Me and my law dog Pickles

Season’s Greetings to you all. I’m getting a lot of the Iraquistan TBI chickens coming home to roost these days. The majority of them are like my Vet Allen I wrote about earlier this week. At some point, the Marines’ FacePage or Ticktock jungle drums started talking about me and my ‘relative’ success in the business of SMC. Ever since, it’s been a veritable gully washer of phone calls asking for representation to “get over the hump” of SMC S and move on to L and T.

Tony and Sheila

And hump it is. VA goombahs fully well know the moment they let these fellers through the gates of aid and attendance that they’re destined to be eligible for SMC T. After all, that’s what it was inaugurated for in 2010. Unfortunately, someone down at the corner of Delay Street and Deny Avenue put out a sub silentio codicil that entitlement to this was going to be done strictly by VA’s Thursday Rule. That would be the invisible regulation (§3.?????) that says Heads I win and tails you lose. Sorry but you weren’t born on a Thursday. And if you were, we’ll just change it to the Wednesday rule. Same difference. You don’t qualify. The reason is simple. We have X amount of money for X number of Vets. Brandonomics is rough so we need more money than you. Besides, we VA employees “work” for a living and most of you don’t. Tough shit if your quality of life sucks. Imagine having to work for VA. We need three signatures for permission to go to the latrine. Get it?

Of all those who have asked for representation, none was probably more entitled than Tony. To shrink the story down, Tony was severely burned and has yet to recover completely from the burns, scars and subsequent pruritis. He has a Combat Action Ribbon so the usual PTSD and post -concussion TBI from the explosion are a given. Nobody at VA debates any of this. The problem is simple. Nobody at VA will acknowledge that his four-page Code Sheet List of disabilities actually rises to the level of needing (or being entitled by law) to a&a.  To those unschooled in medicine, pruritis is the  sensation that commands you to subconsciously scratch an itch. Now imagine the insane urge to scratch 60 percent of your body 24/7/365. The term ‘sucks” doesn’t quite describe it.

Imagine further, if you will, the sleep deficit you incur when you constantly wake up and scratch yourself so hard you bleed. Add Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and stir briskly. What the hey? How ’bout we throw in a tablespoon or two of Myocarditis with a myocardial infarction (heart attack)? What’s missing for an entitlement to SMC L? Why,  major debilitating headaches every day, of course. But SMC for housebound (rather than the higher level of true aid and attendance) status just wouldn’t be complete without major muscle injuries to the upper body and arms. Apply the tinnitus as the final topping and you had Tony as he arrived at my front doorstep at SMC S. Here’ Tony’s burn damage several days after the injury:

Shucks. It doesn’t make any difference what’s wrong with Tony… or you. Add it all up and every last one of  you missed it by thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat much-burns or no burns. As far as VA was concerned, Tony could have just climbed out of a deep fat fryer and still lost. It would seem the only way to get over this hump and put the mustard on the hotdog is to find someone that’s walked point on this and actually won.  My website seems to attract a lot of TBI Vets and we have an inordinately high success so far doing this. “We” means me and my law dog Pickles (above). Don’t laugh. She’s an integral part of asknod Inc. She keeps me focused on the task.  “Inordinately high success rate” means I haven’t lost any yet. Knock on wood. Which is not to say I decline to take hard cases. Some cases have been hamburgered by VSOs or the Veteran themselves so thoroughly, there’s no hope for them. I speak of using certain unsavory types found on the VA IMO Sh*tlist.

Once you invite these folks with truth-telling issues in to opine on your medical state, you condemn yourself to the ranks of the Flat Earth Society and Chemtrail Sniffers. VA raters open your efolder in VBMS and begin to laugh uncontrollably at your poor choices for medical opinions. Hey. It’s not your fault. These jackwads advertise or somehow gain a following on various Veterans’ Help Websites -even if they charge $10,000.00 a pop for their wild theories. I don’t doubt some have even attributed a Vet’s PTSD to Alien abduction. Name withheld to protect the naïve, hornswoggled Veteran.

Winning SMC T for TBI could be compared to sneaking up on an alligator and hogtieing him before he even smells the duct tape. You build the claim components to accentuate the deficits before you launch the frontal attack for the actual SMC itself. I watch Vets file an eighteen-wheeler full of claims and then throw the SMC  LMNOT in on the top of the heap. When the rating decision comes out, they get to read an incredibly long list of all them denials in HD stereo.

Now, one thing I do know and it’s not any Vets’ fault, but TBI/Bent Brain syndrome tends to cause chronic sleep impairment. That, in turn, begets fuzzy brain. You turn into an insomniac trying to envisage multiple scenarios on how, when and where you’re going to fight this, analyze prior failures and plan new strategies. Hey guys (and gals). I’ve been there. This movie starts in your head every night around 2030 Hrs. Don’t feel pregnant and alone. Unfortunately, you a) don’t have access to VBMS, b) can’t see what your VA opponent is holding in his hand; and c) the legal course knowledge on how to defeat their bogus illegal denials.

Not to put too fine a point on it but if you’re calling or emailing me, chances are playing SMC poker with VA didn’t pan out as you’d planned. I don’t guarantee anything but I will fight like a rabid, cornered dog for you. That’s pretty much what I did here for Tony. If you read his code sheet, it appears he has more wrong with him than he has right. He has severe burn scars with pruritis over 60% of his body. He has the usual combo of 9411-8045 with a Combat Action Ribbon to go with it. In a nutshell, he has the same identical disabilities as all the rest of my TBI clients with a heapin’ helpin’ of burn scars on top. Headaches? Check. GERD? Check. Multiple musculoskeletal damages from the aftermath of being tossed ass over teakettle after the blast. The list goes on. Dizzy. Visual auras. Hallucinations. Anger management “deficits”.

Tony came to me at about the same time Donald, Cordney, Courtney, Allen and Roger did. He won’t be the last. To be truthful, it was confusing. They were almost indistinguishable from one another as they all had so much in common. Worse, they all were either stalled out at SMC S or L or any forward progress had come to a screeching halt. Their VA rating decisions all said the same thing. “Here’s what you need to get to L but you don’t have it”. One of the decisions went into more detail and said the  Vet needed a moderate amount of help with dressing, a moderate amount of help bathing, and a moderate amount of help with medication management. Where do they find these enterprising raters who manufacture a whole new (moderate) legal standard of review? Either you can accomplish the activities of daily living most of the time (but not continuously)… or you can’t. Either you can cook for yourself…or you can’t without burning down the house.

Tony had gone out of his way(as had a few of the others) to obtain Independent Medical  Opinions (IMOs) documenting his need for a&a but still didn’t get any traction. I won’t go into a long diatribe about why but it’s a vintage VA denial technique.  VA has been in this  disability business since the Revolutionary War and actually have become quite the consummate denial factory. For the most part, the denial is ambiguous. Sure, at the end of the denial, they’ll insert a postscript that you have a few of the ingredients…but not all. By operation of law and §3.103(f), there’s a laundry list of what they’re required by law to tell you and suggest you obtain in order to win. Laundry list? We don’ need no stinkin’ laundry list. We have spoken. Thank you for your service. Next victim er Veteran.

And like all of these Veterans, I find myself having to fight first for the SMC L for aid and attendance and then spring the SMC T trap on them. Outside of some Special Forces, Deltas or LRPs, most of you are unfamiliar with the horseshoe ambush. There’s one way in and no one comes back out alive. I’ve heard this called Claymore Disease back in my day. With my technique, you get the a&a first while simultaneously obtaining everything evidentiary-wise needed to support your SMC T in the interim following  the closed out L claim for the aid and attendance. By the time they figure they’ve been duct taped into a T rating, it’s too late to bullshit their way out of it.

Sure. You’re going to get denied at the outset. You may snag it at the HLR but I’ve only had that happen once. Nowadays, I use the duct tape method and combine it with the Hansel and Gretel “breadcrumb” ambush. You present everything needed to qualify for T and itemize it in triplicate but don’t push it. The HLR booth bitch will take desultory notes and ignore half of it and discount the rest as the “vapors” anyway. Twenty eight minutes later, Bingo. More often than not, they’ll grant the a&a but deny the T. They don’t want that shit on their resume. It’s easier to deny on some nebulous M 21 stricture than to run the gamut of 5 or 6 RQSRVSR quality assurance checks which eventually question whether you were raised by wolves. Oh. And forget the Christmas bonus, bubba.

SMC T is a second cousin to Unicorns and pots of gold guarded by leprechauns. Sure. They exist, but like ol’ Nessie in the Loch of Ness, it’s an utter bitch to get a picture of her (assuming arguendo ‘she’ identifies as a cisgender female and uses those pronouns). Add into the equation the Heads I win/Tails you lose technique  and you begin to understand why you can’t get to T from here.

Tony had all the ingredients but he couldn’t assemble them all into a coherent attack because he thought VA was there for him. By the time he realized his mistake, he’d used  up all his hand grenades, shot his 249 dry and we had to concoct a brand new ambush. This is where having VBMS is a Godsend. Your efolder is chronological and well laid out. All the old evidence is carefully assembled and word-searchable. You do the dumpster dive on the file and assemble all the “hoo-doggies, he needs a&a” from 2014 to 2023. VA finally concedes he does… but only as of last week. And then you begin anew with Phase II and set up the horseshoe T ambush. It’s a recipe. Just like baking cookies.

Merry Christmas Tony. We’re halfway there. I have his HLR informal conference and some duct tape set up for next Wednesday to give the HLR Reviewer plenty of time to recover from his/her/their hangover. I must confess I’m kinda lost on this whole plural pronoun thing re the folks who aren’t totally dialed in to what’s down there in their underwear. Is this a Sybil gig with multiple personalities like the ’60s movie? Not that it matters, mind you. Just my Tourette’s rearing its ugly head. All these queshuns runnin’ ’round my brain. Anyway, here’s Act II of the  SMC T Program.

Redact a&a RD 12.18.2023

Redact CS a&a 12.18.2023

Stay tuned next week (0r next Spring) for the exciting conclusion. The one thing I can always guarantee my Veterans is I will prevail. Defeat is not an option with VA. As most know, my mantra has always been Win or Die™. Seriously. I even patented it and the flag.

TTFN

And Christmas (or any other post) just wouldn’t be complete without Ed the LURP’s video contributions…