I spent many, many hours, many after midnight, accumulating thousands of pages in support of our claim. The VA's granting of the claim seemed as if it took a lifetime, though the average response time then was estimated at 5 to 7 years, and ours took little more than a year. He was eligible for expediting of his claim, but that was not automatic; we requested and received help from local politicians. Though the expedited claim was also denied, at least we could move on to the next course of action, whatever that might be. In our case, that involved seeking out a law firm who would agree to take our arcane and fairly rare basis of appeal, and searching for additional medical opinions. We finally succeeded in each of these pursuits, and happened upon a doctor whose extraordinary diligence led to the granting of our claim.
The process resulted in a vast amount of downloaded papers, of all types and from all available sources, and constant refills of Epson
Printer ink. After the appeal was granted, I attempted to sort through the unneeded accumulation, and discarded, at first about one-third of the mass, and a while later, about another third. I still have in my house 3 totebags of papers. I am again trying to reduce the pile. I tell myself that almost everything is now on the computer, in his C-file, notated on the ebenefits Veterans' page. I tell myself to just throw everything away: nobody's eyes are ever going to look at any of this, the hands of no other are ever going to try to collate the information. But so far, I am blocked as to further riddance. And, really,
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