Veterans Claims Help

Update on Minot-area HCV outbreak: From 3 cases to 40 cases from an unknown common source

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Laura

This October I wrote about the North Dakota cluster of acute (recently infected) cases of genetically linked HCV from the same geographical region. It can’t happen in Ward County? Well, it did yet North Dakotan journalists must find the subject boring even though the Minot HCV outbreak is already larger than Exeter Hospital’s 32 cases–and where far more people were tested. (Only 500 people in the Minot area have been screened thus far.)

HCVs are opportunistic little devils that take happy advantage of the endless ways they can slip into new hosts wherever health care is provided. A nursing home may have been the setting for this transmission. But they point to the possibility that any of their infected patients may have first contracted HCV in a hospital, prior to admittance to their nursing home. And that hasn’t been ruled out yet.

The ND state epidemiologist, Tracy Miller, is still investigating but hasn’t released much information. Administer Kirby Kruger doesn’t sound worried. He stated:

“It’s important to remember that hepatitis C is not spread through the air, but instead through blood, and it is not spread easily,” said Kirby Kruger, director of the state Health Department’s Division of Disease Control. “At this point, we do not believe the general population to be at risk for hepatitis C related to this outbreak.”

Someone needs to clue him in on just how virile HCV is since the rising numbers of known cases doesn’t alarm him. The ND Dept. of Health press releases report these numbers:

August 12: 3 cases; October 16, 7 cases; October 17, 28 cases (revised to 27); October 30: Testing expanded again; November 12, 35 cases; Nov. 19, 40 cases.

Image is not of the actual victims.

Not spread easily? They know that 40 people were infected with HCV in a relatively short period of time from one common source in ND. The house is on fire. We, the general public, need to know what happened in Minot as soon as possible.

Posted in Guest authors, HCV Health, HCV Risks (documented), Medical News | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Gulf War Vets Help, HCV, HCV Decisions, HCV Health Tips, HCV Veterans, HCVETS, Help with vA Claims, Help with vA HCV Claims., Helping Veterans, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, VA claims, Veterans claims help, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | Leave a comment

ANOTHER VA SECURITY BREACH

Posted on December 6, 2013 by asknod

If you haven’t heard yet, the VA has once again stepped on their collective necktie. When not busy leaving expensive laptops in plain view in vehicles in high-crime areas, they now have been busted for all but printing out our SSNs on our VA ID cards. Yeppers, folks. Spread the word.

While I’m not very prone to drag out my VA ID and proudly wave it around, if I lose my wallet, there’s a high probability that a motivated criminal with a bar code reader app in his cel phone can pull it out without much fuss. That, along with your DOB and a few other metrics like an address off your driver’s license is just about all that is needed to buy a new car on your brand new credit card you didn’t know you had yet.

Be aware. It’s a new world out there and some of the people inhabiting it are not your friends. The good old days of stamping it on your dog tags is gone. The new VA card will be out next year so protect the one you have. What the hey. Take a pair of shears and cut the bar code off. If the VA weenies down at the VAMC blow an ass gasket, give them your opinion of their intelligence. Go ahead. Be brutally honest but do it with a smile. They’re already batting .1000 on stupidity as it is. This just confirms it.

By the way, google VA ID cards on the ‘image’ setting and you can view any of the above cards. I do hope they are merely facsimiles of real ones. And if you know any of these guys, tell them their images are published there (at Google).

Posted in VA security Breaches | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Gulf War Vets Help, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, VA claims, VA Security Lapse on ID cards, Veterans claims help, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 10 Comments

HCV LONGEVITY @ ROOM TEMPERATURE

Posted on December 4, 2013 by asknod

USS Mayflower

Wowser. Just the right calibre ammo for that HCV claim where they say everything is pristine clean and HCV is not a “robust ” virus such as it’s close cousins HBV/HAV on the other side of the sheets. This will poke a hole in one of VA’s prized arguments that HCV can barely survive on a needle for sharing drugs but dies left out in the open to it’s own devices. My advice is to download and print it for inclusion of a general nature to show the VA you were not on the original Mayflower manifest. This will defeat many an argument by making it a nonstarter conversationally. A warm thank you to Patricia for putting this one out there.

Posted in HCV Health, HCV Risks (documented), research | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, DIY vA Claims, Gulf War Claims Help, Gulf War Vets Help, HCV, HCV Decisions, HCV Health Tips, HCV Veterans, HCVETS, Help with vA Claims, Help with vA HCV Claims., Helping Veterans, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, VA claims, VA HCV Claims Help, Veterans claims help, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 3 Comments

UGLY STATISTICS ON DISABLED VETS BEING HIDDEN

Posted on December 4, 2013 by asknod

This hardly surprises me. ‘Pop’ Smoke sends us this news flash which should hardly come as a surprise but does. In the early stages of World War II, this was commonplace. Roosevelt did not want America to lose heart at the outset when our casualties were enormous in the South Pacific. He ‘sat’ on them for years and the truth did not out until after the war. I think we’re all big boys and girls now and can stomach the truth- however unpalatable it may be.

Here, we have the enigma of a self-described ‘open, transparent administration’ which suddenly has become opaque. Suddenly glasnost from the C in C, who promised to extricate us from Iraqistan, is in short supply.

Winning a military engagement is pursued with gusto. Half-measures result in unnecessary casualties. A three-to-one force majority, in conjunction with air superiority is employed and a guaranteed outcome ensues. This fact is tried and true. It has never been otherwise. Yet we have embarked on a policing mission that is anathema to troops in place. Look no further than the type and number of the injuries. It mirrors the carnage of the sixties and early seventies in Southeast Asia. Amputations and loss of limbs once again lead the statistics.

If our troops are injured, so be it. Let’s get them help. Shuffling them into a backwater corner of Walter Reed away from the prying eyes of the media is not what we need. Honesty is. A frank assessment of what the needs list is and prompt attention to these troops to get them help is in order rather than getting reelected on broken promises.

I personally do not care what the Agenda du jour is anymore. I cannot change the bellicose nature of nations nor can I incite my own nation to do what’s right. Somewhere, we made a decision politically to abandon reason and press on with appearances. As usual, the ones who lose are those who can ill afford it. This is not an argument about ‘Bush lied, thousands died’. I note Reagan was not repetitively blaming Jimmy ‘the peanut’ Carter for getting him into a jam economically five years after he was elected a second time. Neither was Clinton overly inclined to take Bush 41 to task for America’s malaise.

The parallels to the Vietnam War and the familiar, concomitant fallout now are striking. Using CIA logic (if we don’t discuss it, they won’t come bitch), the VA and the military are quietly burying this in the backwaters of VAMCs and military hospitals everywhere.

Honesty is what drives future decisions in government. Cooking the books or worse- simply removing whole chapters and secreting them out of sight in hopes no one will notice- is disingenuous and self-serving. Are we so driven by our political beliefs that we are content to obscure the truth about our injured Sons of War? To what possible purpose? Winning the next election? America deserves better. We, as Veterans deserve better.

Since writing your congressman is not the panacea it once was, I strongly suggest we use that lovely lever of democracy called the vote to effect change in the next election. I do not, nor will I ever, suggest who might be the more adroit at accomplishing this task. I don’t rightly know. Both sides seem more consumed with keeping their jobs than keeping America strong. You’re all adults. I leave that determination to you. PFC Josh Stein and his buddies demand we do something rather than bury him and his statistics at the bottom of a trash can. We tried this after Vietnam and it didn’t work very well then, either.

Posted in Food for thought, Future Veterans, Gulf War Issues | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Disabled Veteran, Gulf War Claims Help, Gulf War PTSD, Gulf War PTSD Claims, Help with vA Claims, Helping Veterans, Korean War Vets Help, vA CLAIMS FOR PTSD, VA Medical Care, Veterans claims help, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 3 Comments

FACE HUMOR AGAIN

Posted on December 3, 2013 by asknod

Time life is coming out with their new book on Teaching Your Old Cat New Tricks. You probably don’t want to miss this one. Hundreds of new ways to get Fluffy to dance and even retrieve like a Labrador. A bargain at $29.95

Posted in FACE HUMOR, Humor | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Gulf War Claims Help, Korean War Vets Help, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | Leave a comment

VA BACKLOG IN DECLINE?

Posted on December 2, 2013 by asknod

VA ratings machine

We decided to take the Ric Shinseki ‘Find a needy Vet’ challenge and see if we could find even one sick needy Vet falling through the cracks this Christmas. Turns out we didn’t have to look very far. Our very own Hepsick, Mark, got hornswoggled into a DRO review down in Oakland’s Puzzle Palace back in February of this year. For any of you who don’t know how they are manipulating the backlog, gather around and let me illuminate you.

Entering the VA jungle, you may not notice that you often lose the first time out. That is a 5 month fast-track claim or something fully developed. I am not referring to Presumptive AO diseases. They are in another office and do not count. They’re an automatic gimme but still take a year. No, I’m talking about a bad back, busted up knees or some good old-fashioned bent brain disease with a side of IED-shaken not stirred.

The glorious process only moves forward like a merry go round because there are just so many seats on the ride. The journey actually begins back in the line waiting to get on. After a period of time ( a year or two) you get off and have traversed the diameter of the merry go round circle and no further. You then get in line for the next merry go round and wait for your shot at the appeal or DRO review. This lather, rinse, repeat begins anew at each stop along the way to the Court of Veterans Appeals. Hurry up and wait. Sounds horribly familiar.

The Board of Veterans Appeals, in 2004, invented yet another VA Regional office in which to conduct Kangaroo justice and print up SSOCs to speed up the denial process. They call it the AMC and its located over on Eye Street near Vermin Ave.

To visualize this as a parody, think back on Lucille Ball in I love Lucy. Remember the hilarious scene in the bon bon factory where the chocolates overwhelmed the gals? Now picture them as VA raters yelling down the hall ” Yep. Got it. We’re on target to pump a bunch of ratings out here. Stand back.” Unfortunately the filing cabinets are stuffed, the storage areas are swamped, the building is being structurally tortured and the claims pile up.

When it begins to look like they may get hoist on their own petard come Monday Morning, they merely create a new file or column and label it “Fast Track Claims” When it begins to overflow, they’ll bifurcate it again or another one similar.

Mr. Hepsick has been riding these merry go rounds now for seven years and has won. The next merry go round he boarded gave him a 20% rating in spite of his painfully obvious condition. There’s a reason for this. If he goes away, they have less Mark work to do. If he files a NOD for a higher rating, that is an appeal and Mark has to go get in the appeal line. While standing there, the VA asked him if he was a real glutton for punishment. He answered in the affirmative and signed up for a magic 585 day DRO review. They promptly sent him out for the C&P that they should have done before rating him and had him move over to the Group W bench. And no, it wasn’t named after a guy from Texas. W stands for Wait. As in A Long Wait.

Back in the days, the old, senior raters would see one of these come in and pull it out of the stack. Off Mark would go to the VAMC for a checkie-checkie and bingo- home again, home again. Instead, with a limited number of seats, he will get on several more merry go rounds and eventually get off at 100% Permanent and Total. He knows this. VA knows this. It’s a game. Unfortunately for us, the game is getting longer. We are assured that the corner has been turned and a new dawn is just a year or less away. Yet Mark gets bushwhacked with a knowingly lowballed rating forcing him into an appeal posture to protect himself. Welcome to merry go round number 2 -your very first post-BVA win appeal for a real rating.

In case none of you recognize this, it is the VAMC version of a DBQ for Hepatitis. They are only now doing it post-appeal. This should have been done before the rating in February.

Mark’s C&P DBQ

How is it then that this is allowed to happen? February 2013 to approximately August-December 2014 for a DRO decision on whether the Markster gets a full ride? This must be some kind of heavy reading. Why you’d have to wait until Hell freezes over to get someone to give this the once over and a rubber stamp is crazy. That is the depths unto which we have now subsided. Just think if we didn’t have VBMS or Veterans Service Organizations. You wonder how long it would takes then, huh? Naw. I’m not gonna go there.

Posted in C&P exams, VA BACKLOG, Veterans Law | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Gulf War Vets Help, HCV, HCV Decisions, HCV Health Tips, HCV Veterans, HCVETS, Help with vA Claims, Help with vA HCV Claims., Helping Veterans, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, VA claims, VA HCV Claims Help, Veterans claims help, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 8 Comments

ILP GREENHOUSE UPDATE

Posted on December 2, 2013 by asknod

Organic, gmo-free, green heat. Click on picture

Here’s the latest from CBS. VA Vocation Rehabilitation Counselor tells Veteran to man up and heat his own greenhouses. Veteran, In vain attempt to protect what’s left of his liver and keep organic food on the table, enlists help of local power company and his horses. Veteran signs pact to only buy “green” electricity generated by wind in eastern Washington and thus reduces global warming. Horses sign mutual trade agreement to deliver “green heat” for apples, rolled oats and leftover carrots.

Green electricity imported from eastern Washington. Like they say, it costs more if you’re trying to save the world.

Being space-challenged because Broccoli is rude makes it difficult to walk into my smaller greenhouse. Lettuce is on track to be ready by Easter if we don’t have a cold snap.

Gee, I may get my ILP appeal certified and sent to Washington for a BVA decision sometime in 2015 or 2016. Good thing this backlog business is over.

Posted in Food for the soul | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Food for Vets, Gulf War Claims Help, Korean War Vets Help, Service Connection, VA claims, Veterans claims help, Veterans For Food, Vietnam Veterans Claims Help. | 2 Comments

GEN. MOSES & THE PONTOON BRIDGE

Posted on December 1, 2013 by asknod

Yo! 14 cubits wide. Got it?

From the seasonally festive Battle Creek Law Offices of Law Bob Courtpants comes this endearing Army version of the story. I had no idea. It’s from a former Airborne weenie, so you have to take it with a grain a salt. A very large one, in fact.

Nine-year-old Joey, who tended toward drama, was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday School.

Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Lt. General Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt . When they got to the Red Sea , he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent in bombers to blow up the bridge. In the meantime, after the fighters achieved air superiority, they strafed and naped the Egyptian Forces. The A-10s took out the chariots and dropped CBU-26/49 delayed to impede their withdrawal. It was a complete route and the Israelites made a brilliant tactical retreat into their homeland.’

‘Now, Joey, is that really what your teacher taught you?’ his Mother asked.

‘Mom. If I told you the teacher’s version, you’d put me on restriction for a month and make me start seeing a shrink!’

Israelites crossing the Red Sea

Posted in Humor | Tagged ASKNOD BOOK, asknod.org, asknod@wordpress.com, Gulf War Claims Help, Korean War Vets Help, VA claims, Veterans claims help, Veterans Humor | Leave a comment

T-DAY FOOD STORIES

Posted on November 27, 2013 by asknod

Every year I contribute some whiney complaint about the world and VA. This year is different. I feel positively ebullient so I will tell stories of my former life. The first concerns rotten butter. If you smoke cigarettes, you really can’t smell or taste with any finesse. I couldn’t.

When we moved over here to the country in 1989 from the bustling metropolis of Tukwila, I had inherited a refrigerator from a neighbor. This worked out well as we were renting until we got the lay of the land and found the right area to buy in. The refer sat in my garage for over 8 months before we moved over and we promptly installed it in the kitchen of our temporary abode. After about a month, I happened to get up early and make breakfast one weekend. Zooming about, I found butter in the butter door of the refer right where you would keep it. Hell, it even said butter right on the little flip up door. After a spell, Cupcake drifted in and immediately started complaining about some disagreeable aroma that smelled like rotten food. I dutifully took the trash out and also absentmindedly put the butter away. Several days later I was having my morning ritual of English muffins with fresh clover honey (again) when the Queen of Wauna announced (once again) that there was something nasally amiss. This time nothing could dissuade her from the hunt. It ended up at my face. We’d been out of butter for several days so she also wanted to know where I found it. Shoot, I ate far worse in Southeast Asia including monkey ball soup and Fig Newtons one night in the dark covered with those little black piss ants that used to get into everything. She wouldn’t kiss me for a month.

Several years later, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper as I always did in the early morning before taking off. If women only knew how important it was for us to read the obits, the tools for sale and other earthshattering subjects, they would never pester us at this crucial time of the morning. Buff, the Bichon Frisé had a rash, poor dear, and I was the pill giver. Women don’t like to get dog saliva on their hands and dogs do not cotton to taking their pills civilly. Cupcake laid the prednisone pills on the table where she normally put my vitamins and said “Don’t forget to give these to Buff.” Deeply engrossed in whether Clinton was going to outlaw 30-rd clips for black guns, I absent-mindedly nodded. As I finished up and prepared to bug out, the Okesan asked again “Did you give those to Buff?” Give what to Buff? The pills? Hell, I ate ’em.

Lastly, one evening I was cleaning up with Buckwheat jr. before I went up to bed. On the counter was what appeared to be powdered sugar. Well, hey Pilgrim. Powdered sugar usually means powdered dessert somewhere, right? I reached over and dabbed my finger in it and gave it the old taste test. Definitely not sugar but it had a weird taste for the kitchen. I made a second pass over it. Buckwheat Jr. ran upstairs and announced I was eating unidentified powder off the counter. This caused Cupcake to fall to the ground convulsing in laughter. My fame for eating anything had finally preceded me. She and Buckwheat came down, and with straight faces, asked me if I had figured out what it was. I offered them a taste but no way doggies. When Molly, my labrador refused to lick it, I knew it was going to be ugly. Turns out Punkin was busting up laundry powder that had become clumped together and pouring it back into the box with a funnel. I don’t recommend it but it won’t kill you. It cleans the palate, too. Sort of – you know -like when you’re at a wine tasting and one of those squirrelly Frenchie wannabes says “Here, ‘ave a table cracker. It will cleanse the palate before your next sip.”

I learned something that evening. If the dog won’t go for it, you probably shouldn’t either. I’m betting ol’ Molly Pop would have snarked down that rotten butter faster than you can say Jack Robinson, though. Anyone could have made that mistake. The butter wasn’t some horrible color of green and as for the detergent, it did look like powdered sugar. I’m not stupid, you know. I don’t eat just any old thing I find lying around.

Happy T-day and watch what you eat…