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ORIGINAL CLAIMS

ORIGINAL CLAIMS

When I was transitioning from Active Duty at Fort Carson in 2016, it seemed like there were a million steps that the military wanted me to take, and a million different appointments before I could get out of the Army. One of the many stops was at the DVA. All I wanted to do was to be finished and get on with my life, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention when DVA took a copy of my medical records, and explained that they were going to help me file my original disability claim.

Twenty years in the Army had taught me to be tough, never complain, and just drive on. Because I was “tough”, I downplayed every condition the DVA asked me about. The thing was, I didn’t feel disabled. I had served with a lot of men and women who were seriously injured in service, and compared to them I was just fine, so I didn’t complain.

When VA issued its decision on my Original Claim, they denied or underrated almost everything in the claim because I had downplayed the frequency or severity of my conditions. As a result, I had to spend the next several years proving my correct disability levels to the VA.
Filing an original claim with VA is not the time for a Veteran to act tough. It’s the time they should be honest. It’s the time they should be absolutely up-front about what hurts, about what doesn’t work like it should, and about what is completely broken. It can be very difficult to get the VA to understand how severe your conditions are on their worst day, especially when you’ve already spent your military career “pushing through the pain” and not complaining. So when you decide to file your first claim with VA, be brutally honest so that you get the benefits and compensation you are rightly owed.