air1

I got my retro today.it was three days after closing.Now can plan for daughters college in two years.

I got my retro today.it was three days after closing.Now can plan for daughters college in two years.

I got my retro today.it was three days after closing.Now can plan for daughters college in two years.

I got my retro today.it was three days after closing.Now can plan for daughters college in two years.

Just received BBE.it stated that I was granted entitlement to service connection for PTSD and major depressive disorder.REMANDED(TDIU) to allow AOJ an opportunity to rate newly service-connected PTSD and major depressive disorder.      1)Issue rating decision that implements the board's grant of PTSD and major depressive disorder and assign initial rating therefor.         2)After the above development and any additionally indicated development, has been completed, readjudicate the issue of entitlement to aTDIU on appeal. So how do they rate my grant as one mental issue or separate.

I suggest all of you who feel slighted by my comments above either reread  the posts or look up the word "template". This thread has been hijacked and I am just as guilty as others. For that I apologize. However, I will never apologize for correcting what anyone can clearly see as untruths or outright bad advice. One size does not fit all nor will it ever in VA adjudications. Hadit  allows Vets to offer advice on how they  solved their dilemma. Using another's technique to win is often like trying to wear another's clothes.  Sadly, many Vets discover this when they try to utilize advice at Vet's help sites. While it may be helpful or instructive, it must be taken in context or it may backfire. What we are seeing here is the "too many chiefs and not enough Indians" syndrome" or more succinctly "My advice is correct and yours isn't." Hey, folks. Fly at it but do not insist I agree with your misconstrual of VA law. I do this day in and day out-and most of it pro bono. Most of you do it once or twice and obtain what you seek. You do not continue to keep up with changing statute and regulation.
I do not talk down to Vets. I do not give them false hope. I provide a service when they finally have no one to turn to for representation. Virtually all of the Vets I represent are very ill and have had no success with their purported representative at a major VSO. I lost a Vietnam 11 Bravo (LRRP) this morning to respiratory cancer. He did two tours back to back like me. Two BS's with Vs and a PH. I now have the unenviable task of consoling his widow this week, going to his funeral,  filing for substitution and getting a nexus to fight it. I do it because if the shoe was on the other foot, he would have done it for me. I met him here. I try to provide general knowledge couched as advice. I do not offer specific advice or counseling because that is against the code of conduct for attorneys and agents. If you disagree with my advice, it helps if you could cite to the specific regulation you feel I am wrong about. Ad hominem (google it) attacks about the need for earplugs are pointless.   
It is said you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. The adage more than applies here. To tell someone they have to have an IMO in order to submit a winning claim for PTSD is misinformation. To baldly state that CUE is "VERY RARE" is a gross distortion of the truth (read "untruth"). Only a novitiate or someone grossly misinformed would make such a comment. To what purpose? For those of you without a dictionary, misinformation and untruths mean you are giving your fellow Veterans false information. To tell them they need to obtain a PTSD  nexus initially from a private source insures they will lose and really damages their chances of success later on on appeal. If you feel the overwhelming desire to give advice, make sure you read the statute and regulation that controls it first. Many of you depend on your fellow Vets here to offer useful information but you endanger all of Theresa's hard work on this site if the advice you offer is useless, inapplicable or worse-detrimental to their claim.  That is all I set out to say when I entered this thread.  
After many years of doing this, my personal experience is that many who suffer major mental disorders are very sensitive to any criticism and consider their particular experiences unique and applicable across a broad spectrum. I certainly do not seek to upset any of you but it's apparent it grates on your ears. Hadit was designed to help all of you, not devolve into arguments about who is "more right" or has a more spot-on experience. I offer my past battles as advice only, and now, my working knowledge from real experience as an accredited Veterans advocate as help for all of you. You most certainly are free to ignore it. Henceforth, I will don earplugs before delving into these posts.
I apologize for any who feel marginalized by my comments. My intentions were purely altruistic.
P.S. In reference to Buck's comment above. I wish to clarify my aircraft was not shot down. My gomer Air America pilot, Jack Smith  had a hangover and made a left turn into a mountain. We went from 75 kts to 0 in just under 10 feet when the A/C stalled and augered into the trees. We actually made it about 1 klic inside Thailand when he pulled this stunt so it cannot be truthfully said we went down in Laos. Besides, Laos wasn't enemy territory. It was neutral but we did a lot of sightseeing up there. Regardless of what Buck says, I am a Veteran just like all of you- no better, no worse, no more or less important than any of you and certainly not unique in any respect. We had a 40% casualty rate with all of them KIA-BNR. 
 

<<<If you have a solid claim in the first place, there will never be a need to go to the BVA.>>> 
I get a bang out of Vets who use their own claims experience as the template for everyone else's when giving advice. Obviously Navy4life has never filed claims for CUE or she would never say that. It took me 7 years and two trips to the CAVC (#12-1980 (comp.) and #15-115 (CUE)) to collect my $500,000. I had wonderful evidence but VA was adamant about not paying that huge sum out without a fight. When (and if) Navy4life  becomes accredited and dips her paddle in the VA lake of claims, I do hope she'll come back and tell us you never have to appeal to the BVA or up to the Court. If we never had to, there would be no need for Attorneys or Agents (or VSOs for that matter!) and we would certainly never need the CAVC. We'd settle all this at the ROs across the fruited plains and win the first time out. Ne c'est pas?
<<<PTSD is a different animal and any claim for PTSD has to have a diagnosis from a VA or contracted examiner for the VA when a PTSD claim is submitted.>>>>
Hmmm. What's wrong with this statement? How is it anyone who has been previously denied for PTSD ever wins down the road like all of my clients? Every one of the Vets I've taken on was denied by a contracted VA examiner (VES/QTC) or a VA psychiatrist. By law, I cannot represent them until they get denied. I have never used a DBQ nor would I. Until I repped the gentleman above, I had never had any but combat Vets like Buck w/ CIBs or other combat medals. Actually, I take that back. I had a WW2 Marine Infantryman who was in the first wave a New Georgia and Okinawa. He lost for PTSD eight times. He was my first claim. I got him 30% and filed the NOD. We obtained a IMO from a private shrink and VA instantly granted 100% with no fight. He was 94.   
Understand one thing. VA, by operation of law, is forbidden to develop negative evidence against your claim. Their shrink can deny you based on lack of  a stressor  or because you have personality disorders . Once your rebut that, you reach equipoise. Equipoise gives you the benefit of the doubt. Ergo, you win. 
One thing I do not hand out is bogus advice. I'm not allow to by law. You folks are welcome to disagree with me but please do not ask me to agree with your interpretation of statute and regulation. I began this game in 1989. I finally won the last of it in 2016. You can insist I'm full of hooey and doing it wrong but my clients (over 1000 now) are all happy campers. In fact, everyone who read my book has gone on to win. 
If any of you are avid followers of the CAVC, check out docket #18-938. You will notice that Judge Bartley is taking an inordinately long time to deny my quest for a larger greenhouse after VR&E screwed me on the size. If they were going to deny or dismiss, it would have happened in less than a week. Next week, we'll be going over one month with no decision. I'm hoping for a panel and an Ex Writ win. That would be #9 in all of  CAVC history since 1989. 
Win or Die. 

Start a new thread and I'd answer that Buck. I don't want to get any warning points or teach bad habits to newcomers about "taking over" a thread. Suffice it to say, after 5 years, they'd better have a darn good reason to schedule not one-but two exams- spread out over six months/year to show you have not only improved but maintained the improvement. If they don't, I win them at the BVA for not doing two exams. But with my new-found knowledge and techniques, I don't even need to get in that 4-year backlog nightmare. It's easier to spend $2 K of my client's money and get that IMO to rebut VA's contention right after the FIRST c&p where VA is saying you're a candidate for the Boston Marathon. I call for a DRO hearing on the record and whack 'em up side the head with the new IMO and they sit down and shut up.  You'd end up paying me a wad  for taking that appeal upstairs and the 4-years @ 20% you'd have to pay . I don't want your money. I'm too busy. I'd rather come here and teach you how to DIY. 

Someone (VA?) is blowing smoke up your rear end. I can get anyone SC for anything at any time regardless of how many times or when they got denied or in which order.  Here's a pertinent example. My Vet goes to Vietnam and loads caskets on departing C-141s at TSN for 8 months. He helps unload wounded from Dustoffs. Finally, it warps him and he begins snorting smack. The AF pulls him aside and gives him a one-time shot at rehab and a clean sheet. They evac him to Wilford Hall MC at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. He is cleaned up but his psyche is irreparably damaged. They 86 him and give him a DD 257 as an incorrigible drug addict with personality disorders. I wrote this in 2015- a full year before I was accredited by VA. https://asknod.org/2015/08/20/the-good-humor-man-at-tan-son-nhut-ab/
He filed for bent brain as he left in '70. VA denied and said his Heroin and ETOH were the cause of his mental disorders. He lost 5 more times to the present (2015). I filed anew last fall and tuned up the claim with a good, rewritten stressor. No buddy letters. No evidence of PTSD or GAD (back in those days we called it Generalized Anxiety Disorder) in service.  VA examined him and denied yet again this spring. Denial was for "no dx of PTSD".  VA insisted he had a MDD secondary to drug addiction for 48 years. Suddenly, now, there's no mention of all those denials based on drugs being the reason he's bent. I promptly went to my nexus doctors and got a beautiful dx of PTSD due to all those human popsicles in caskets he was loading. I got the shrink to say the drugs were an attempt to self-medicate and good medical treatises on the fact that drug use doesn't cause bent brain syndrome. VA just scheduled a new c&p to rate him on Friday last. Never ever, ever depend on VES/QTC doctors to write a favorable nexus. VA denied for every reason under the sun for 48 years. I won on attempt #6 because it's a simple recipe. If you refuse to follow it, you lose. In the instant case mentioned above, you (dlove74us) are being given bogus info and told to believe it.
One thing I have learned in my 30 years of doing this is the need for essential, valid knowledge. There is a lot of incorrect info out there being disseminated to Vets-often by VSOs. Once you understand the "game", you cannot lose. This presumes you have a legitimate claim (but I treat that as a given). VA denies by depriving you of a nexus-not because you are not entitled- but because they are an Insurance Co. That's what they do. They deny and frequently in case nobody noticed. You merely have to get the nexus letter to win-even if you don't get it for 48 years. 
One trick most do not realize is the old "benefit of the doubt" rule we laugh about. You file. VA denies. You get your IMO and file it with your NOD. VA is forbidden to develop negative evidence against you so the claim is now in equipoise. Equipoise = tie goes to the runner-ergo you win. You may have to go to the BVA on some contentious point of law like a jetgun claim for Hep C. In that case, you hand your IMO to a VLJ rather than a dumb-s__t rater. Bingo, you win. Let VA deny. They have to have a succinct "Finding of Fact" to deny with. Let them develop this finding so you can rebut it with a nexus. Turn their game against them. Once they commit with their negative nexus, you have the opportunity to rebut with your IMO and will win.  Sadly, I see many develop their claims and think VA is going to see the light and agree with them. Not. The M 21 was not developed to grant claims. It sounds good but the manual is designed to provide the excuse needed to deny with. I buy my nexus letters for a flat $2,000 apiece. They are always bulletproof.
I've had 4 losses in about 1000 attempts since 2008. Reasons? 1) Liar (was never in Vietnam); 2) Liar (admitted to drug addiction in 1993 and then testified in 2014 he was clean as the driven snow); 3) Lied about OTH discharge; and 4) Liar (lots of UCMJ violations for more things than I can list here and most were not LOD). You win because a) you're right  and b) you told the truth. If the STRs and the claims file bear out your contentions, you will always succeed. If you failed, you forgot to supply one of the needed three ingredients. If I can get a Vet SC for glioblastoma for Camp LeJeune water and it isn't on the list, then you folks can do it too.  https://www.va.gov/vetapp18/files3/1815897.txt
I'm not a miracle worker nor do I profess to be one. I use VA's game against them. I suggest you do the same.

The VA says its reviewing cases of August 2015, my case was given a docket number July 2015. Would this mean that they have look at my case because are now doing the next month August 2015? If so, how long will they take to review my case and give to judge?

A New Comp Claim should have no effect as to a  BVA Hold-up. What is the Denied Issue?
You've never filed for PTSD, why? Evidence of in-service incident?
Semper Fi

You are right.I not going to worry about it i have a good imo and a nexus so i will put it in gods hand.Thanks everyone for your great advice on this site.
 

I WOULD REFER YOU TO MD BRETT VALETTE SITE. I USED HIM AND HE DOES GREAT EVALUATION OF RECORDS AND HE HAS DONE OVER 20,000 IMO AND ALSO KNOWS WHAT THE VA BOARD IS LOOKING FOR, BEFORE YOU SEND ANY RECORDS PLEASE CONTACT HIM AND ALSO LOOK AT HIS SITE,I THINK FROM WHAT I READ THAT YOU  SAID ABOUT THE PERSON YOU TALK ABOUT DOING YOUR IMO,BRETT VALETTE RESUME SPEAKS VOLUMES AND THEREFOR CARRY WEIGHT AT BVA. 

I WOULD REFER YOU TO MD BRETT VALETTE SITE. I USED HIM AND HE DOES GREAT EVALUATION OF RECORDS AND HE HAS DONE OVER 20,000 IMO AND ALSO KNOWS WHAT THE VA BOARD IS LOOKING FOR, BEFORE YOU SEND ANY RECORDS PLEASE CONTACT HIM AND ALSO LOOK AT HIS SITE,I THINK FROM WHAT I READ THAT YOU  SAID ABOUT THE PERSON YOU TALK ABOUT DOING YOUR IMO,BRETT VALETTE RESUME SPEAKS VOLUMES AND THEREFOR CARRY WEIGHT AT BVA. 

Ruready needs to be, well something needs to be done. He is very rude and I received nothing from this thread because of his attitude.
Yah quit being too nice and just throw him out. He has been rude to almost everyone in this thread.

RU, venting is good, just no reason to become belligerent. A civil discussion, can be very helpful and informative to all parties.
DS63 posed a righteous BVA question and I think he has more information and understanding today, based on AN's posts, than when he started.
Semper Fi

This thread was  completely hijacked by someone who refuse to accept good information from people who have been good at helping other vets through the VA maze. I like to thank  ASKNOD and BERTA for the great advice that they have given us over the years and hopefully if anyone in  the future feels the need to attack the very hand that's giving this knowledge to us vets then he should feel free to stay off the site. God Bless

THIS IS DEFINITELY A WORKING NUMBER ,I CALLED THIS WEEK. 800-923-8387

Do you need Imo or Ime, MD BRETT VALETTE can give you an Independent medical opinion if you send your records and he can reveiw them and write an opinion for you .He is in Colorado.His cost is pretty reasonable also.

GODD ADVICE ABOVE,WERE VETS HAVE TO LOOK AT THE FORUMS AND THEN RESEARCH THE QUESTIONS AND THROUGH THIS WE CAN EDUCATE OURSELVES CONCERNING ARE CASE.I THESE LAST THREE YEARS HAS READ FROM ASKNOD SITE AND GOT GREAT INFO FOR MY CASE AND WHAT TO EXSPECT FROM MY APPEALS THROUGH HOW TO STAY BUSY WHILE WAITING ON DECISION.SO PATIENCE AND ALOT OF READING CAN HELP US TO LATER HELP OTHERS.THANKS EVERYONE.

GODD ADVICE ABOVE,WERE VETS HAVE TO LOOK AT THE FORUMS AND THEN RESEARCH THE QUESTIONS AND THROUGH THIS WE CAN EDUCATE OURSELVES CONCERNING ARE CASE.I THESE LAST THREE YEARS HAS READ FROM ASKNOD SITE AND GOT GREAT INFO FOR MY CASE AND WHAT TO EXSPECT FROM MY APPEALS THROUGH HOW TO STAY BUSY WHILE WAITING ON DECISION.SO PATIENCE AND ALOT OF READING CAN HELP US TO LATER HELP OTHERS.THANKS EVERYONE.

Lawyer said she felt good about my case and that the judge that I had was nice today when she normally is harder on vets.This all was said to me after the case she had not read my IMO by Brett Valette PHD who I found from  Hadit radio.He did a great IMO and explained ,rationale and also include his resume and  my lawyer three days later sent IMO to BVA. AS I said before I was denied because my private examiner was psychologist with MA and VA in its denial stated that probative weight goes to the VA doctor and also because my private examiner with Masters showed no rationale,but they accepted  in service stressor event that MD Brett  Valette reminded them of in this 10 page report not counting his three page resume.

Do you need Imo or Ime, MD BRETT VALETTE can give you an Independent medical opinion if you send your records and he can reveiw them and write an opinion for you .He is in Colorado.His cost is pretty reasonable also.

Lawyer said she felt good about my case and that the judge that I had was nice today when she normally is harder on vets.This all was said to me after the case she had not read my IMO by Brett Valette PHD who I found from  Hadit radio.He did a great IMO and explained ,rationale and also include his resume and  my lawyer three days later sent IMO to BVA. AS I said before I was denied because my private examiner was psychologist with MA and VA in its denial stated that probative weight goes to the VA doctor and also because my private examiner with Masters showed no rationale,but they accepted  in service stressor event that MD Brett  Valette reminded them of in this 10 page report not counting his three page resume.

If the denial was in May this is technically a Reconsideration.

Did the VSO file it that way, referring them directly to that evidence?

GOOD for you for taking the time to find that order and pay voucher!

Ebenefits is not always a reliable source for info.


A Reconsideration like this does not stop the NOD clock (the one year appeal deadline)

On the denial in the upper right hand corner there should be a numeric and initial code.

I always send stuff " Attention to" and then put the Initials there in the submissions because this is usually the last person who wotked the claim and the claim might still be on their desk.

I always use USPS priority with tracking slip.

But I am sure info can be downloaded at ebenefits site too.

It is miserable to seek evidence. I have over 20 years of VA crapola in manila folders.

BUT often well worth the time it takes to go through everything, even more than once.