Finally moved to Step 4 (at day 222).

I was pretty surprised to get a phone call today from the VSR who is handling part of my claim. The rep was really amazing. Like seriously good! She had some questions about my in-service stressor which I answered, she also had a concern about my sleep disorder claim secondary to tinnitus. She told me she was going to service connect it to my back issues to make it an easier claim to rate. She also said she was missing some pre and post op photos of MOS surgery on my face (which is odd, they were there in my claim two weeks ago and gone today), so I uploaded them. It’s for basal cells as a presumptive (she said my TERA memo did the job). We hung upon, she called back two hours later and said the PTSD claim looks exceptionally well documented and that she was ordering my C&P exams by close of business tomorrow. She also told me the VA has a huge archive of articles of major “bad” events going back to the sixties. She said the archive matched up with my DD214, my personal statement, and the in-service stressor. Like I mentioned a the top, I was truly impressed.

Of course, now I have to hope I get a competent C&P examiner, which we all know is a crap shoot.