Member 63Sierra from Hadit.com sends me this missive and asked that I post it for all of you. He finally attained SC for his kidney cancer secondary to HCV. While this is nothing to cheer about (the cancer) it is good news for those of you with it who seek to have it service connected. It may be an important stepping stone to Special Monthly Compensation or important simply because you may need the SC as insurance if you die from it before you get ten years of P&T under your belt. Always remember that. No tickee-no laundry. If you are not rated for it and you die from it, it isn’t service connected. Period. 

I know that sounds odd coming from a “nonadversarial” benign, rainbow land of Unicorns Agency, but it’s true. The letter of the law is anal. If you don’t build it, they won’t rate. Contrast that with your local VA service rep. down at the Watering Hole Inn convincing you, as only someone in the know can, that filing a bunch of claims will bring a lot of unwanted attention and denials. I’ve had some guys tell me that their rep. flat out refused to file it for them. Considering that they are the major porthole through which many of us must swim if we use the VSO system, this can be a make/break choice for many.

Fortunately for the internet, fewer and fewer of us are succumbing to the allure of that stupidity after the first trip. I sound trill and alarmist for a good reason. Within reason, in any subset of a beehive (Veterans Service Organization worker bees), there will be bright, intelligent ones and dull, lazy conniving ones. There will be subtle, social climbers wishing to get to the Holy Grail of District Commander and higher to State Level using the service rep. time as a stepping stone. There will be innumerable ones who have too heavy a caseload. Using Murphy’s First Law of Plumbing, we all know where defecation rolls to. Few VSOs have any talent pool of law. Any who do are swamped. Good news travels fast if you get Johnny Vet a retro CUE back to 1950 on an 80% claim/TDIU. All of a sudden you are Golden. There’s no panacea to this other than a law degree. You and your fellow over-35 tag  football team sponsored by Hooters® would no sooner go out and throw down the gauntlet to the Seahawks than should a 400- hour service rep. with the absolute army of VA  Juris Doctors they are preparing to do battle with.

With that said, one of 63 Sierra’s earlier emails reveals:

also yesterday I talked to my retarded DAV service officer, and told him abt it, today a guy called from VES sounding very ,very friendly, scheduling a c&p exam. he seemed WAY too helpful and friendly. So I don’t know if the vso passed the word to someone abt the kidney debacle and they are hopping now because of that.

See? Proof that your service rep. is good for something. They’re faster than UPS, too. The downside is 63 is only going to see any surgery 100%s and what not within the last year of  the day he spoke to the DAV rep. and the “informal claim” became “formal.” The smart money says the DAV rep and the VA Coach both play on the same Sunday morning Golf Club league and are on a first-name basis but that’s just the cynical me talking.

Bob: “Did you see that case come in yesterday where the VAMC dropped the dime on that guy back in 2003 and forgot to tell him about the cancer? My boss sure would like to get his face on the front page of the National Gazette next month. Can you help me look good on that?”

Tom: “Sure can.  No problem. The Mailroom Coach brought it up last evening. Boss Coach said to get it rolling now and we scheduled a C&P for Monday down at QTC.  He’ll get some rating paper in about sixty days. That’s as fast as we can go with this new VBMS thing. We’re required to send his whole C-file out to be .PDF’d first. That’s the best I can do.”