tag:www.thedonovan.com,2012://1/tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543- 2012-03-24T15:21:12Z We're the Military and Airpower Guys of Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online + a stray we found wandering around looking lost. All original material JHD, BHD, JR, WT, and KA 2003-2010 Movable Type 4.12 tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543 2009-03-20T12:53:05Z 2009-03-20T13:26:59Z

The Armorer http://www.thedonovan.com
On the issue of the rating schema and service connection - i.e., how did Bloodspite essentially have two hips replaced and yet only get 10%, the same as guys with bad knees or tinnitus?

Service-connection is what ties you to eligibility for care. At less than a 50% rating, you are entitled to care only for your injuries, diseases and hurts that are related to those things for which you have the service connection. Above 50%, and you slip into Category 1, and are entitled to full care for everything, service-connected or not.

That's why it's important to at least get the "Service connected, 0% compensable" rating when you leave the service or retire. I have two of those 0% ratings, in addition to my 60-60-60-30-10 ratings which, in VA math, add up to 70%. That's not said as derisively as it sounds.  VA math actually has a method to it's seeming madness.

If your problem responds to treatment - then your entitlement was... the treatment. If the treatment does not fix your problem, but only ameliorates it, or prevents it from worsening, then the rating comes in.

The rating is an attempt to measure "impact" on your life and earnings ability. It was developed in the 30's and has been tweaked since, and has a bias to an agricultural/industrial economy, and the enlisted soldier, at the time often a draftee. So, I, who make a living using my brain in an information-age job setting, am probably over-compensated in the light of the paradigm under which the schema was developed, right?  Yes and no, something else we'll tie up for you.

So, if you've been successfully treated, and don't lay out some measurable impacts, then you're going to get a "service connected, 0% compensable" rating. But, if Bloodspite's hip goes bad - the service connection entitles him to more treatment, and if that treatment doesn't fix the problem, the door on compensation reopens. Even decades later.  Which is why it's important, even if you feel fine right now, in your twenties or thirties, to do the seemingly sissy thing and get yourself inspected and rated by the VA.  Because the thing which just twinges now, and you ignore because you're a stud, when you're 60 may reach out and grab you by the throat - and then, having already established the service connection, you can start accessing health care, compensation, and pensions as appropriate.

Being tough and forgoing all that isn't noble.  It's frankly dumb.  I don't mean scam the system to take money, or turning money or treatment down at the moment - I mean forgoing getting the rating.  Life takes twists and turns, and 30 years from now that rating might start looking pretty good.

My 60+60+60+30+10=70 VA math?  The "plus" sign misleads.  A Venn diagram (that's overlapping circles for you guys who slept through high school math) is more appropriate.  Essentially what that means is that I'll get a minimum of a 60.  The other ratings are then overlaid on top of it, in the sense that their effects on my life are overlapping, not additive.  So, how can you get more than 100%?  Well, let's just say that if you have that kind of rating, you've got some pretty impressive issues.  I've got a friend who has an Agent Orange-presumptive condition, who was unrated and unrecompensed for decades, until the disease manifested.  He then pretty much went overnight to 100% and when he's undergoing cycles of his expensive and complicated treatment (that is being paid for by the VA) he's bumped to 140%.  When he comes off a treatment cycle, he goes back to 100%.  He does a lot of paperwork.

Getting back to me - since I have a non-physical labor kind of job, should my compensation be reduced?  Perhaps.  That's one of the areas where the VA could probably save money over the long run in compensation cost, is relooking the rating schema.  But even in an information age, there are costs for physical ailments on quality of life and quantity of life, as well as actual direct expenses.

Quality of life - while I have a good job and make a living, I no longer do a lot things that I used to enjoy, and not just because of normal wear and tear due to aging.  Such as skiing, playing racquetball, etc.  When SWWBO and I visited San Juan in November, I didn't get to troop all the battlements of the forts as I would have wished, I simply can't move that fast or far anymore.  Things like that. 

One reason Denizen Ry comes and "serfs" at Castle Argghhh! is because I can't do things or things take forever to do - such as building a fence.  I could, in fact build a fence, but what took two young healthy men two days to do would have taken me weeks.

Repairs or remodeling of the Castle that I used to be able to do myself we now pay to have done.  Admittedly, the quality of the work is better that way... but there are still expenses that I wouldn't be having, and impacts on my life that wouldn't be there if it weren't for the effects of my service.

That and the fact that my ailments will probably ensure I don't make it anywhere close to where my grandparents did in age.  And the rating schema tries to take all those sorts of things into account.

And all of that is why you should get that exit physical.  And when things start going south, 10 days or 30 years later, get yourself re-evaluated.  Your choice, but not doing so isn't really noble.  It's arguably a self-inflicted wound.

It's not charity.  You earned it.]]> tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86144 BillT http://www.thedonovan.com
Basically, the body reacts to dioxin by excreting porphyrins and, long story short, you bleed through your skin -- blood blisters that swell, then burst, and when they heal, the scars are depigmented. Mine's localized in my arms because we had to wrestle the drums onto Hubert, and we took our shirts off, but left our T-shirts on, so we got direct skin contact with Orange and White, but couldn't wash our arms until hours later, when we hit the showers after the spray missions..

No reason to wash it off immediately -- "The stuff is perfectly harmless to human beings," according to the briefing we got.
]]> 2009-03-23T10:41:38Z 2009-03-23T10:41:38Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86131 Josh "Oh, wow! You see pictures of this in the textbooks, but they tell you you'll prolly never see it in real life!"

Would you mind terribly if I asked what the medical miracle is?  I share the fascination-over-squeamishness mentality of your doc... [And I completely understand if you're not inclined to do so...]

I suspect that some day down the line I'm going to have nightmares with the VA.  I'm honestly terrible with paperwork and I know it.  It's all I can do not to set my medical records on fire by accident...
]]> 2009-03-23T03:38:40Z 2009-03-23T03:38:40Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86090 BillT http://www.thedonovan.com
Good move, keeping the records. My stack is about four inches thick, and I brought originals *and* two copies of everything to my initial VA appointment.

Mac, pay attention to the flying and leave the admin stuff to the pixie.
]]> 2009-03-22T10:09:45Z 2009-03-22T10:09:45Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86088 HomefrontSix http://homefrontsix.blogspot.com

MacGyver thinks I'm crazy but I keep ALL of the paperwork related to him and his physical health (and mental). I make copies of his medical files (and mine, and the kids') each and every time we move. I request duplicate copies of all labs, discharge paperwork, etc. He thinks I'm nuts. I think I'm saving him (and me) more than a few headaches when the time comes.
]]> 2009-03-22T07:53:04Z 2009-03-22T07:53:04Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86085 Sgt. B. http://www.thegunline.com
Not so much...

I'm an OLD grunt, and atop the 13 years of Marine grunt-ness was a skyrocketing weight, subsequent system damage, and then the weight loss, but the damage (I think) has been done.  Now that I am back in the trenches, there are all manner of twinges, pains, and restricted movement that I don't emember from the heady days of my youth, and my thought is that now is an excellent time to get all that documented.  (Like the truely impressive array of vericise veins on my left leg...)

My issue is combatting the who "You're going to sick call, ergo, you are a whiny little man" mentality that not only pervades my psyche, but is evident on the faces of most of the leadership (you can see it in their faces, and hear it in their conversations"...)

Pride is a wonderful thing, in some cases, but not so much when it comes to admitting that you ain't eighteen anymore...
]]> 2009-03-22T03:59:50Z 2009-03-22T03:59:50Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86083 Walter M. Clark John, I understand. I've had arthroscopic fixes done on both knees, and held desk jobs since the early 1980s, but I still weigh what I did 25 years ago. So, it can be done. It's not fun and there are many things I'd rather do, but it can be done. Walter M. Clark (in the bomb shelter and digging deeper). 2009-03-22T01:58:35Z 2009-03-22T01:58:35Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86080 John of Argghhh! http://www.thedonovan.com
And the cause of that ruck is two of my 60's on the 60-60-60-30-10 ratings.]]> 2009-03-21T23:32:34Z 2009-03-21T23:32:34Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86079 Walter M. Clark Say, John, just to cause trouble and stir up things, I wonder how much better the tourist bit in San Juan would have been if you weighed now what you did when you made Captain? Walter M. Clark (ducking into the bomb shelter). 2009-03-21T22:37:33Z 2009-03-21T22:37:33Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86076 BillT http://www.thedonovan.com
It helped that he was more fascinated than squeamish...

"Oh, wow! You see pictures of this in the textbooks, but they tell you you'll prolly never see it in real life!"
]]> 2009-03-21T16:32:00Z 2009-03-21T16:32:00Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86072 John of Argghhh! http://www.thedonovan.com 2009-03-21T13:28:38Z 2009-03-21T13:28:38Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86069 BillT http://www.thedonovan.com After going through the mind numbing event for ever and a day and then suddenly out of the blue receive a letter saying "Gee you've been approved" I envisioned this person at a desk cackling as he received each sheet.

Heh. Mine was just the opposite. After an hour of reviewing all my documentation, the doc said, "I wish everybody who came in here had a paper trail this complete. Did you save *all* your flight physicals?"

A month later, I got the multipage "disapproved" letter which cited items that I hadn't claimed and *didn't* cite the items the doc validated. Took three weeks and four visits before they'd believe that a Clerical Error had crept into the system, then another month before the "approved" letter appeared. Which, having seen the mountains of paperwork adorning a couple of clerks desks in just one corridor of just one floor of just one VA hospital, I considered Priority Handling.
]]> 2009-03-21T10:33:02Z 2009-03-21T10:33:02Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86065 BloodSpite http://www.techography.com As I said it always boggled me. After going through the mind numbing event for ever and a day and then suddenly out of the blue receive a letter saying "Gee you've been approved" I envisioned this person at a desk cackling as he received each sheet.
"I'll approve this one! BAH This one is from Montana nobody actually lives in Montana! Must be a fraud Denied!" and so on and so forth in a Monty Pythonesque rapport]]> 2009-03-20T23:53:59Z 2009-03-20T23:53:59Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86053 htom ]]> 2009-03-20T17:59:15Z 2009-03-20T17:59:15Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86051 John of Argghhh! http://www.thedonovan.com
It's not manly to skip sick call to get an injury documented.

It's a self-inflicted wound.

The more the documentation (don't be a pest, but be real) the easier it is for VA to justify the rating.

When you do your periodic physicals, list the problems, even if they aren't disabling now.

You probably don't want to whine yourself into a permanent profile, but periodically through your career, cataloguing your injuries is insurance against the time later in life when those injuries *are* disabling, and you're paying guys to hang sheetrock and doing painting you could otherwise have done yourself for a lot less money than you're paying out now.]]> 2009-03-20T16:42:27Z 2009-03-20T16:42:27Z tag:www.thedonovan.com,2009://1.10543-comment:86049 1IDVET http://htp://1idvet.com If you are still active, be a puss once in a while and get the bum knee looked at and put in your records. If it isn't in your file when you get out, it never happened.
My left knee is a prime example.
I went to see the docs for my right knee. They gave me vitamin M, or other pills for pain, etc...
When the left one started acting up, I just took the meds I had left over from the docs and figured that I would suck it up.
Guess what? The left knee is never mentioned in any med file. I didn't get service connected for that knee.
Got a 0% for the right, which is now really bothering me, so that may come into play as was stated.
The left one ain't much better, and I can't do squat about it with the VA.
Just saying.
]]> 2009-03-20T15:56:39Z 2009-03-20T15:56:39Z