Seeing Is Believing!

[Bigred122]

Why does the VA even have a disability program if they aren't going to play fair? I learned early that the VA played the game of LIFE by their own rules.And if they didn't have a rule for it, they made one up just for us and it would only be used once so that it wouldn't be considered the rule of Law.Last weekend, I received my medical records for my first 2 years in the sevice from the NPRC. Being in sports all my life, I was a suck up the pain kinda guy, so I didn't go a medical facility unless it was emergency in nature. So my records were a whole 12 pages long.(I create more nowadays in just one day) And to make me feel like one of the gang, two pages were missing.Would you believe those two pages just happen to be very important to my claim?(Silly me, you all have been at this for years and have heard this story a thousand times.) I know we have people from the VA who come here. Can someone explain to me why these records disappear. Are they paid to process claims or are they paid to sabotage claims. It happens so regularly, it just can't be fate.It has to be on purpose.The odds at them losing 2 pages out of 14 and those 2 pages being key to me getting disability must be HUGE. They did screwup and leave 1 page that may help me on my AO claim from FT Gordon .I don't remember my visit to the hospital there, but it occurred after 2 weekends of guard duty at one of the AO dump sites.It showed a strange rash, dizzyness, diarreaha, and a strange weakness. It was on a important medical document from Basic trainning.One of the page/pages missing was a 4 day stay at the base clinic/make do hospital for unknown reasons. This was key evidence again to my exposure to AO. The other document was a visit to mental health DR. In the letter they sent with my records, they said to call and give them special permission to send other misc records. Of course when I called them today, they had no clue to what the record clerk was talking about. So I told them what was missing and they said they would check again. (Some things have to be authorized twice by me makes no sense)I told them I was up against a 4/29 deadline, so hopefully they will be found.lol I can't believe that there isn't some hidden rule that says to deny deny deny! Lets keep the playing field fair and just decide things on the evidence. It's too late for me now, but I suggest if your thinking about filing a claim, get ALL your records first. Then file your your claim. By filing first they know what records to make disappear. They are the dealer in this card game and they decide what cards we get or don't get.Thanks for giving me a place to vent.Deadline date is approaching in 2 weeks so the end might be near for dealing with this silly game. Get my approval/denial and then to decide what to do. A hundred trees gave their life, just to save a few more government jobs.Was it worth it? We will see!! Mike

[Pete53]

Bigred:

I used to think that the delays were the VA's way to stress people to find any kind of work. I think it was but it got away from them.

[rpowell01]

I wouldn't blame the VA as much as St Louis because they should never send orginal's to the VA in the first place. They should make copies and send them just for reasons like this.

[Bigred122]

Bigred:

I used to think that the delays were the VA's way to stress people to find any kind of work. I think it was but it got away from them.

Since I'm already on SSD and it's not SC. I already have too much time on my hands. If they hadn't of put so many AO questions on the Form 526 that I could answer yes to, I'd probably be done by now. A simple Chapter 38 1151 was what I filed for. A simple mal practice suit for them. Then I started looking into all the misc diseases I have diabetes,hyperthyroidism, isechemitic heart problems and a few more that were connected to AO.Then I found out that places like Ft Greely Ak, Ft Gordon GA and Camp Casey Korea all were dump sites for AO and all my mystery health problems made sense. So thanks to the form 526 my claim went from simple to about 3" thick now. Luckily I make enough on SSD to squeek by. I just figured if the Vets in Florida got 100 disability and free medical for getting Hep C from the VA, I was entitled to the same outcome.Either way, our lives changed forever for their laziness. I could have gotten pissy about it and turned to drugs or alcohol. But whose health would I have been hurting by going that route. I chose to live longer and make drastic changes to my life and maybe out live the ones that did this to me. Already my claim has cost two Drs early retirement.I bet they still make more than me.lol I'm sure they get their share of professional scammers playing the system for every penny they can get. I see them all the time. All I'm asking is that they not hide/lose the records to change the outcome of a legit case and let the records speak for themselves. Everyone knows that lying to the Feds is a big deal. Screw with those that are screwing with you!! I bet if they took off those AO questions from form 526 and put them somewhere else, their case loads would drop probably by half. My country did a good job of keeping me in the dark for 40 years!! Let them approve my chapter 38 and I'll gladly wait a few years on my AO claim. If one is 100% disabled with that the other is just icing. I don't think there is such a thing as 200% disabled. For fun I added up all the things they are considering at the lowest rate and still came up with 680%.lol I've seen some at over 100%, but I have never seen how that was possible. I've already lasted 4 yrs longer than THEY expected. So I don't figure to see any appeals lasting any length of time for me. This process has too many roller coaster rides for me.So I'll be happy when it's all over with.If the government goes bankrupt, this will all be for not. We all will be making the same thing $0. I love vension and other wild game, so I'll survive. So let the Gladiator Games Begin!! Mike

[Philip Rogers]

Bigred122 - How do you know they're missing/lost??? To the best of my knowledge, original copies of a claimant's SMR's are transferred to the VA, when requested by the VA, when a claimant files their first claim. The VA then becomes the custodian of the SMR's. Is is possible the person doing the copying merely missed copying that page, accidently?? I know when I've requested copies, of my records, I usually get duplicate copies of an occassional(sp) page and could also, unknown to me, be missing a page or two. If the records came from the NPRC, I would seriously doubt if any missing page(s) would be intentional, as they couldn't care less about your claim. jmo

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[john999]

Plus you would have to prove that the VA or St Louis intentionally lost your records. Most of the VA and St louis losing stuff is just incompetence or laziness I think. A lot of laziness as the VA won't even crack your C-File unless at the point of a legal gun.

[Hoppy]

"I don't remember my visit to the hospital there, but it occurred after 2 weekends of guard duty at one of the AO dump sites.It showed a strange rash, dizzyness, diarreaha, and a strange weakness. It was on a important medical document from Basic trainning.One of the page/pages missing was a 4 day stay at the base clinic/make do hospital for unknown reasons. This was key evidence again to my exposure to AO."

I thought that I heard that hospital records are not always “married” to the service medical records and that in some cases you need to acquire hospital records by a request directly to the hospital. Hopefully someone who has had to deal with hospital records can jump in on this post and clarify this.

I do not mean to be adversarial. However, by attacking your claim now it might become stronger in the long run.

Who told you the missing records are “key” evidence in an AO claim? AO claims are not usually won or lost by identifying undiagnosed “acute” conditions in the military. Many claims of all types are lost because the doctors in the military did not identify a diagnosable “chronic” condition while on active duty. As far as I have seen AO claims are won by showing exposure to AO through duty records. Are there other ways to prove your claim other than undiagnosed symptoms while on active duty?

Can you establish through records that they were dumping AO at these sites and can you put yourself in proximity to these sites using duty reports or proving specific knowledge of the dumping operation that only someone would know who was in close proximity to the dumping of AO. I could be wrong. However, I doubt the VA would service connect every individual from a stateside base just because they were dumping AO somewhere on that base. If you can find cases on the BVA website where they were service connecting everone on a stateside base with a dump site this would shoot down my theory and you could use whatever case law was cited on that claim to support your claim. I have seen people service connected for AO who were able to show that they were actually loading AO or working on the aircraft that was spraying the AO. I have not seen any linkage to symptoms that occurred two weeks after exposure. If you had some medical evidence supporting the onset of linkable symptoms two weeks after exposure be sure and submit this to the VA. The VA assumes very little. You cannot always count on C&P examiners to write favorable opinions.

Due to the fact that my angioedema involves an inordinate chemical sensitivity I have been following chemical claims with the VA for 15 years. I have read numerous reports on the BVA website. Angioedema causes the exact symptoms you had while in the military. I have had in depth evaluations of my own symptoms addressed by several doctors. I have had doctors tell me to my face that all the symptoms I had and you are saying you had in the military could have been caused by something I ate or something in the drinking water.

I could not get doctors to write favorable opinions relating my in-service symptoms of angioedema to symptoms of the disease that could have been explained by systemic reactions to food. I argued this point for five years to no avail. It wasn’t until I found a hospital record from one appointment, while I was on active duty, from the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth Virginia written by a specialist who actually diagnosed me with angioedema. Even with the same diagnosis in service and post service I was denied two more times until I got a nexus report from a specialist based on the fact that angioedema has no known cure.

It sounds to me like you are trying to win the claim by seeking a medical nexus linking AO to some vague non chronic symptoms that doctors would think it was plausible that the symptoms could have been caused by non AO related causes. In this regard that is what I was trying to establish with my chemically induced angioedema. I would never have won my claim if I did not find a hospital report showing a specific diagnosis of the disease made by a specialist while I was on active duty combined with a nexus report from a specialist stating that the disease had no known cure.

They still denied my claim because a VA hospital employee lied to the RO and told them all my post service treatment records were destroyed in an earthquake. The post service records not only established chronicity of the disease they specifically linked my angioedema to the same chemicals that the VA determined I was working with at the time the military doctor diagnosed me with the disease. Five years later I found the post service records by accident. Finding the records was the last duck I had to put in a row. After 8.5 years of an open claim I was finally awarded service connection.

It is important to find any missing hospital reports from the military. You are saying that the symptoms were unknown in the military. That is exactly what I thought about my angioedema. Much to my surprise I found the report with a specific diagnosis of the disease made by a specialist while on active duty. The reason you need to find your reports is there could be something in there you forgot about. There could have been a diagnosis of some condition you are not aware of that was made at that time. If you do find something then you will still need to show a nexus.