The VA is definitely hit-or-miss when it comes to personnel. AKVA has been pretty good to me, only took 400 days to process my claim..
My buddy down in Georgia, he's a dozen times more messed up than I am, got retired from the army because of the massive injuries he sustained from a couple of IEDs and a mortar that landed in the back of his HEMTT. The VA rep in germany, to get his paperwork through with minimum hassle, removed half of his disability claims, and forged his signature on a paper waiving his right to get assigned to a WTU stateside. So he got boned right from the get-go. they retired him at 40% rating, and just dropped him and his family stateside.
The army held his last two paychecks for about three months, so when I went down to visit him, his wife was working overtime, and because the VA wasn't paying for his meds, he was pretty much paralyzed on the couch because it came down to "Feed his kids or buy medication". The only reason his girls got christmas presents this year was because the local community came together and took care of him. the only reason they had heat at their place was because the Propane guy filled their tank for free and wrote "Merry Christmas" on the invoice. His congressman told him there wasn't a thing he could do to amend the situation, so I called my congressman's office back in AK. Apparently getting a size twelve boot to the backside from another congressman changed ol' dude's tune.
As screwed up as the backlog is, I wish those dingbats would just start establishing some order of priority when it comes to claims filing. Me, I'm a single guy with no dependents, I can afford to put up with a long wait. Dudes who are catastrophically disabled with a family need help a helluva lot more than I do.
