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Claims Approved

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Shake-n-Bake

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I had never set foot in a VA facility, or sought any help from the VA, until June of 2016 when I went in for my Gulf War screening exam. Doing so got me into the VA system and at that point, I signed up to get a Primary Care Physician to begin the process of addressing ongoing health issues, most of which I attribute to my military service. Also, in July, I registered my intent to file a claim for PTSD. In November, I added an intent to file for Tinnitus. After being referred for a mental health screening, I was, in fact, diagnosed with PTSD in December and in January I was sent to a series of Coping Skills group sessions for it. Once I had my PTSD diagnosis from the VA, I went ahead and filed my claims.

In mid-February, I was given a C&P exam, via telephone, for my tinnitus claim. On March 4, 2017, I had my C&P appointment for my PTSD claim. I felt that it went pretty well at the time, as far as the examiner being receptive and hearing me out. At the time, she repeated to me more than once, that as a recipient of a Combat Action Ribbon, there would be assumptions made about my exposure to stressors and, of course, I had been given a diagnosis of PTSD. Something in the way she said this and repeated it, caused me to think that she was going to write a favorable report. Unfortunately, though, there have still never been any notes, from this C&P exam loaded into my Blue Button records, so I have no idea what she said. Also, after my exam, the estimated completion date in eBenefits kept getting pushed back further and further, to the point where it could be January of next year before I got a ruling. After feeling good about my chances after the exam, I really ended up just being more distraught over the whole thing. I stopped checking eBenefits, because it just made me and angry and stressed out to keep seeing things get pushed back.

On Monday of this week, April 3, I went on line to renew a prescription and thought, "what the heck", I'll just check the status of my claim on eBenefits. It had disappeared! I was about to lose it when I realized that it simply meant that it had been closed out. My heart sank at that point, because going from a "maybe next January" date to suddenly being closed out couldn't mean anything good, in my mind. Coincidentally, they had actually just closed it out that very morning. If I'd checked a few hours before that, I wouldn't have seen it until who knows when. So, I dig around on eBenefits, not knowing exactly where, or what I was looking at. I assumed I would have to wait for a letter to find out what they'd done, but then I saw it...I'd been awarded 60%. I couldn't believe it. I kept double checking and looking all around the site, thinking I'd find something to contradict this. Nope. Apparently, it was real. They gave me 50% for my PTSD and 10% for my tinnitus. 

At that point, I got to work updating my dependents in the system and adding my direct deposit info. I had tried to do both in the past, but since I wasn't receiving any benefits, I wasn't able to enter any of that information. Now it was all unlocked for me, so I got all of that info updated the same day my claims were approved. That turned out to be a good (and lucky) thing. Two days later, on Wednesday, I had a pretty fat deposit show up in my bank account for the back pay, which turned out to be a couple grand more than I had guesstimated. Things have been in somewhat of a downward spiral over the past year and this couldn't have come through at a better time. I was blown away. After reading so many horror stories, somehow I had my claim approved and money sitting in the bank, literally just one month after my C&P exam.

I have other claims I also need to file, but I figured these two were the most obvious and, hopefully, easy to win. I wanted to clear this hurdle before moving on to my other claims. So, although I still think the other claims may be harder to win, my experience with this has at least made me a bit more optimistic.

 

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Congratulations, hopefully your future claims go just as smooth as this one. Keep up the hard work!

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I really like your writing style!!!!  Excellents read and wiw. Such great news.

 

Lifes crazy... one day you are broke and the next day your getting 1200 a month for life and got thousands sitting in the bank.

 

1200...especially in the cheaper states...thats seriously a life changer.

 

Huggggeeeee congrats

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