One reason to apply for service connected disability through the VA is to be able to obtain treatment for the specific conditions that can be attributed to your military service, even if those conditions did not cause you to be unable to work. My ex has loss of hearing directly attributable to his military service. If he needed treatment or evaluation for that, the VA would have to provide it.

If you need medication for PTSD caused by your POW experiences (and undoubtedly you would have some residual effect), then the VA may pay for it. But, the VA, like SSA, has a long application process with a lot of paperwork. And does not always end the way you want.

You provided new information in your last post when you talked about the unpaid help you got (your wife typing for you). Without that unpaid help, you might not have been able to finish your book at all. The value of that help should factor into the value of the work you did. Not easy to place a value on it, but it should factor in. How much would it have cost to pay a stranger?


http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OP_Hom...-34-di-03.html

Unpaid Help: The reasonable monetary value of any significant amount of unpaid help furnished by a spouse, children, or others should be deducted from net income. The file should include facts which would permit an estimate of the reasonable value of unpaid help furnished by family members or others. When it is clear that the help rendered consists of miscellaneous duties carried on in connection with the person's general activities as a member of the household or as a friend, statement to this effect will be sufficient, and no estimate of value will be necessary (e.g., a farmer's children feed a small flock of chickens or tend a home garden). On the other hand, where the help furnished is of a nature to which commercial value would ordinarily be assigned, the following type of information should be in the file: the name of the helping individual and this person's relationship to the impaired self-employed individual; the reason why unpaid help was furnished; a full account of the services rendered, the amount of time furnished, and how long the arrangement existed; an estimate of the reasonable value of the services, on the basis of prevailing pay for that type of work in the community; and, if the help was furnished by a spouse or by a child under age 18, an explanation of how the previous pattern of such individual's activities was affected, if at all.In estimating the amount to be deducted for unpaid help, it is necessary to consider the prevailing wage rate in the community for similar services. Where the unpaid help is rendered on a part-time or intermittent basis, only the pro rata value attributable to the services actually performed (as compared with those that a full-time employee would perform) should be deducted.