Finally, someone put this to rest with a concise study. Yes it is possible. In many cases it was the only known risk factor. The fact that VA lists it as a risk in the Risk Factors Questionnaire is a dead giveaway. Regardless, VA has been known to say it isn’t or that the risk is so statistically insignificant as to be unmeasurable. This study revokes the myth. As Murphy has been quick to point out over the years, if it can’t happen—it will.
![image_thumb[1]](https://asknod.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/image_thumb1.png)
Here’s a great article to keep us to speed on what medical science has uncovered as secondaries to HCV.
The email that prompts this is tempered by the magnificent game I watched yesterday. Having been raised in Seahawks since their inception in 1976, I have been captive of their dismal performances over the years. Nevertheless, I always kept faith with them. Yesterday simply confirmed what we all come to realize about life and our commitment to our morals-never say die. Not even if it takes thirty eight years. Having just put twenty years of the VA process under my belt, I see a strong parallel. Which brings me to the email.
Juanita asks “What is all this about ‘Win or Die’. I keep reading references to it but no how-to to employ it. Is it some kind of inside joke or just a tag line to sell your book?” Valid points that bear an explanation, Juanita. I apologize.
In honor of you, Juanita, I will name my next book ‘Win Or Die’. Allow me to tell you of the wondrous Win or Die logo and it’s meanings. It was born in the early days of 1978. We held yearly soapbox derby-type competitions in what was known at Pike Place Alley in front of the actual Market before being drunk in public fell out of style. This is in downtown Seattle up towards the north end above Elliot Bay. You may have seen pictures of fishmongers throwing around 25 lb. King Salmon in June.
ETOH was a prerequisite and the prime lubricant of this festivity. My company’s entry (Midnight Electric and Plumbing Co. or MEPCO) was an all-black, all-metal child’s type car from the fifties. It was probably a fire engine at one time with the little ladders on the side and the little push pedals down inside with the Geneva gear. Sub-par steering rounded out the product. And sub-par steering was our downfall that year compounded by downing far too much Tanqueray. Tango does, however, mask the pain of lacerations. But wait. There’s more. Amazing for morale and good for sterilizing deep lacerations, too.
Ours still had the bell but was sans ladders. It was also sans the rubber on the right rear tire but did not seem to impair steering. Since the whole thing was 50 yards downhill to the right, it really didn’t appear to be a traction issue– on paper. You’ll notice the metal poles in the picture above. Newtonian physics refers to them as immovable objects as we came to find out.
The vehicle was prepped, painted flat black and our welder Roger had beefed it up with some Ben Hur spurs on the sides to impale any competitors who messed with us. And the logo was chosen by the wife of Bubba. She was the artist and worked for some outfit that did commercial art. Being free, she won the contract and we all agreed she was the best. We had no idea how good she was. When we saw the logo we immediately upgraded to a high gloss black over the primer. This was a class act. The logo was assiduously transferred to the hood. Off with the Bell. Get out the bondo. And this, Juanita, was what Ruth came up with. We had t-shirts made and ended up having to make dozens more for Race Day.
Given a narrow mandate in keeping with liquor, guns, violence, single malt Scotch and victory, she unveiled her masterpiece. It took her two weeks but will be remembered forever.
Now, in its new iteration as an aid to VA claims, I bring the same intensity to prosecuting them- without the liquor and guns, of course. It’s not some cute catch phrase. It is not a verbal hook. It means, quite simply, that in order to win your claims, you have to be prepared to begin early. You have to be prepared to wait interminable months and years. Your patience and fortitude must surpass that of Job himself. If you are not in this to win, you shouldn’t even throw down. Since an inordinate number of us were stupid and didn’t begin until we were much older and discovered the problem, many of us die in the process of waiting.
Win or Die is a mindset. It is the fabric of desperation. It’s forged in the same oven of commitment you enjoyed in the military. Many who begin early on, accomplish much and have the rest of their lives to enjoy. Many who wait suffer financial hardship and ruin with a good number dying while still waiting. Currently, 53 Veterans a day pass away with unadjudicated claims and appeals. Win or Die is an inducement to take control of your claim yourself. Treat it like an automobile fender bender claim. Joe Idiot hit you from behind and he owes you.
Win or Die is a concept of how to fight your claim. It’s roots are found here and at other places like Hadit.com. A select number of people have been through what you have and can share their experiences. We can contribute law and technique from those who have run the race and won–and lost. Yes. There is knowledge to be gained there as well. We can tell you about exciting new precedent from the CAVC and the Federal Circuit that may affect your technique or aid you better in the pursuit of your claims.
Win or Die is lastly a philosophy of Life. It teaches you to pursue it to the end-up to and including after death. If your claim has merit, your spouse should pick up that banner and march forward. If you make that commitment to your claim(s), you will be surprised with the results. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The longer your claim has been ping-ponged back and forth, hamster-wheeled to DC and back, and readjudicated, the higher your chances of success. Much higher.
Win or Die reveals the secret of improving your odds the higher you go on appeal. It reveals how to ensure you do not make claim-killing errors. Mostly, it teaches how not to lose. My book left off as I was waiting for the BVA to hear my appeal. I lost when I was confident of a win, but I was prepared for the loss. In fact, I had prepared for it much like hanging a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I prevailed due to all the hard work done six years earlier, not at the last moment in desperation. When not fishing, cut bait. And that, in a nutshell, is Win or Die. With the amount of time required to make this happen, it’s like community service. Every sixteen months there’s a flurry of activity and then morose boredom for another year. Win or Die is related to it’s close cousin ‘Git ‘er done’.
Mark, or Hepsick as he has used as a handle over the years, has had one of the hardest, nastiest examples of a VA HCV claim. Imagine the worst case of circumstances–then multiply it by two 48 week courses of Bug Juice. Both were unsuccessful and Mark says it was like being drug through a knothole backwards.
Mark came to me with a sad VSO tale. His service rep down in the land of the fruits and the nuts (California) had stood him up from 2002-2006. Finally, Mr. Bob Penny forgot to send in Mark’s Form 9 and all the the hard work was lost. Of course, Ol’ Bob hadn’t told Mark about things like nexus letters and the Caluza Triangle of evidence needed. Bob, like all his buddies at the California Dept. Of Vet Affairs, was a mailman-and not even a good one at that.
In November 2006, he began all over. By his first denial in round two, he spotted our old Delphi Board and contacted me about his problems. Fresh off my own new win for the Hep, I started helping him assemble all the things needed to win with. This becomes increasingly more difficult when you screw it up like Mr. Bad Penny did. Each time requires new and material evidence to reopen. Fortunately Bob managed that part right. Mark finally packaged it up while I was doing my one year stint as an inpatient at the Seattle VAMC. It took a long time but he won. We won. Bob Penny sure didn’t but acted as though he had carried the water. Mark’s saving grace in all this was a lovely picture of him and his buddy showing off their brand new tattoos in the barracks parking lot at Ft. Hood in Texas- in 1977. That was the winning ticket. An old, washed out Polaroid One-Step photo was all that had stood between him and a 100% rating. Once the BVA judge saw it, Mark’s claim was in the bag.
When Mark reconnected with me in February 2013, I discovered he had followed some more destructive advice from old Bob and filed a DRO review with Oakland over their low ball offer of 20% for his hep. Bob explained as how he was going to get Mark 80%. News flash. There is no 80% rating in DC 7354 but that’s the wonderful help you expect from a VSO. Keeping in mind that Oakland is also over 585 days out on DROs and you can see the makings of backlogus maximus. Ex Lax couldn’t break up this log jam. On Janauary 2, we opted to call in the the Legal Eagle– Katrina Eagle, to be more succinct. Mark got his Big Brown Envelope several days ago with the 100% P&T. Nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing this Vet win after fighting and being given bogus VSO assistance over and over.
The NOD HQ in sunny NW Washington.
Speaking of Big Brown Envelopes…
I want to share the good news that my husband’s disability claim has been largely 
successful–although he was denied HCV. We received a decision in under one year and the information found on this website was critical.
Nonetheless, there is much to learn. For example, I thought that the VA was obligated to order a C & P exam for HCV but apparently, they do not.
My spouse, a former Marine, served in the Republic of Vietnam. He was lucky because he lived to return home–albeit to a hostile social environment–but unlucky because he has many health issues directly connected to his military service. For decades we tried to discuss a little about his military experiences but it was too emotional. We just couldn’t revisit that part of his past. I often felt serious bouts of paralysis when we were preparing paperwork for the VA. Without the stories shared by ASKNOD members, paralysis might well have won out. Life will be a little easier for us now because we found the needed support here to act. To get those statements written and mailed out, something so seemingly simple, were Herculean tasks.
But we will carry on learning and advocating for veterans, past, present and future.
In the process of cutting up a cantaloupe the other night, Cupcake came over from stir frying and said “Don’t forget to save the Alpha seeds.” Thinking I’d been lost in space for a lifetime, I immediately looked at what most men might refer to as a shitpile of seeds more closely. I had a feeling this was going to be a teaching moment. Having been brought up in a civilized family and now being a lot more in charge of the kitchen, I commented that there were so many happy seeds that it was hard to determine just exactly which ones were the desired Alphas. This was insider knowledge. Martha Stewart didn’t even know about this stuff. Apparently, neither did I. This smelled of garden and that is my domain.
Cupcake immediately pointed out the little one I had hit with the knife that got pushed out when I cut it in half. And yes, it did look like it was boldly attempting to go where Alpha seeds go in desperation to exit the melon and seek a new home. Why, I had no idea. She proceeded to explain about the birds and the bees and how the Alpha sperm swims faster and more surely and arrives at the egg first. This is why the human race always improves and each generation is more intelligent than the preceding one. I tried to fit that into the context of the Veterans Administration and decided not to go there that evening.
However, I did pop her balloon and explained about the knife. She allowed as how it was a lot like finding out about Santa Claus being a hoax at 52. Personally, I was flat out relieved. I finally figured out where all those bags of cantaloupe seeds with one or two in each one were coming from. I had been planning to set my game camera up in the kitchen and make sure I wasn’t sleepwalking or going off the reservation at night.
Alpha 6 Actual
I have thought long and hard about how I would write about this event. What the hey? I had twenty years to contemplate it. I was alerted, as many of you have observed on your own claims, to the imminent deposit of a large, well, extremely large, amount of funds several days into the future last Friday. Unsurprisingly, Monday morning brought the Big Brown Envelope- or BBE as some of you over at Hadit like to refer to it. Judging by it’s weight, it was obviously not a four-page denial with apologies about how they tried soooo hard to grant if they only could but were forced to deny due to those nasty laws Congress enacted that prevent them from being generous.
Having fought this long, I was prepared for some long, convoluted Fenderson rating that would simply begin the fight anew. I have watched VA do this innumerable times and fully expected the same treatment. A slow, pedantic grant of 20 or 30% for hepatitis under the old DC 7345 Hepatitis schedule followed by a new NOD. Two more years of DRO review and then back to DC at the BVA for yet another fight. I was prepared for this. I had fully expected it. What I think may have happened is that VA is aware of this Blog. I certainly have not made any secret of it.
My surprise at seeing the Appeals Management Center logo on the address was complete. The claim, by rights, should have gone back to the Seattle Regional Office for the Fenderson staged rating determination to ascertain just exactly how ill I was and when. This can only be done legally by what is in the C-file. You might have newer info and you can submit it but it will take years to enter you new, electronic file. First stop is Janesville, Wisconsin for the conversion process into a .pdf. Why they cannot do this locally remains a mystery and has something to do with where they need shovel-ready jobs.
I will say that I chose to write about this from a standpoint of law. I made a commitment to teach others how to do it when I hit the wall. We can all learn from our communal denials-and from our successes. I had no idea I would be quite this good at it. I suspect that, at 3,715 pages and seven volumes (in 2011), that VA has had their fill of me. I want you to know I did not do this for the money. Ever. I was called a liar and my good name was smeared. I was told I was never in Vietnam. I was told I never had Hepatitis of any type in the service. I was told I never attended my tinnitus C&P. That is why I did this.
When I fought for my earlier effective date of my original claim, I was told so many different things that none of it added up. We call this credibility. When your credibility is shot, you are not believed by anyone. VA went so far as to say they had looked at my new evidence submitted in 1994 but that none of it was “material”. It became a case of controversy rather than law. I contended I had submitted new and material evidence. VA maintained that I had not mailed in my Form 9 and it was game over for failure to perfect an appeal. No one opened the C-file to ascertain the truth of my contentions. New denials all the way up to the BVA continued the same hackneyed phrases cut and pasted for a new Texas Necktie Party.
This continued all the way to the CAVC. There, a smart cookie named Emily Purcell of the OGC decided to do her homework and discovered the horrible truth- VA had received the new evidence December 7th, 1994 and never actually done anything with it. A bargain was hastily struck over back channel emails and it was whisked back to the BVA for a long overdue do-over. Judge Mark Hinden wasn’t too impressed, but with an OGC sword at his back, he was forced to admit the truth and grant.
Here the claim sat for- hold on to something- nine days- before the AMC, or Black Hole as we know it, jumped on it and cranked out the grant on December 3rd, 2013. As you can well imagine, it took three signatures to sign off on this redistribution of wealth. I received it Monday the 27th of January. As most know, the AMC can’t even take a pee break in less than a week. Most Veterans who enter there on remand disappear for years and wander out dazed and confused. Nine days is like Hans and Chewey’s Millenium Falcon making the Kessel run at .65 lightspeed.
I do not like to talk about what I received financially. I wasn’t raised that way. I know you can figure it out simply by clicking on the Backpay calculator widget above under the Vietnam Campaign Medal but I still hesitated to reveal it. I choose to show you because it illustrates 1) how they do it and 2) that they rarely do things this way. Somebody, and it was not my rainmaker, decided that this squeaky wheel had been making too much noise for far too long.
To be honest, if you took all my medical records as a whole, you would never come to the conclusion I was 100% disabled solely by the Hepatitis in 1994. I suffered from a bad back due to one of my pilots choosing to park a PC-6 C in some trees. That might have been good back to 89 if I refiled the CUE and pursued it for 20% X six years. I suffered from Crohn’s which has not been determined to be related to Agent Orange. I did suffer from Porphyria Cutanea Tarda and scarring but my Hepatitis Doctor opted to tie it in as a secondary to the Hepatitis and guarantee a VA rating rather than fight the crazy PCT rules VA has on it. Oddly, you will not find any mention of PCT in the grant. It’s simply a blank sheet—100% from 1994 with P&T. No major discussion of why they gave 100% back to then and you all just know how much VA likes to play with words for paragraph after paragraph on how they determined you are eligible for 0% on hemorrhoids and hearing. I don’t have any hemorrhoids. I do have 0% for hearing but it’s just in my left ear. That was the one closest to the Mk 82 that landed way too close one time.
The rating decision is here.
1994 HCV decision dated 12-3-2013
As I say, I offer the payout sheet as a summary so others can see what it looks like and dream their dreams too. It can be done. Do not let any chucklehead from the VA or a VSO convince you it cannot be done. The words of Pat Buyer, the Military Order of the Purple Heart representative I fired in 2008 said: ” Let’s get something perfectly straight. You are never going to win this Hepatitis claim-ever. You aren’t going to win the AO claim for Porphria either. I can get you the tinnitus for 10% and you ought to just go home happy. That’s how VA works. Get used to it and don’t make waves. ”
Ladies and gentlemen Vets, I give you quite possibly the shortest Fenderson rating ever produced by VA- and also one of the most inaccurate. Why do I say this without fear of VA reprisal? Because on March 30th, 2014–a mere sixty days from now– my rating is protected due to it’s being over twenty years old. VA couldn’t find their ass with a methane detector in sixty days. Remember also, that as a finding of fact, it cannot be overturned unless the VA files a CUE claim against themselves and declares it null and void. That would be difficult even for them at this late stage of the game.
Rating explanation and amounts
I take no pride in whipping these guys. If they had done what they should have in 1994, we wouldn’t have this blog. Because they did not, we do. Over forty of you have benefited so far from this course knowledge with more arriving daily. That is what we do-one Vet helping another with no expectation of remuneration for doing so. I also take no pleasure in the increase in wealth. Sorry. No Corvettes. I am blessed and it isn’t a make or break issue. It was done for all of you to illustrate how, and often why, you need to do certain things to protect yourselves. My grandchildren and other needy Vets will benefit from the VA’s largesse. Pay it forward to those who need it most.
P.S. you just know I’m going to drop by the MOPH and thank old Pat for that spot-on advice back in 2007.
Bieber being informed of
his right to remain stupid
On Thursday morning, Miami Police released the first pictures of Veteran Justin Bieber who was recently arrested for juvenile mental delinquency. Bieber, who claims to be a Veteran of numerous “musical deployments”, insists he is innocent of all but the drug charges and will be vindicted as soon as “mommy” can be reached. (Photo courtesy of Carol Jacobs).
From my cousin Denise in Idaho. I appreciate her concern for America. I also value Navy Veterans for their spot on advice at this troubling time in America’s history. Perhaps the government should listen to the pearls of wisdom that emanate from those who have been there. Obviously, this statement unfairly tarred and feathered numerous former drunken sailors of all stripes. Frankly, I’m amazed that more have not voiced a similar dissent. Considering we could probably reduce the world production of whiskey simply by reducing the numbers of the standing US Naval forces, this is sage advice indeed.
A U.S.Marine Colonel was about to start the morning briefing with his staff. While waiting for the coffee machine to finish brewing, the colonel decided to pose a question to all assembled. He explained that his wife had been a bit frisky the night before and he failed toget his usual amount of sound sleep. He posed the question of just how much of sex was “work” and how much of it was “pleasure?”
A Major chimed in with 75%-25% in favor of work.
Next, a Captain said it was 50%-50%.
A lieutenant responded with 25%-75% in favor of pleasure, depending upon his state of inebriation at the time.
There being no consensus, the colonel turned to the Lance Corporal who was in charge of making the coffee and asked for the “man on the street” opinion.
Without any hesitation, the young enlisted man responded, “100% pleasure without a doubt,sir.
The colonel was surprised but demanded a reasoned explanation.
“Well, sir, if there was any work involved in it, the officers would have me doing it for them, sir.”
The room fell silent….
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