Do you often have to leave or skip family gatherings because you have such severe cramping and diarrhea? Does it feel like someone has put your insides in a vise grip half the time? Are you losing weight because you don’t want to eat, and are you tired all the time?
If any of this sounds familiar, you could be living with Crohn’s disease. Read on to learn more about this condition and how you could get compensation from the VA for it.
In this article about VA disability for Crohn’s Disease:
- What Is Crohn’s Disease?
- Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease
- What Causes Crohn’s Disease in Veterans?
- Risk Factors – How Veterans Get Crohn’s Disease
- Complications from Crohn’s
- Can You Serve in the Military with Crohn’s Disease?
- How to Qualify for VA Disability
- Getting Diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease After Being Discharged
- Proving a Service Connection
- PTSD and Crohn’s Disease
- Getting a Medical Nexus
- How Disability Ratings Work
- How the VA Rates Crohn’s Disease
- VA Disability Compensation Rates
- If Your Claim Is Denied: Appeal!
- Get Compensation for Crohn’s Disease
What Is Crohn’s Disease?
Crohn’s disease is a subset of inflammatory bowel disorders, a series of conditions that impact your digestive system. Crohn’s can cause your digestive tract to become inflamed, causing abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, weight loss, and more. This disease is not only painful, but it can also have some severe and even life-threatening complications.
Crohn’s disease can affect different areas of the digestive tract in different people. Oftentimes, the inflammation this disease causes may spread further into deeper areas of your bowels. While there is no cure for Crohn’s disease, there are some treatment options that can reduce or even eliminate your symptoms.
Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease
Crohn’s disease can affect any part of your small or large intestine, including your colon. It may be continuously active, or you may experience bouts of symptoms that may develop gradually or strike without warning. During the active phases of the disease, you may experience diarrhea, abdominal cramping, pain, fatigue, and fever.
Crohn’s disease can also cause you to have blood in your stool or pain or drainage near the anus. You may have a reduced appetite, develop mouth sores, or lose weight during these episodes. People with severe Crohn’s disease may also experience inflammation in their skin, eyes, joints, liver, or bile ducts, as well as kidney stones and anemia.
What Causes Crohn’s Disease in Veterans?
Doctors aren’t sure exactly what the root cause of Crohn’s disease is, and research is still ongoing. Previously, it was believed that Crohn’s disease was the result of stress and a poor diet. But these days, we know that while these factors can aggravate the condition, they are not the root cause.
There is some evidence that Crohn’s disease may be the result of an overactive or malfunctioning immune system. There may be a certain virus or bacteria that can trigger this specific immune response. There may also be some genetic factors at play, but scientists have not yet been able to say for sure if Crohn’s disease is hereditary or not.
Here one of our VA disability lawyers goes over the questions Woods and Woods, The Veteran’s Firm, is often asked about veterans’ disability claims and appeals.
Risk Factors – How Veterans Get Crohn’s Disease
Several factors may increase your risk of developing Crohn’s disease. For one thing, you’re more likely to develop this condition when you’re young; most people who have Crohn’s disease get diagnosed before they turn thirty years old. Smoking may also leave you at higher risk of developing Crohn’s, and it can make the disease a lot more severe if you do develop it.
Crohn’s disease seems to primarily affect white people, especially those of Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish descent. You may be at higher risk of developing it if you have a parent, sibling, or child who has the disease. And while no medications are known to cause Crohn’s disease, taking NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), such as ibuprofen and others, can make the condition worse.
While there have been attempts to make Crohn’s Disease a presumptive for Gulf War veterans, they have so far failed. Since the cause is still difficult to pin down, many veterans who win their VA application for Crohn’s disease do so because they can prove that they had symptoms while they were enlisted. If you can report evidence of repeated diarrhea, constipation, or abdominal pain, you have a much better chance of winning. Remember, proving a service connection doesn’t always mean proof that your service caused it. You can also get VA disability by proving that the condition started while you were enlisted.
Complications from Crohn’s
Crohn’s disease can have several complications, some of which can be life-threatening. One of the biggest risks is that you could develop bowel obstructions over time. When your bowel becomes inflamed and heals, it can scar and narrow, which can block the flow of digestive contents and require surgery to remove.
Veterans with Crohn’s may also develop ulcers in their mouths, digestive tracts, or anus, some of which could even lead to fistulas. Many people with Crohn’s disease suffer anal fissures and malnutrition since you can’t absorb the nutrients you need through your digestive system. Crohn’s disease can also put you at a higher risk of developing certain types of cancer, especially colon cancer, lymphoma, and skin cancers.
Can You Serve in the Military with Crohn’s Disease?
If you have Crohn’s disease, you may be wondering if you are eligible to enlist in the military. Unfortunately, if you are already diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, you will likely not be eligible for military service. The environment would likely aggravate your disease to the point that, even with treatment, you would be incapacitated too much of the time.
If you are already in the military and you get diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, you may be looking at an honorable medical discharge. The situation will depend in large part on whether you’re able to transfer into a job that doesn’t require active combat deployment. However, if you are discharged, you will be eligible for VA disability compensation.
How to Qualify for VA Disability
To qualify for VA disability compensation, you must meet three basic criteria. First of all, you must have an official diagnosis of your condition from a VA-approved doctor. If you received your Crohn’s disease diagnosis while you were in the military, the doctor there will meet VA standards.
Once you have your diagnosis, you must be able to point to a specific incident or set of conditions in your military service that could have caused your condition. Conditions diagnosed during your military service will also meet this qualification. And finally, you must have a medical nexus connecting your condition and your military service.
Getting Diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease After Being Discharged
The first step in getting VA disability compensation is to get an official diagnosis. If you are already out of the military when you develop Crohn’s symptoms, make an appointment with your family doctor immediately. They will be able to either provide you with the diagnosis you need or refer you to a specialist who can. If your family doctor won’t write a nexus letter for you, give us a call. We have doctors on staff that can look over your medical records and work with you to find the best solution. We’ve helped thousands of veterans win their cases and we know how nexus letters work for the VA.
Talk to Us About Your Claim: (866) 232-5777
There is no single test to diagnose Crohn’s disease, so your doctor will want to rule out any other causes of your symptoms before they diagnose you. They will likely take blood and stool samples and may want you to have a CT scan or MRI performed. They may even order a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, or an enteroscopy to get a better idea of what’s happening in your digestive tract.
Proving a Service Connection
Once you have your diagnosis, you will need to be able to point to a specific incident or set of conditions in your military service that could have caused your condition. If you were in the military when you got your diagnosis, this part of your application process will be taken care of. The VA will have records of military doctors providing your diagnosis and will be able to prove that it began during your military service.
If you had already been discharged from the military when you got your diagnosis, proving a service connection would be more difficult. Since there is no known cause of Crohn’s disease, you can’t point to the specific incident that caused it. While there is some evidence that serving around burn pits can cause inflammatory bowel diseases, you may have a difficult time proving this to the VA.
PTSD and Crohn’s Disease
One way to potentially get a service connection for Crohn’s disease is as a secondary condition to PTSD. As we mentioned, stress can aggravate Crohn’s disease, and while this isn’t a cause, it can certainly make your condition more difficult to manage. If you have a service connection for PTSD, you could connect your Crohn’s symptoms to that to get compensation.
A secondary service connection means that you have a disease that, while not a direct result of your military service, is a complication of another condition that was caused by your military service. This allows you to get a disability rating for both conditions, as they all tie back to your service record. The VA will use VA Math to evaluate the ratings for each condition and give you one overall combined disability rating. You can do your own VA Math with our combined rating calculator.
Here is a video of one of our Veterans Disability Lawyers teaching you how to use our VA Disability Combined Ratings Calculator.
Getting a Medical Nexus
Once you’ve proved your service connection (direct or indirect), the last thing you’ll need to do is get a medical nexus. A medical nexus is simply an official statement from your doctor saying that your condition is at least as likely as not the result of the incident in your service record. This prevents veterans from claiming disability for conditions that develop completely separate from their military service.
If you were in the military when you got your Crohn’s disease diagnosis, your diagnosing doctor should be able to provide your medical nexus at the time of your appointment. If you were already discharged, you’ll need to bring your military records with you. Your doctor may be able to review them and provide you with your medical nexus that same day.
This firm has been excellent at obtaining my disability claim. I now am 100% service connected. No complaints. Thanks to Woods and Woods. I will recommend them for anyone trying to obtain service connected disability.
L.T. — review on Google Reviews
How Disability Ratings Work
We mentioned disability ratings for Crohn’s disease earlier, but let’s talk some about how they work. When you get approved for VA disability compensation, the VA will assign you a disability rating. These numbers are expressed as percentages and range from 10 percent to 100 percent, with ratings being rounded to the nearest 10 percent.
Your disability rating is a reflection of how severely your condition impacts your ability to live a normal, healthy life. The higher your rating, the more severe an impact your disability has. Your disability rating is also the single biggest factor in determining how much money you’ll receive from the VA each month.
How the VA Rates Crohn’s Disease
Your VA disability rating for Crohn’s disease will depend in large part on which symptoms you exhibit. It’s important to note that you will not get a separate disability rating for each independent symptom you have. Instead, you’ll get a rating for the symptom(s) that most strongly define your condition.
For instance, if you have a pronounced ulcer that causes continuous pain, vomiting, and weight loss, you could get a 100 percent disability rating. If you have severe diarrhea or alternating diarrhea and constipation, you could get a 30 percent rating. You could get a rating ranging anywhere from 10 percent to 100 percent, depending on the nature and severity of your condition.
VA Disability Compensation Rates
Your VA disability rating will be the biggest thing that determines how much compensation you get from the VA each month. If you receive a rating of 10 percent, you’ll get $152.64 per month from the VA. For a 20 percent rating, you’ll receive $301.74 tax-free each month.
When it comes to ratings above 30 percent, the VA also considers how many financial dependents you have. For instance, if you have a rating of 70 percent and no dependents, you’ll get $1,529.95 each month (more with dependents).
Use our VA Disability Calculator to estimate your combined VA rating and monthly entitlement here.
If Your Claim Is Denied: Appeal!
If your disability claim is denied, don’t give up hope; you can always appeal denials or ratings that are too low. You can even send these appeals all the way up to the BVA in Washington, D.C.
If you plan to go through the appeals process, you may want to consider hiring a lawyer specializing in veteran affairs. For one thing, they can help you navigate the confusing process of deadlines, evidence, and paperwork. They can also give you insider tips on how to make your appeal more successful and get a higher rating.
Here, one of our VA disability lawyers talks about what we do when we appeal your case to the Veteran’s Administration.
Get Compensation for Crohn’s Disease
Crohn’s disease can be a debilitating condition to live with, causing severe pain and dangerous complications. If you were in the military when you got your diagnosis, you should be able to get compensation from the VA for your condition. If you were already discharged at the time of your diagnosis, you could still get compensation, but it may be a tougher road to get there. We’d like to help you.
At Woods and Woods, the Veteran’s Firm, we’ve helped thousands of veterans with their VA disability applications and appeals. We’ve been adding staff and lawyers during the Covid pandemic to better serve disabled veterans in difficult times.
Call us today to discuss your VA disability appeal or your first application. The call is free and we won’t charge you a single fee until we win your case. We even pay for the postage for all of the documentation you send to our office. You can look for a VA disability attorney near you or call us and join the thousands of veterans living off of VA disability thanks to Woods and Woods.
Talk to Us About Your Claim: (866) 232-5777
According to 38 CFR Section 1110: “For disability resulting from personal injury suffered or disease contracted in line of duty…” which means that you only need to prove that you got sick with Crohn’s during active duty, not that active duty caused it.
The rating will follow whichever symptoms present themselves, of course. But the VA Ratings Table for Crohn’s follows ulcerative colitis at 10%, 30%, 60%, and 100% ratings while the VA Ratings Table for IBS only lists 10% and 30%. Talk to our team as you prepare your case and we’ll help you make sure you apply for the right VA disability.