Thank you for the opportunity to speak about this.
It was clear that the injuries were related to service, and I have awards for a couple of specific joints. However, as an overall whole person, when I applied for the specific condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, despite there clearly being information in my medical records, the Veterans Affairs medical officer who reviewed the file....
I actually have a copy of it, because I'm appealing it. The BPA provided me with that to provide my civilian doctor.
The Veterans Affairs medical officer zoomed in on the medically unexplained symptoms, so he pulled out evidence of the mental health department saying that it was all in my head. A couple of physicians said, “Yes, you're flexible, but that's normal. That's nothing. You're just stressed and you need to get more sleep in order to manage your stress.”
I'm in the process of appealing it, but because there are no guarantees it's going to be successful, my case manager advised me to apply for each individually affected joint. I currently have an award for my left shoulder, my lower back and bilateral hips.
Once I was denied the overall condition, I submitted additional applications for my neck, my right shoulder, bilateral wrists, bilateral thumbs and bilateral ankles, and I was immediately sent a medical form for each individual joint. I have to have a medical appointment with my family physician for each individual one. I am extremely fortunate to have a family physician, and I am extremely fortunate that she's willing to spend the time on that, but that takes away from treating my other conditions. That takes time in her schedule away from other patients, and it's ridiculous. My physiotherapist is doing the measurements for the range of motion and could easily fill out the forms, but it has to be a medical officer.
I can't fill out the forms on my own. I need help to do that and then I need help processing that. All my energy is going towards that, so I can't apply for other conditions.
I have gastrointestinal issues. I have issues with my autonomic nervous system. As a result of all of this other stuff, I have a condition that resembles long COVID. I had it before COVID happened, and it's debilitating.