How Do You Rate Severe Spinal Stenosis

[ocreswell]

dont understand the code but have severe spinal stenosis how do they rate that

[john999]

If you have severe and chronic pain you can be rated for the mental part of this via a rating for Chronic Pain Disorder/depression. I assume you have trouble sleeping and your activites are restricted. I bet you take strong meds for the pain. If you often feel life is almost not worth living then you are probably depressed and have chronic pain disorder. You can get a separate rating for this secondary condition of your back trouble.

[Hoppy]

TravHill

Good point on the bed rest issue. It must be your treating doctor and they cannot write the prescription retrospectively. There was a veteran here on hadit who had his doctor write a note saying that he has had the patient on bed rest for the last year. The DRO in this case said he did not belive that the veteran was in bed for a year. The best way to deal with this issue is to keep a log of each episode and immediately have the doctor write prescriptions showing the number of days or weeks the episode lasted that required bed rest. Check the rating schedule for the rating standards. I am pretty sure it goes as follows. 2 weeks per year of bed rest is 20%. Four weeks per year is 40% and six weeks per years is 60%.

Edited January 16, 2011 by Hoppy

[SLEDGE]

The good kind of a statement of a disability goes like this;

I'm a spine specialist.

This guys 100 percent disabling back pain and leg numbness is caused by the gunshot wound he got while serving in Irag.

The wound is on page 169 of his inservice medical records dated Jan. 10 2006 while serving in Irag.

The folks who set your ratings of disability are not medical types and need it spelled out in simple terms.

Short, unemotional and right to the point.

When they shoot it down you need to start giving them evidence that a judge can refer to.

Giving it to them short and sweet just to set the effective date.

None of my severe spinal problems were deemed to be connected to my inservice injuries.

3 surgeries and lots of shots later, oh well.

sledge

Edited January 17, 2011 by SLEDGE