Matthew Hill: Hello, this is Matthew Hill. I’m here with Carol Ponton from the Hill and Ponton video blog. Today we want to talk to you about C&P Exams, Compensation and Pension Exams. Specifically, what you do when you get there.
Matthew Hill: Just to rehash, we’ve been talking about these lately in the last several videos we’ve done, but the C&P Exam is the exam the VA sends you to when they believe they do not have enough medical evidence to make a decision on your case.
Matthew Hill: Most of these exams are done at VA Medical Centers, but what we’re seeing is more and more there’s a lot of exams done outside the VA with contractors. QTC … what’s the other one?
Carol Ponton: VES.
Matthew Hill: VES.
Matthew Hill: It is important to know what you’re getting into when you go to these exams. So Carol what …
Carol Ponton: Exactly.
Carol Ponton: As we’ve talked about before, unfortunately, 90% of the people at the VA who make decisions do it solely based on these exams.
Matthew Hill: Exams, got it.
Carol Ponton: They tend to ignore everything else. So this exam is crucial to winning your case. And here’s some mistakes I find that my clients make.
Carol Ponton: This is an opportunity to show this examiner what you are living with. This is not the time to dress up, to act … to shave, dress your best, try really hard to be the nicest you can be in the last year. You need to give them a true picture of what this problem has caused you.
Carol Ponton: If it’s PTSD, you need to go there dressed the way you normally dress. If you don’t normally shave, if you don’t normally bath often, if you wear crummy clothes most of the time, that’s the way you go. Let them see how you’re living.
Carol Ponton: The other thing that’s so upsetting is because, a lot of times with PTSD, your family has to put up with a lot. You are not happy. You are angry. Why do you go into your exam and be really nice to the examiner? Please don’t do that. I’m not asking you to be anything other than what you are and that’s what the examiner needs to see.
Carol Ponton: Another problem I know is with backs. If I have someone who has a physical problem, they tend to rest up before they go to the exam so that they can get there because they know it’s painful.
Matthew Hill: Right.
Carol Ponton: I tell them, don’t do that. They need to see a picture of you. If they’re going to say you can go out there and work. If they’re going to say you have no problems, you’re not helping yourself by adding to that, trying to go there when you’re in the best shape possible. Don’t rest. Just be active like you’re normally are and let them see how you are.
Matthew Hill: The point of the exam is to get a picture for the VA, from a medical standpoint, of what your life looks like day to day. How this disability affects you. How it keeps you from working. How it keeps you from being active around the house. And so, if you turn into an alter ego, or you decide that you all of a sudden-
Carol Ponton: You’re embarrassed and you want to show the best part of you, you’re not showing the true part of you.
Matthew Hill: Right, right. And yeah, you don’t want to show up on your best day ever when the other 99 days are awful and it’s … We’re not saying you lie about what you are.
Carol Ponton: Absolutely not.
Matthew Hill: And what you go through. But at the same time, it’s important to have them see how awful it is and how awful of an existence you have because of this disability.
Carol Ponton: I will have your spouse or your significant other talk to me about how you are very impatient, you get angry easily. You isolate, you don’t want to be around anybody else. You’re often in a bad mood. This is a person that needs to show up at the exam.
Matthew Hill: Right.
Carol Ponton: Not a person who says, when the examiner says, how are you? I’m fine, how are you? That is lying in its own way. It’s not showing who you really are.
Carol Ponton: Remember, when you walk in that door, they are grading you on everything. How well you’re dressed.
Matthew Hill: Right.
Carol Ponton: Are you well bathed? Are you well shaved? Are you nice? Do you seem happy? Do you seem calm?
Carol Ponton: What I’m asking is, just present the way you really are. That’s what you need to do, because these are so important.
Matthew Hill: It’s like Carol said, even if you think you’re doing great and there’s nothing wrong with you, it would be good … well, we’ll get to taking somebody with you, but, it would be good to think about what would somebody else say about you. If your spouse thinks you’ve been being a real jerk and the guy says, how are you? You could say, well, I think I’m fine, but everybody around me doesn’t. That gives a picture of what’s going on.
Carol Ponton: Exactly.
Matthew Hill: And with one thing Carol and I stress to our clients is to take somebody, a loved one, with them that see day to day what’s going on. This serves multiple purposes. The first is that they bear witness to what they can talk about. Say, hey look, he can’t get out of his chair. His back hurts him so much, or he has days where he’s bedridden.
Carol Ponton: I have to do everything for him, he can’t even bend over and pick up something off the floor.
Matthew Hill: Right.
Matthew Hill: Then, a lot of times they won’t let that person back into the actual office. And I gotta tell you, I’m okay with that ,because then that leaves your significant other, your spouse, as a timekeeper. Because a lot of times the VA will say, oh I was with this person for an hour and a half and the veteran will say, well they saw me for four minutes.
Carol Ponton: Exactly.
Matthew Hill: If you have somebody who’s been sitting in the waiting room waiting for you who can say that, one, I was not allowed back and I know what he looks like on a day to day basis. Here’s the things the doctor probably didn’t consider because I wasn’t there. And two, this is how quick the exam was because I timed it.
Carol Ponton: Another thing that’s very helpful is, that person, take a picture of you. I had a client who went in and his feet were swollen. It was unbelievable. Swollen, red, angry looking, and the examiner said they were perfectly normal.
Carol Ponton: The veteran had his wife take a picture of his feet, date it, and they both swore on a 4138 that this was what my feet looked like on the day I saw the examiner.
Matthew Hill: The day of.
Carol Ponton: I’m trying to tell you, you can make your exam either accurate about what’s going on with you, or you can let the VA decide what they’re gonna do with it. And I wouldn’t suggest that.
Matthew Hill: It’s your case. You should be in control.
Carol Ponton: Right.
Matthew Hill: Well, thank you so much for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you on this space here.
