298 - Starting a VA Disability Claim After the Service

<p>The internet will tell you how to “win” a VA claim. Almost none of it is how the exam is actually written.</p><p>Will spent 11 years Navy EOD, 9 as a SOF medic, and now sits as a National Guard battalion PA. In the middle he worked the other side of the table: third-party C&amp;P exams. Meet the veteran. Fill the cookie-cutter form. Ship it to the VA actuaries. He never got Genesis. He got whatever dump the system decided was fit to send — problem lists, notes, radiology reports, and every PHA where you checked “no” to stay deployable.</p><p><br></p><p>What the examiner is hunting: a diagnosis, a nexus event, and a physical that matches the story. Range of motion. Special tests. Flare-ups. Work. ADLs. If they only asked questions and never touched you, that exam is incomplete. Say so.</p><p>SOF and aviation make this worse on purpose. Pipelines punish honesty. Team medics hand out diclofenac and toradol and skip the note so the guy keeps special duty pay. That is loyalty on Friday and a missing nexus on the way out.</p><p>Will’s practical kit: be honest on the late-career PHA. Print the DD-214s, V-device awards, schools, and the pages that prove exposure — because the current MOS on the screen may say PA while the tinnitus came from being an 18D. You have 10–15 minutes per condition. Do not make them scroll 2,000 pages.</p><p>Read 38 U.S.C. § 1155. Use VA.gov. Ask the teammates who already finished the process.</p><p>prolongedfieldcare.org | @prolonged_field_care | PFC Podcast</p><p>Top 5 takeaways</p><ol><li><strong>The examiner is not in your EHR.</strong> They get a curated PDF. If the note, x-ray report, or PHA is not in that dump, it does not exist that day unless you hand it to them.</li><li><strong>Late-career PHAs are evidence.</strong> Battalion medicine may ignore them. The VA file does not. Stop auto-checking “no.”</li><li><strong>Nexus plus diagnosis plus a matching physical.</strong> No in-service diagnosis makes the hill steeper. “Audio has to match the video” — a perfect straight-leg raise after a “debilitating” claim is a problem.</li><li><strong>SOF culture writes the denial years early.</strong> Off-book gel and ketorolac keep people on the team and delete the paper trail. The C&amp;P form cannot rate what was never documented.</li><li><strong>Run the exam like a 15-minute hit.</strong> Tab DD-214s, awards, schools, and the pages for <em>this</em> appointment. Current MOS can hide prior blast and gunship time. C&amp;P staff are QTC/Lei