Just joined the board

[Merc]

Hello all, Just joined the board. Stumbled on here after getting fed up with VA and their nonsense.

Since I started reading, I've made a leap of faith and reached out to a few of the respected doctors for some assistance with putting our stuff together. So far, Dr. Bash has been the most responsive. After speaking with me and my wife, he thinks he can move us both from 20% to 100%... It's not cheap - quoted $18k!!  But if he can deliver and maybe even get us some retro, it may be worth it.

 

Figured I'd chronicle the adventure here for the benefit of others.

[brokensoldier244th]

probably the best way to go. Attack the denials. Are your records on paper or scanned? If scanned, you can just CTRL-F and search through them on a computer rather than flipping and reading. If they are on paper that is where I would start. Take them to Kinkos or something, or have a scanning party and break it up into chunks. Having them 'automated' and searchable will make the rest of the process much much faster and more accurate. 

[Merc]

We've got a bunch of files. Much of it is scanned. There are many files that are repeats as well. We have multiple denial letters. Then we have my c-file on disc as well as about 500 scan pics (MRI) on two discs. I need to make copies of these discs as well.

I currently have a file box worth of documents and it's going to take quite an effort to touch each page and sort this mess into something a little more coherent.

I was just looking through our files. No VCAA letter. There are denials that start with Introduction, decision, evidence, reason for our decision...  Is that What I'm looking for?

 

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Merc

[Oceanbound]

Your C-file is not organized, so you have to open up your free spreadsheets in LibreOffice or Google Docs, and start creating a table of contents for it. It can be done, look at phone books all those names and numbers

Table of Contents	Page 1	Main point	Date
	Page 1	This is your c-file
	Page 57	Image of katchup
	Page 58	Blank
	Page 63	In the year 2000
	Page 192	Every page
	Page 222-223	note the main thing
	Page 571	and the date
	Page 850	I would say
	Page 909	Do 30 pages
	Page 1234	a day to prevent burnout
	Page 1492	Rome wasn’t
	Page 1775	built in a
	Page 1812	day

 

[Merc]

Good Idea. I did not know the c-file was not organized. Is there a preferred method for organization?  

Should I group by issue, by date, by location?

I'm thinking a grouping by issue might be the easiest way to keep everything easier to find and then a subset within the issues by date...

 

 

[ShrekTheTank]

You can organize it anyway you want.  What is important is how you submit your information.  If you go here is my 1000 plus pages and it is in there somewhere the RO is going to look at the first 2 pages and deny you.  

What I have done is set it out by issue as much as possible, but doing it by date is also a good idea.  When you submit evidence for you claim submit what is relevant to your claim and not the other 20 you already claim, but have not had a decision on.  I then go to the barney level and highlight the copy so they can go straight to the point an give me an approval.  

I found this the hard way, I was denied and I was like it was in the file you asked for 700 pages.  I then realized I am dealing with someone who has thousands of cases just like mine and has no time to look through everything.  So I then sent 4 pages with highlighted areas so they could quickly see the issue and how to rate it.  KISS keep it simple stupid!