED to the date they receive new evidence on an appeal.

TestVet I hope you get SE'ed soon. I know you want the SC for DIC reasons. Remember when you thought you would never live to get 100% for PTSD. I bet it will happen soon because you have expert representation. Imgine being represented by someone who actually knows the law. John

I tried to get a guitar and the VA made me jump through many hoops. They wanted proof that the guitar would improve my mental quality of life. They wanted a thesis from my VA shrink. I know they buy people computers but my VARO is cheap.

I find it weird that the VA makes cancers of the respitory system SC for AO cancer, but not the organs that take in the contaminated air that lead to the lungs. How do they figure that the AO gets to the lungs? Do we breath through our skins like frogs? What the VA is doing is this bogus system of medical proofs where one organ is considered presumptive for AO cancer, and the organ next to it is not presumptive. They are just trying to limit the damage. Is cancer of the palate considered presumptive. Air flows through your palate and down your throat past your tonsils to get to the lungs. Why would these body organs not be exposed to AO? It is all just a lie and fraud on sick vets. They require these extrodinary proofs when they know that dioxins are one of the most toxic substances on earth.

Rock Here is what I got from my lawyer. If we can establish that the VA made a CUE when then excluded material evidence from their decision then we can have them reweigh all the evidence. The CUE comes first, and it cannot be based on reweighing of the evidence, but after the CUE then the VA must reweigh the evidence to make a new decision. I know you are talking about new a material evidence opening up a claim, but the pricinpal is the same. You have to be able to reopen, and then you can get the VA to reweigh evidence they had before but dismissed. This is how I understand it. If, for example, the VA denies my CUE then they don't reweigh the evidence.

The question Carlie's shrink asked her is an unfair question. How do you answer something like that? I get the idea the shrink is fishing for an answer to justify something else the VA wants to do like farming out psychiatric patients to the private sector. I do think the VA wants to get rid of us older psychiatric patients to make room for the Iraq and Afghanistan vets.

It is best to bring up what you want pretty quick because you don't want to waste money on a doctor who is not going to write a good report for you. Doctor's aren't dumb. They know you want an "IMO" that supports your claim. If they write something weak or negative they know you will never come back and will tell your friends the doctor is an ass. They need to make a living and you are paying them. They don't like to think of themselves as whores so you have to let them do their thing without being too pushy.

Ruby I think it is good since it fits on one page. They don't read beyond that usually when you first make a claim for a condition. Short attention span at the VA. It is 2009 not 2008.

I live in Florida. The VA does not work quicker here. There are about a million vets here in Florida so everything is crowded and the VARO is just awful. They are sure to lose your paperwork at least once. My VARO gets 10,000 pieces of mail a day I was told. Imagine the mailroom with some government employees sorting through your precious documents.

When I wrote my original CUE I cited a bunch of cases I found in the VBM to back up my claim. The VARO simply stated their was no CUE and denied my claim. That is when I hired the lawyer. The VA did not discuss even one citation to dispute it, or argue it. They just stamped it "denied".

A rating for service connected depression is just as strong as for PTSD. All the junk about your childhood and teenage years is a quest for a personality disorder diagnosis. I would get a private medical opinion to verify the service connected mental conditions. You need to show the private doctor your SMR's.

Belle You earned it and you and your husband deserve it! How long did it take from the time you first filed? John

My wife was told the same thing here in Tampa about the VA not having people to treat women. She wanted to use her ChampVA at the VA. Same/same for female vets.

Is there a good VSO anywhere?

I sent the VA a employment questionaire before they sent me one. Now I call them and they say they don't have it. I will check back to see if they found it yet. Their mailroom is a disaster. It will probably end up that I have to drive to the VARO and get a date stamped copy. My VARO loses most of what I send them even certified mail. They deny ever gettting it, and deny what was in it. I get sick of making the one hour drive just to get the basic forms date stamped, but that is the beast we deal with every day.

Chronic underfunding is the major abuse that leads to all the other abuses. The government is cheap when it comes to taking care of veterans and this comes out in all sorts of ways. It is better to save a buck than treat or compensate a vet.

I would go ahead and hire the lawyer if he is an expert in VA law. He gets 20% of your retro, but probably will know doctors who understand what is needed to get a higher rating and how to get it.

bronc I agree with you. Trying to prove the VA has or has not given a full and sympathetic reading of a vet's claim is the hard part. Getting hard evidence they cannot ignore is the easiest way to beat these devils. I was not making light of your efforts. I think having specific evidence or is the best way to win. Generalizations of law are always tilted against you. John

The idea of the VA fully and sypathetically developing any vet's claim is laughable. They give your claim the most narrow and adversarial development they can. Then you get the low ball decision or the denial.

Just remember you need a medical opinion beyond just progress notes to win a secondary condition. The VA will not connect the dots for you. I had to get medical opinions to establish a nexus for DMII secondary conditions and these are well known complications. Your doctor needs to nail down the nexus for the secondary condition in no uncertain terms.

I see my VA shrink once every three months. He hardly remembers my name. We both know that therapy is out of the question, so he just tells me jokes and updates my prescriptions. At least my shrink does not pretend to be doing therapy. Four visits a year is a joke.

With the meds by mail for narcotics I get it certified mail. My problem is with the VA changing the rules for prescriptions. I was once on the opiate program. That was ok until I complained about the side effects of the morphine they were giving me. The next thing I know they are giving me a detox schedual for all my pain meds. The lesson here is don't complain. If you get a med that is not working just throw it away. My VA pain clinic is awful. They are afraid to prescribe anything beyond the long acting morphine, oxycodone or methadone. There are many different pain meds besides these three. If any of these three don't agree with you then you are out of luck. Oxycontin (which is long acting oxycodone) is a dirty word. They don't prescribe xanax at all as far as I know. The VA is contantly changing the rules for how much of any one drug they will prescibe. It has been almost a year since I was able to get meds by mail without making a visit to the VAMC. This is a pain in the ass since it takes an hour to get to the hospital and then another hour to see the doctor just to get a script. Every time they change the rules for how much they will prescribe of any one drug I get put back five months before I can get back on the opiate program which means I have to get a urine test every few months just to get the same script I got before the change. I think these problems are VA wide. By the way I am only able to get generic pain meds.

My VAMC changed the way they prescribe percoset. I was getting 200 a month and they said that was too much. I have to now go to the VAMC and can't get them in the mail like I used to do. They have had me on five different narcotics over the years and have abruptly decided to make me detox before, but I fought it. I have a private pain doctor for these emergencies. They get you hooked and then jerk you around. This is why I want to get off these narcotics. Remember that chronic pain is the most undertreated disease in the USA mainly because doctors are afraid of the DEA. Even VA doctors are afraid of being accused of being lax with narcotics.

Quint My doctor mentioned fusion to me as a resort for my back pain. Describe the surgery and recovery if you don't mind. I am scared of this type of surgery since I have had other failed surgeries. I have a disc that is going bad and my back in constantly in a knot.

I was a postal employee who retired on disability. It does take some time to get all the ducks in a row. You can get the disability retirement pretty easy, but SSD and VA TDIU may take longer and are less certain. If you can keep working that is probably good as it keeps you connected to the world. Just be honest with the new shrink. I don't think a treating shrink will be interested in trying to reduce you. They only want to treat you.