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Tyr

Second Class Petty Officers
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  1. You got denied because you don't have a diagnosis. You may get denied because it may be deemed that your four visits to the BAS were for things that were deemed to be acute and transitory, not chronic. Just FYI, it may happen. If service connection is granted, I'd expect to see a 10. Painful motion warrants a 10, and I assume you have pain, given that you go see a doc now for your issue.
  2. Calm down and take a breath. Unless they specifically granted IU, you can work. (And even then if they did, you can work in a very limited way). Did you send in a VA Form 21-8940? That is REQUIRED to grant IU. That is, they should not have done it without that form. Google it, if it doesn't look familiar, then you can rest easier. Your narrative should have it as a separate issue. It will not be contained in the fine print for another decision. Look on ebenefits as well, it should be listed there. Sounds to me like you're statutory 100, PT. Which is a very good thing. Your kids/wife get a huge stipend for college now, you are eligible for CHAMPVA, you can get a DoD ID card so you can shop at the PX and use MWR facilities, and best of all, the VA should never talk to you again. Not to mention the $, which is a huge increase from where you were. You can also call the VA and ask them on the (crappy) 1800 number. The person you talk to should be able to look at your codesheet to see if you are granted IU. If not, smooth sailing. Congrats, you won.
  3. If I understand your question correctly, yes, the percentage shown in ebenefits can change prior to a claim being completed. Theres a glitch with ebenefits where it will show what the rater has done once they finalize their rating. But, the claim itself is not done yet. It still has to go to another person to do the award and letter, and they will take a look at it. So it may end up going back to the rater, who may change their decision. Thats unlikely, but absolutely possible.
  4. The doctor doesn't, or at least absolutely shouldn't, recommend a certain rating percentage. They check boxes in the DBQ that are correlated (but not absolutely) on the percentage assigned. But then there are other factors as well, like what symptoms were noted. So even if the doc only checked the box that is associated with a 70, other symptoms may support a 100% evaluation. If you know the doctor said that, thats good evidence for you. The rater may have seen where another healthcare provider questioned your competency, and that may have been enough to trigger it, even though it would have been a mistake to do so given that your examiner said you were competent to hand your funds. Its hard to say without seeing your file. If the evidence ... Then ... suggests but does not clearly and convincingly show that the person is incapable of managing the VA benefit payment without limitation do not develop do not propose incompetency, and state in the narrative of the rating decision issue that there was no clear and convincing evidence of incompetency. Now is the time to be more proactive. Statements from people that are in a position to know about your competency will help. Wife, friends, doctors/providers, lawyers etc etc. If you are found to be incompetent, you can regain competency, but its much easier to avoid the issue all together.
  5. Buck, its pretty much a moot point, though there are times when it may not be. If its moot, the exam should never be scheduled and it should effectively just go away. If its not going to lower what is paid, then it shouldn't be scheduled. There are other reasons why VA wouldn't schedule it as well, FYI. If it is not, then they will schedule the exam. Example of when its not moot: If it relates to SMC - like if you are 100 for deafness, but have a PTSD rating at 70, that will entitle you to statutory housebound. But, if your last exam showed improvement in your PTSD and they scheduled an RFE for it, then you can be PT, but have a valid RFE. It won't matter as far as the PT status, but really for your SMC. Because if your PTSD drops to 50, you are then no longer entitled to housebound.
  6. If you miss a routine future exam, its mandatory for the VA to propose to reduce. It doesn't sound like you should have had an RFE, but I can't say for sure without seeing your file. My gut feeling is that someone got all sorts of stupid and inadvertently put an RFE on your PTSD. If nothing else, the time frame is wrong - it should (generally) be at 18 months, 24, or 30. Not freaking 4. Get another exam scheduled and go to it. File a claim for DEA. Make them make a decision as to if your disability is static or not.
  7. Question 1) It doesn't matter really. You will get one mental health grant. Other diagnoses may be added to that grant, but you're not going to get one 50% eval for PTSD and then another 50% eval for MDD. It can matter if they say they can differentiate symptoms of PTSD and MDD, and determine that your PTSD is due to service, but your MDD is not. Then they won't count the symptoms for your evaluation that are not related to service. Thats rare though, usually they say they can't split them out. In your case, no, you filing a claim for MDD really just wastes time for everyone. Question 2) A grant of OSA secondary to PTSD is very, very, very rare. Your best bet to get a grant is to get a positive opinion with a sound rationale from a private provider and then submit that with a claim for it. If you just file a claim for it, I'd be shocked if it was granted. From what I can gather, the two are correlated, but there isn't really much that shows that PTSD actually causes OSA. The grants that I've seen have had a good rationale from a qualified provider. Question 3) I don't know. I want to see every single thing you are service connected for, at what percentage. What knee, what %. What radiculopathy, what %. etc etc. You say you have knees and back for another 30%. Well, you probably don't actually. You may have 3 separate 10% grants, but in VA math that doesn't add up to 30%. Those things alone, sure. But if you have PTSD at 50, then those three don't add up to give you a combined of 80. The gist of VA math is that they use the whole man concept. You start at 100% healthy. Then you have PTSD at 50% disabling. That leaves you 50% healthy, 50% disabled. The next highest disability is factored from your healthy part. So if you have a back at 40%, its 40% of the 50% thats left. So 40 percent of the 50 that remains from your PTSD is 20. That adds to your first 50 to combine to 70% disabled. Which leaves 30% healthy. If you have tinnitus at 10%, thats 10 percent of the 30 thats left. So thats really only considered to be 3% disabling. Which adds to your 70 to become 73. So the higher your percentage is, the harder it is to get to that next level. Its really hard to get to 100 sometimes. But enough 10s can do it. Especially if you have a 50 a 40 and a 20 or 2. Question 4) IDK what your overall % should be, because you haven't listed them. If you are PT, then it (DEA) should be granted automatically. It is absolutely NOT a thing that won't get granted until you claim it. If entitlement is there, it should be granted. Of course, mistakes happen and sometimes people get stupid. That said, the program that raters use will bring up a prompt to show that you should grant DEA if it calculates that the veteran is at 100% and there are no routine future exams scheduled. So people have to try to ignore it a couple times. So the odds are pretty good that you are not PT. Good luck to you. lol damn, I just saw this was from a long time ago. Oh well, hopefully someone else can learn from it.
  8. I'm not sure what you're asking to be honest. Why did the effective date go from 2010 to 2016? Because you were at 0 in 2010, then were increased to 10% effective 2016. They didn't take the 2010 date away, they added a 10 percent evaluation on top if it, if that makes sense. 0% 08/18/2010 10% 04/04/2016 Are you asking why your effective date is different from your date of claim? Probably because its the date of your intent to file. Any time you get on ebenefits and *initiate* a new claim, the system does in ITF. Even if you didn't know or intent to.
  9. It actually works out to 13 months of temp 100, then your knee will go to 30%.
  10. Its almost certainly just a placeholder to keep the claim from prematurely going ready for decision. If all the tracked items are closed, the claim will go RFD, even if it is not at all ready for decision. Having a "dummy" tracked item helps to prevent this at the RO. I can only speculate as to why your claim is not ready for a decision. I dont recall too much else about your situation, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are waiting on records or a response from some place. And yes, claims for MH issues other than PTSD sometimes (frequently) require corroboration of an event. VA has a sympathetic reading of disabilities for MH conditions, which boils down to that a claim for one is a claim for all. You need an event in service - as you previously noted. The two really go hand in hand. Stressor is really used as a synonym for "event". It may help you to think about it as a claim for an injury, not a claim for PTSD. By that I mean that the VA still needs 1) an event in service (and the best way to get all the pertinent info if corroboration is required is to send an 0781/0781a) 2) a disability now, and 3) a link between the two. Does that kind of help clarify things? I could certainly see how that letter asking you for the 0781 would happen. Say you file a claim and say "anxiety due to an assault in service". The processor may send that letter in an effort to expedite things while they are waiting on records, which may not even contain a record of the assault in question. So then they will have the required info to do further research on things, if that is needed and warranted. It can help save time, sometimes. Other times, it may turn out to be wasted effort.
  11. It doesn't have anything at all to do with Trump. I wouldn't pay much attention to whatever ebenefits says the claim status is, to be honest. If that status is accurate, I'm guessing that your claim is about ready for a decision because there is no rationale to send you to an exam. Did you send in any new and material evidence?
  12. Andy, If I'm understanding you right, you have an appeal open for MDD now, correct? If so, your PTSD claim would probably get lumped into that appeal. For non-combat PTSD, the VA has to have a verified, (or conceded) event. Verified type things would/could be a mugging from a police report, a car accident from the same etc. The conceded type things would be where a rater would basically look at all the evidence and say "yep, its reasonable to assume the veteran did this/saw this". For example, if you witnessed a plane crash, and your job was at an airfield where the verified crash occurred, the VA would basically say that its reasonable that you saw it. The VA isn't going to look for duty logs etc, to make sure that you weren't on a detail somewhere else that day. (They will look at whats in the file, but won't go digging for stuff. So if there is a record of you being on leave or in school in Texas when you were stationed at Pope AFB where there was a plane crash that you said is your stressor, then there is evidence that says you weren't there. But if everything aligns with you being there, then great. Clear as mud?) Anyway, for you - if you have SC injuries from when you went down some stairs, it sounds like there is a good likelihood that the VA will concede your stressor, assuming your records say that you have a broke leg, back issue etc due to falling down the stairs. If your records don't support that, then the stressor will have to be verified. Yours would be a tougher row to hoe since its not a verifiable thing, like a fatality would be. It can still happen, its just tougher to do. This is where buddy statements and things of that nature help. All that said, you still need to get a dx of PTSD to be service connected for it. And if your current doc wont give you one, that makes it even more difficult. A DX of PTSD can be given at exam, yes. But like I previously mentioned, I'd really expect it to get lumped in with your MDD appeal. PTSD and MDD are too close together (IMO) for them to be not intertwined, and the VA will only SC you for one MH issue. The VA does not like at all to have a regular claim mixed up with an appeal. At times, the appeals side may worry about the regular claims, but the regular side will pretty much never involve themselves in appeals. They will say "Your claimed condition of XXXX is currently under appeal, and will be dealt with in the appeals process". (You may have more than one diagnosis, but its all going to be balled into one rating, generally.) You aren't going to be SC for PTSD at 50, then SC for MDD at 30 on top of that. Or someone messed up bad if you are lol. I hope that helps a bit.
  13. Sounds like you deployed, so you get an exam regardless of what you say the stressor is. Hopefully you mentioned something about a possible stressor during your deployment - that would be great.
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