From 0% to 100% P&T — I Did It Myself
From 0% to 100% P&T — I Did It Myself
I got out of the Air Force in July 1993. Four years as a Fuels Specialist, AFSC 63150. 363rd Supply Squadron at Shaw. Deployed to Al Dhafra during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Issued over 36 million gallons of JP-8 to 14,400 aircraft. I came home, hung up the uniform, and went on with life.
Nobody told me I could file a VA claim. Not at separation. Not after. For 31 years I didn't know.
In 2024 I finally started looking into it. By May 2026 the VA rated me 100% Permanent and Total. I did the entire thing myself. No attorney. No paid claims agent. I won three Higher-Level Review informal conferences along the way.
This is how.
What I started with Nothing organized. Just a body that hurt and decades of medical records scattered across providers. Plantar fasciitis I'd had for 25 years. GERD. Sleep apnea. AFib. Restless legs. A back I couldn't trust. Numbness in my feet and hands. IBS that ran my life. I didn't know any of it was connected to JP-8.
What I did first
I did the research myself. Pulled personnel records, old medical records, deployment documentation. I built a paper trail showing where I was, what I handled, and how long I handled it.
The biggest single move I made early on was the VET-HOME phone interview. VET-HOME is a VA program — you call in, a clinician walks you through every duty station, every job, every exposure. They put it on the record. Mine came back with 11 confirmed toxic exposures — benzene, naphthalene, toluene, xylenes. That interview did half the work for me. Anybody reading this who handled fuel, solvents, paint, burn pits, or anything else dirty during service — make that call. It's free and it goes straight into your file.
Then I went and got diagnosed. Properly. For every symptom I'd been ignoring. EMG for the neuropathy. MRI for the back. Holter and sleep study for the cardiac and apnea stuff. Bowel log through Guava Health for the IBS. Sleep data from my Oura Ring and CPAP. If a doctor said something useful, I asked for it in writing. I always used secure messaging when possible.
What worked
Service connection chains. I stopped filing claims as isolated problems and started filing them as cause-and-effect. JP-8 exposure caused the peripheral neuropathy. Gulf War service triggered the IBS under the presumptive framework. The AFib qualified me for convalescence under § 4.30 after my ablation. Every claim tied back to either service or an already service-connected condition.
Nexus letters that used the right language. "At least as likely as not." That's the phrase. Dr. K (VA Neurologist) wrote one for the RLS and another for the lumbar chain. Dr. E wrote one for the GERD. I didn't draft them — but I told my doctors exactly what the VA needed to see.
Buddy statements. My wife has lived with me through all of it. She wrote statements for symptoms I couldn't prove with paper. They counted.Data, not stories. Guava Health gave me a bowel symptom log going back to June 2025. Oura tracked my sleep. ResMed logged my CPAP compliance. Lab work showed low ferritin (RLS). When the VA wanted evidence, I handed them spreadsheets, not feelings.
The HLR conferences
Three of them. I won all three.
The pattern was the same every time: the VA rater missed something obvious, or one of their contracted examiners filed an opinion that contradicted the actual evidence. I read every C&P exam line by line. I matched it against the EMG, the imaging, the DBQs. When a contractor said one thing and the VA's own neurologist said another, I pointed at it.
On peripheral neuropathy the contractor flat-out misrepresented the EMG. I cited Nieves-Rodriguez and called the opinion inadequate. The informal conference is your shot to talk it through with a senior reviewer. Be calm, be specific, point to the page and the line. That's all it is.
What I'd tell any vet starting from zero
Call VET-HOME. Phone interview, free, goes in your file. It tells the VA what you were exposed to and you won't remember half of it on your own.
File for everything you have, not just the obvious stuff. Rhinitis. GERD. Sleep apnea. RLS. They all add up.
Think in chains. One condition causes another. The VA pays for the secondary, not just the primary.
Bring your own data. Bowel logs, sleep data, CPAP compliance, lab results. Print it out.
Read every C&P exam. The contractor exams are where claims die. If something is wrong, file the HLR and bring it up at the informal conference.
Don't quit after the first denial. The denial is the start of the real claim.
It took 31 years to start. It took two years to finish.
If you served and you haven't filed — file. If you filed and got denied — appeal. Nobody is going to do this for you, but you can absolutely do it yourself.