SABruce1

I give up with that 60 / 40 rule and then 40 / 40. Do you usually get a pay cut or pay raise? I am having trouble figuring it all out Bruce

john999; carlie; sixthscents; robert51; Pete53; allan; free_spirit_etc; Ricky Thank you for your time and advice. Just takiong the time to type in a little advice has helped to turn my world around when I got up this morning. Bless each and every one of you and you are all in my prayers. Respectfully Bruce

john999; carlie; sixthscents; robert51; Pete53; allan; free_spirit_etc; Ricky Thank you for your time and advice. Just takiong the time to type in a little advice has helped to turn my world around when I got up this morning. Bless each and every one of you and you are all in my prayers. Respectfully Bruce

I am over all rated at 90% of which 60% for compression fracture of lumbar spine alone and numerous others to include chemical burns at 30%, depression at 30% and 5 minor things at 10% each. Three years ago I was making 80k with a MA degree in HR and my SPHR certification and then my neck started to hurt one day at work. I ended up having to have a neck fusion. I was out of work for a long time so I was let go when the company was sold. I started out at the bottom in federal civil service as a GS-5 in a developmental position to GS-11 because I wanted the job security for my family. Last year 2006 one of the fusion plates came loose from my first fusion and they had to redo the surgery this time from the back of my neck and placed two rods and a lot of screws and small plates in my neck. It didn't help and I was still in pain. Last year I was away from work for medical reasons for more than 500 hours and because of leave donations from co-workers my family and I barely made it through the year. I had my third fusion in March of 2007 and went back to my surgeon today for my follow-up. The pain has shown no improvement and I am still on 10 mg of methadone every 8 hours and 60 mg of Prozac along with various other medications. For some reason the VA said my L2 spine compression was not related to anything that could have happened in my cervical so I am appealing my neck to become service connected. Long story short version is I can’t perform my computer data input on the medications and if I don’t work I and my family of 5 don’t get paid. If I were to file for TDIU the VA says it would take about 6 months to a year and during that time I could not work. Since there is no workers comp or disability except for $1,000 per month from the federal civil service. How can it be done? If my appeal every gets won I may or may not get to 100% which is important to me mostly because I have three teenagers still living at home and they would then get college assistance because I was at 100% TDIU (or is that only at 100% scheduler?) Which they can get tuution help only if I am at 100% or I can die from a service connected reason. ...................bottom line how can we live with out working money for 6 months to a year?