lpalli

Thanks for the answers. I have copies of everything. I'm going to head in and talk to the DAV this week and do something. I honestly have no idea if the 50% is right or not for my PTSD. I just filed the claim and let it go its course. I'll run this all thru the DAV and see what they say. Thanks!

Last month my PTSD claim was completed and I was notified that I am 50% disabled due to PTSD - combined with 10% disability on another injury brings me to 60%. I've had the other 10% since my original claim, just after I left the Army in 2007. For the 50%, I was back paid to the date I filed my claim for PTSD in May of 2011 (last year). My question is that in my original VA claim in 2007 I included Chest Pain, Hypertension, Shortness of Breath as one of the medical conditions in my claim. The VA came back and said that none of that was service connected. HOWEVER, all of that was my PTSD. The problem is that at the exact time I was filing that original claim, I was only a few months out of Iraq and was still determining that all of those symptoms were in fact PTSD. In fact, when I filed I thought I actually had heart problems (etc etc). Turns out all of that was anxiety related to the PTSD. To further complicate things, almost all of my medical evidence of PTSD was in 2007 while/during my original VA claim. After I got out, I tried to "tough it out" for a few years and didn't have any additional medical evidence (aside from a few ER visits) until I filed my second claim in 2011 and was evaluated by a mental health professional. I've scoured the internet for a similar situation - but cannot find one. Should my recent PTSD decision be backdated to my original claim date since I had, more or less, PTSD on that claim? Thanks for any help! Secondly - can someone recommend a good service organization I can use to run my appeal thru (if I do one)?