I am sitting at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda waiting to see my Neurologist. Holly blogged yesterday that I was going to see my Neurosurgeon, but she was slightly off. I saw my Neurologist two weeks ago and at that time he answered all the additional questions that the MEB doctors had. In the past few weeks I have seen all the specialists involved in my care so that they could enter final notes into the system for my MEB. They call these addendums. I thought everything was done and I went to see the PEBLO (Physical Evaluation Board Liaison Officer), the guy that is the go between the MEB docs and everything else. He went into the system, printed out all the notes and said he would pass them to the MEB docs. I got a call a few hours later from my PEBLO and he said the MEB docs were ready to move forward with the process... Except for one thing. When I saw my Neurologist two weeks ago, he said he was going to dictate a new board. What that means is he would speak into a microphone all the new information and it would have to be transcribed and sent over to Walter Reed. Minimum time? About two to three weeks. So that would stop everything in it's tracks... Again. So, my question is why?
If he already answered all the questions... Why do this again? I already have a board dictated. Okay... Terminology break. When a doc dictates a board, the resulting document is called a Narrative Summary or NARSUM for short. A NARSUM initiates the Medical Evaluation Board process (MEB for short). From there it moves on to the Physical Evaluation Board or PEB. More on that when we get to it.
So, I already have a NARSUM. It was a very poorly written document and it was out of date. I told this to my Case Manager at the time and she said that was fine. That updated information could be added via these addendums. As far as I understand, all the addendums are in. But as I said, my Neurologist wants to dictate a new NARSUM. He asked to bring my old NARSUM, which I did. But I still don't understand why he couldn't ask the doc that did it in the first place since he's in the office next door! Talk about the right hand not talking to the left!
Anyway, I have no idea what's going on. The big question that I have today is, if all the questions the MEB docs were answered in the addendum, why does a new NARSUM have to be dictated?
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Okay, he just called me back and said that he is going to enter the new information, whatever it is, into the electronic system - a new addendum. He says he's putting in a new NARSUM. Whatever. I think I better call and see if what he's doing is valid.
I just called my PEBLO and he said he just left me a voicemail! He said that he can enter a new NARSUM into the system and the docs can start on my case as early as Friday!
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I will update you later on what exactly takes place the rest of the day. Looks like things might be moving along! :-)
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