VA updates rating criteria for musculoskeletal and muscle injuries

Need

As a federal employee, file the appropriate claim through your employing agency. Its a workers compensation claim. See your personnel office for the proper forms. Suggest that you gather all pertinent medical information to assist your claim.

Is there ever any service connected disability awarded when a vets service RECORDS are never located even after 40 years of health complaints? I keep getting we can not locate letters from the St Louis archives. I was so demotivated for so many years that I stayed away from care centers until I could not function. I just had a second surgury & I doubt my current records inquiry will improve. I have exhausted so many avenues as a peacetime vet who was with the battlegriup shelling Beirut in 83 while my health was failing & then going to gaurd to KAL-007 trawlers. I touched land about 2 days in 5 months as I fought continual exhaustion and numbness that had started at a previous ship – after a fall on the quarterdeck of the Uss Sperry AS-12. I got handed to psych people instead of medical people. I guess they needed to test me with the Ucmj and heavy sea duty. The result was Ive not felt like other people since & I mean that in a nuerological way not a mental way. I earned my honorable and other good notes that only served to make people doubt that sensory challenged people can still attempt to complete any mission when others are helping alleviate the heavy lifting. My med board was done twice – I appealed because the nuerologist would not allow me access to ENT examination and wrote up an inconclusive report stating ehivh tesrs haf not worked. In those days I did not want a disciplinary action aftet getting just 3 months from my EOS. I called my parents doctor -got a referral and paid for a workup with xrays that were better than the sectionals at LBRMC. I attempted to let the same doctor writing my appeal to go over them. When he refused & refused my request for champus to get a doctor he trusted. I could see he wanted me off his work liad and out of the service because my appeal went past my EOS date. My iimited duty post was to security call in hourly at a 5 story barracks full of guys all awaiting boards. Many with identified surgeries which made me understand staying to fight a person intent on ridding U more than helping U even have a chance was beyond my capacities right then. They kept pointing to the VA as the answer. The author of my 2nd board did try by sending me to Nuclear med for imaging. They found a bump I had on my right hairline area. Because that was defunite they changed the diagnosis to rid themselves of my puzzling case. There are about 2 accurate statements in the report – loss of smell & that I declined to have the bump surgcally removed. This granoloma did keep me on the VA radar with a 0 percent rating
But it served like a big red herring and made me look like a liar every time I repoted trouble on my left ear jaw neck elbow hip knee and ankle. I tried to go back to the incidents in the med records-but photocopies that are poor are not wanted. They wsnt the med reords which have still not been found. My copies and along with most of the good evidence I had was lost when I stored it in a closet at my Dad’s place snd his water heater plumbing sprayed it all and the moist stuff molded. The VA saves me with a surgery when they absolutely must – because I got a POA to present an affidavitt. Which is worse – a vet in a war zone gets shot and corrected with a rating or a peace vet gets lots of demotivating conflicting analysis by well meaning expediency oriented professionalsthat have very tight schedules which resultd in a peace vet feeling as if every thing he asks is always denied becausethe darn documents can’t be found to substantiate. This Sept. I was hopeful because the POA statements made the system act to allow an LHI look-and the let me upload the workup documentation to the DOD evidence intake fax – yet nobody could ingorm me how to upload the x rays supporting the documentation. So now I have a letter from the DOD saying they have evidence about 25 items LHI was supposed to check. THE CONTRACTOR CHECKED 4 THINGS PROPERLY & the rest eas Covid delayed. I DON”T MIND a delay so long ad they look at my knee & all the many items I listed earlier. They do not have any evidence concerning my knee or most of the stuff on their list. They can scour every VA clinic record for the 40 years Ive been complaining – & I always let them redirect and placate me because I trusted they knew how to help better than I did when I was especially numb and not certain if I could pick the correct severity number in the pain/ discomfort/ numbness question the interveiwers always ask. There are no knee imsges or ankle images or foot images or hip images or back or neck images. Only occasional chest x rays that mention spondylosis in a couple places- but when I ask about it – get assured it”s no concern to them because I don” t lie and scream sbout level 8 pain. I report when there’s much DISCOMFORT which is rarely during a GP interview. I did get my new GP to approve hip imaging after somehowe I got into a non VA cinic during a bad day only to learn I most certainly need a hernia looked at that up till very revently I could not feel like a normal person would. So what I’m pointing out is that I managed to stubbornly function because well meaning people refused to look past the surface mearly based on my lack of documentation which could refute their layers of partial
impressions. I TRIED REPORTING THE LHI STUFF – IF THEY SENT IMAGES AS EVIDENCE to the DOD – the the DOD is getting lied to for funding expedient efforts which are not my involved appointments which result in reality for my trust.