ARMY 2004-2012 — VA disability appeal, the C&P exam grind

Filed an initial VA claim in 2014 for back, knees, tinnitus, and PTSD. Rated at 30%. Most of the rating was for tinnitus and a single knee. The back and the PTSD were both deferred and ultimately denied. I appealed. The first appeal was a Higher-Level Review. Denied. The second appeal went to the Board of Veterans' Appeals with a hearing. The hearing was in 2019, by Zoom, because I lived in a different state from the regional office. I sat through it with my DAV National Service Officer in the frame next to me. The Board remanded the case for additional development. That meant a new Compensation and Pension exam (C&P). I drove four hours to a contracted facility for that exam in 2020. The examiner — not a VA employee, a contractor — spent twelve minutes with me. Twelve. For a PTSD evaluation that was supposed to determine whether my service-connection should be established. She denied service-connection in her report. We submitted a rebuttal with a private psychologist's independent medical opinion (paid for by me, $1,400). The Board overturned the contracted exam, granted service-connection, and rated me at 70%. Effective date back to my original 2014 claim. The back-pay covered the private psych report ten times over. The process took five years and eleven months from initial claim to final rating. The DAV NSO was free. I am writing this so anyone in the C&P exam grind understands that denials at that stage are not the end. They are the beginning of the appeal.