Did you wait till you were out to get your disability rating? If so, how long before you made your first claim?

No. I worked with the DAV who I gave a copy of my medical records while still on active duty. I do recommend others do the same. You’ll have better access to obtain any records and information.

I made my first VA diability claim 30 years after my date of separation and I found it really difficult to address my situation to the VA. I was never told about the VA after separation and I do not remember being told about it in my outbriefings. Still, I thank my military service because it help me getting a good job as a law enforcement federal officer after my service. Anyway, because of my federal job, I had a very good health insurance and I never had problems addressing health issues with them; but now, some of my health problems show up and can only be caused because of the long past years of my military service and it is extremely difficult to present them to the VA without being questioned or seen as a person that is trying to take advantage of the system. I have only a 20% disability rating, and I want to present a claim that I am being told that I need statements from service members that I never saw ever again and I never followed up on them. I am really having a hard time trying to show them that these health issues come from my military service time.

I got out in 93 and didn't know about filing a clam until 2011.

I ETS'd from the Army in 1980... and retired from the USAFR iin 2003. I waited until after the PACT Act to file... A little over 20 years after I retired, I achieved my first VA disability rating. The VA denied a bunch of things that they were too lazy to search my VA records for, so I need to file a supplemental claim and search my own records to locate and attach the evidence to my claim. I suspect that my VSO should have coached me better so that I would have sought out the VA documentation and attached it for the initial claim... and knowing nothing about the system I let it fly. My initial rating is for 30% (which is deducted from my military retirement), however I am hoping that the supplemental filing (with attached evidence from VA records for every claim) will boost the rating to at least 50% so the disability pay will not be deducted from my retirement..

Much of the my delay in filing was based on the reputation of the VA for denials and run-arounds... and I was working nights so going to C&P appointments would have been very difficult... basically I didn't need the stress and hassle, and I was making decent money, so I didn't file until after I had completely retired from working.

About 20 years depending on how you want to figure it. My first injury was in 1978. I went to the VA between enlistments because I was having problems with it. Spent all day there saw a VA doctor for about 5 minutes. A week later I received a letter from the VA pretty much telling me not to come back and I didn't until 2002. About a year later I filed my first claim for that injury. VA disability ratings are not retroactive.

I never filed in '71. I got a 10% rating and got my first check for $32 a short time later. I'd never heard of the VA other than stories in national news about how bad the VA was for care. I stayed away for decades. I'm now enrolled but don't use VA much. I was a medic in Nam and 3 Purple Hearts.

I did all if it after retiring. If you are rated at 100% make sure you then apply for social security disability. Keep your tricare and if you get ss disability then you will get Medicare.

When I got out I wanted nothing to do with the U.S. Government. I was out 27 years before I joined VA.

It took me 38 years to file a claim.
I was detached from my ship and placed on medical leave, and then medically discharged in lieu of reenlistment and a $25,000 bonus. The DoD rated me 10% and the VA sent me a letter stating that I had a non-compensable injury.
In 1984, no one said anything to me when I was discharged. I received no paperwork or copies of any of my records. I went to the VA hospital one time in extreme pain and was given the standard military treatment of Motrin.
It took almost 40 years to learn that I could file a claim, over a year to get results, and was rated at 70%. The VA had my records in local storage and they were never scanned electronically and it took over a year to locate them. I was rated based on the evidence in my medical & service records.
My life may have been easier if I had known that you could contest the VAs rating, but you don't know what you don't know.
In 2014 I applied for VA healthcare and was accepted based on the medical discharge.
The care that I receive is light years beyond the care that I received from Cigna for 30+ years.
At times, the 40 year delay felt almost deliberate, personal; but it was my fault for interpreting the term "non-compensable" literally.

I did mine through the program in the Navy. They sat down and help me do the forms they help me get the paperwork from the hospitals. I got a disability rating within a year after being discharged, medically. Of course I pill it was very low, but it seemed to flow through pretty quick. One note is my claim was right at the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan.