On 07/03/2021 I traveled to the Veterans Hospital in Nashville Tennessee. My wife let me out at the emergency room door. In a great amount of pain, I reached for the door handle and woke up thirty days later.

I was informed that I had had Fournier’s Gangrene and had underwent emergency surgery. I had been reconstructed from above my knees to just above my navel. I had lost forty one pounds of flesh during the surgery. All of this was resultant of my agent orange exposure and secondary diabetes and chloracne.

On 02/01/2021 I filed a claim for the Fournier’s Gangrene and at the same time I filed for an increase from Special monthly compensation R-1 to SMC R-2. The claim was adjudicated within forty five days, from the day that I submitted it to the date of the decision.

I was granted a 20% rating for the Fournier’s Gangrene, thirty % for painful scars, an increase from 0% to 20% for the chloracne, and an increase from SMC R-1 to SMC R-2. At the same time I was rated for seventeen scars ranging from four inches long to over fifteen inches long. I did not file on the scars, but they were noticed by the C&P examiner and automatically entered on the claim to fulfill the VA’s duty to assist.

Compensation at the R-2 rate is $10,905.69 per month, but along with all of the pain and suffering, not to mention two years worth of recovery, I would sooner have my health back.

My wife has also been excepted into the VA caregiver program and is now compensated due to the passage of the Mission Act allowing for us older veterans to enter the program as of October 1st, 2021.

I still have an open CAVC case for an earlier effective date for the 2016 grant of R-1. I have already won a joint motion for remand and at the court. The case is now headed back to the BVA for a new decision. I expect to win a grant for a five year earlier effective date. It involves sixty months of back pay at over three thousand dollars per month. Of course, there will be a 20% deduction from the retro for legal fees.

Update, I did win the five year earlier effective date for the award of R-1.

James M. Cripps,

Veteran