Waiting on the VA . . .

As a veteran I have number of disabilities due to long service to the nation.   The VA, Veterans Administration, generously gives me compensation for those disabilities.  No one wants these disabilities but they are the result of exposures to the rigors of military service.  And it is damn decent that the VA compensates you for those disabilities since they are not going way.

When I first retired, I took the local military doctor's advice and had the VA look me over.  They gave me a physical, asked questions, looked at my records, etc.  I filed for arthritis in both knees and for Gout.  At the time of the examination I had a raging case of Gout.

The VA sent me a letter and said essentially I did not have any service connected (SC) disabilities.  Upon advice from the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), I appealed that decision.  I had to drive into Los Angles to the Federal building where the VA appellant hearing was conducted.  The DAV sat in with me while the appeal was conducted.  At the end of the appeal, my testimony, the DAV representative advised me that I did not have leg to stand on.  He was wrong, I won my appeal, had a reexamination at the Jerry L. Pettis VA Hospital in Loma Linda, CA. 

I lived in Redlands at the time, it is the next town over from Loma Linda.  They x-rayed my knees and I had a doctor examine them.  It was not the same physician I had originally.  They also confirmed by original examination did indeed show a case of Gout.  The upshot was an award of 30% disability for my knees and the Gout (which is believe it or not a form of arthritis).  It all transpired over a year.  There after I was able to collect a disability compensation of a couple of hundred dollars a month.

The compensation was deducted from my military retirement (ugh) and paid to me by the VA (yeah).  That is sort of a zero sum thing but the VA compensation is 100% tax free from local, state and federal income taxes.  So there is a little gain there.

After moving back to Texas in 2002, my local physician diagnosed me with Type II Diabetes.  I was heavily exposed the Agent Orange, a defoliant used in Viet Nam.  Agent Orange had a very powerful chemical, Dioxin, in it.  It seems dioxin gets into your liver and never leaves.  The upshot was the VA under pressure from some many claims, made a unilateral decision that all veterans with Type II Diabetes that had "feet on the ground" in Viet Nam were automatically covered with a disability.

My net SC ratings jumped to 60% total disability.  The VA had requested and received my medical records from my local physician (known in our lingo as my PCP).  The PCP diagnosis is not refutable by the VA, they accept it and of course validate it.  But along with Type II Diabetes comes a whole subset of issues.  Diabetes attacks your nervous system, it may effect your heart, your skin, your sense of feel and your vision.

A subsequent examination showed I had developed Peripheral Neuropathy in both feet and left hand.  I had other issues with the 5/6 cervical (read that as neck) disc, it had collapsed.  That resulted in sporadic pain across my chest and down my right arm to my hand.  My right hand today is partially numb from the disc damaging the nerves feeding my hands via my neck.  That is know as Radii Colapathy.  The VA also picked up on my cataracts from the medical records of my PCP.  And the VA gave me an examination for the Cataracts and indeed confirmed they were Agent Orange/Diabetic related and awarded me additional SC ratings for that.

The final is that all my little disabilities are assessed in the VA mathematics.  The VA takes your highest individual rating of say 30% and subtracts that from 100%.  They use the "whole man concept" and the process dates from the Civil War.  So that means you have 70% remaining non disable functionality.  Then the take the next disability, lets say it is 10% rating and the multiply the 10% times the remaining 70% which gives you a net of 7%.  That 7% is added to the 30% for a total of 37% total disability.  It continues that way for all your ratings.  I think my net number of ratings is 170% but using the VA mathematics it comes out to a net of 90% total disability.

90% disability is a substantial amount of tax free compensation for me.  One can look it up on the VA web pages, I also get a little extra for being married and yet another Special Medical Condition award, type K.   And Congress in its wisdom has seen fit to stop deducting from my retirement and pays the VA as a total separate issue.

With the two recent wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, the VA has been overwhelmed with claims.  Adding to that the Agent Orange issues has further complicated things.  Thus if one files for a Service Connected disability, it takes as much as two years before one gets an answer from the VA.  The good news is the award of a disability is back dated to the date one files for the disability (or as our lingo says a SC).

Why am I now waiting for the VA?  Well I have developed hearing issues.  I have lost all my high pitched ranges of hearing sensitivity.  I retain what is generally referred to as the telephone range of hearing, the normal voice range so to speak.  A private ENT physician conducted hearing examination confirmed the hearing loss.  The VA itself has conducted a hearing examination and confirmed the hearing loss and has equipped me with hearing aids.  And finally, an independent VA compensation examination has also confirmed the hearing loss.  All there examinations also confirm I have Tinnitus (no apparent way to test for that except question and answer). 

My people, the DAV, have notified me that the VA has awarded me a SC rating of 10% for Tinnitus, and nothing for the hearing loss (one has to be literally completely deaf to get a hearing loss rating).  DAV notified me in mid December 2013.  The VA says they will make a decision between February 30, 2014 and April 23, 2014 as to the final award for Tinnitus.

They are thorough, but agonizingly slow because of the massive backlog they are dealing with. And yes, they are bureaucratic as all get out.  They have red tape on top of red tape.

I do not expect the additional rating of 10% will change my overall total disability rating.  As an estimate 10% times the remaining 10% works out to net gain of 1%.  They are good about rounding up from the nearest five to the next whole number.  So my current net of 90% may in reality be 85%.  And of course using the VA method it would add only 1.5% rounded up to 2% added to that 85% which would round up to again 90% ergo no change.

Diabetes is an auto immune disease and will progressively get worse.  Sometimes very slowly and sometimes very rapidly.  My Cardiologist advises me I have the onset of PAD.  That is Peripheral Artery Disease where calcium builds up in the blood vessels in the legs.  It can lead to amputation of toes and even worse to Coronary Thrombosis, or blood clots going up into your heart (or lead to a heart attack).  I will have a further examination this year sometime to reconfirm the PAD.  I do not expect the PAD to decline, but rather will progress.  We will have to wait and see.  But that will start another cycle of VA claim filing, examinations and a long wait.

Diabetes marches on, it never ceases, is with you always and always doing further damage.