yvonne116

Thank you both for your input. My husband is AF. He has been going to the doctor to be seen for only a couple of things at a time. It is hard to get him to go with a list as he is still concerned that it will cause him to be looked at closer for a medical discharge or something. I do not understand it and I do not try to. I feel if you are in pain you should be able to go and get it checked out. Just the civilian in me. The tinnitus is in his SMR's. We went to speak with a VSO and she has been very helpful. She also has helped to get him to go to talk to Mental Health. He is VERY reluctant to talk to them but she helped to point out that a lot of things she feels could be related to his lack of sleep for all of the pain he has been in for so many years. He feels someone is always out to get him, grouchy, forgetful, etc. If we see nothing from a claim but he gets help this is all worth it. She said he should get a C&P exam date within the next two months and then a decision about 3 - 4 months after that. We retire Jan 1.

My husband is getting ready to retire and we are in the process of gathering medical records now. He has had 3 surgeries on his left knee. One to repair the meniscus, one to remove the meniscus and one to repair the ACL. He has also had three surgies on his ankle. One to repair the ankle where it was crushed in an automoble accident (active duty), one to remove the screws from his ankle and then one last month to remove a couple of the bone spurs on it. The surgical report and MRI shows many torn ligaments and severe arthritis. He is unable to raise his toes off of the floor if his heel is on the floor. I am wondering how they rate something like this. His knee also had one MRI show minimal arthritis. His hip is now bothering him. Do they rate this as one injury or is the arthritis and ligament damage separate from the ankle problems? We also keep hearing about an exit exam. When should something like this be scheduled for. He retires January 1. He already has another job that he will start while on terminal leave so we are trying to schedule as much stuff around the new job. Don't want to start out with a bad impression. He also has tinnitus in both ears. It is only marked on one of his hearing test and then it is put as patient voiced C/O for tinnitis both ears for years. Does anyone know what this means? Any help with what to do next or where to start on getting things filed would be greatly appreciated. He also was just diagnosed with TMJ. Sorry for being so long. Just have a lot of questions and trying to make sure we do it right.