Hello, I’m Travis Studdard, a veteran’s disability attorney and I want to follow up
on my last video talking about the combined effects of service-connected disabilities
and your TDIU claim—how to use those to prove your overall unemployable situation.
So I want to talk and give you a specific example that we run across and have helped
some veterans with in the past, which is someone who has a relatively severe low back disability
that is service-connected and rated by VA and also has a service-connected PTSD disability.
Let’s think about how those two interplay and connect with each other.
Taking the low back disability first, someone that’s say 20% or 40% for their low back,
they’re likely limited in what they can do physically.
Oftentimes they’re limited to what we call “sedentary work” which is, I may do this
in a later video, but sedentary work is office or sitting-type work where there is very light
lifting, say 10 pounds or so, required or less and again mostly sitting rather than
standing or walking.
So, again, that is on account of low back pain and limited function.
So now again that by itself may not render the person unemployable, however, they also
have PTSD and they’re treating doctor for PTSD says that they have difficulty creating
or maintaining relationships, they have difficulty interacting with others, they have difficulty
dealing with stress and either criticism or direction from other people and are better
suited to be working by themselves or in a situation or environment with less interaction
from others.
Now again, a lot of jobs in that situation are more physical or manual labor type environment
where there is less interaction and it is based on the person doing real physical work.
So again, that’s sort of a mismatch.
On the one hand, the PTSD says don’t be around others in a closed office-type environment
and the back injury says you’re limited to an office environment where you’re surrounded
by others most likely throughout your work day.
Those are irreconcilable and you know, you’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you
don’t because either way, well not either way but put together, you are kind of out
of luck in terms of employment.
So again, if you have that particular situation and you are in fact not working then you probably
should consider filing for TDIU benefits.
If you’ve done that and been denied then that’s probably something where you need
to have a lawyer who practices VA disability work review that and give you his or her opinion
on whether there is a viable appeal there and we’d be happy to look at that for you.
You can reach out to us on our website at winyourvetclaim.com, you can get a free consultation
there, we also have other videos and other articles related to this topic, related to
PTSD, related to low back disabilities and how those are evaluated as well as TDIU benefits
in general.
So check those out and we will catch you here next time.
Thank you for watching this one and we’ll see you later.