Hello everyone! Is it normal for the steps to go backwards if you submitted information? I’m doing a VA claim on behalf of my father a vietnam veteran who was exposed to agent orange. I’ve mailed in complete medical records pertaining to the claims, in order highlighted by year dating back to 2002 when he had a triple bypass and stents placed in his heart all the way up to 2025 when he had two CHF episodes and over 30 mins of critical care treatment. All his blood pressure medications, every stent surgery he had and when he has a stroke and heart attack. His diagnosis of anxiety depression hypertension CAD vertigo right hip pain and left shoulder pain, and tendinitis, sleep apnea with CPAP as well as insomnia. As well as his deck logs showing that his deployments he went on during Vietnam his ship was well within 12 ￼ nautical miles for over 18 months and 3 deployments to Vietnam. I also submitted 3 lay witness statements on how his life is affected and how he isn’t able to complete his daily routine and tasks and basics like hygiene from his family’s pov and one from him about how it has affected his life. My question is why would this step move back after he finally finished all his C&P exams from step 3 to step 2? ￼

•vertigo (New)

• insomnia (New)

• Tinnitus (New)

• sleep apnea (New)

• right hip pain (New)

• heart stents (New)

• depression (New)

• anxiety (New)

• hypertension (New)

• Hearing loss (New)

• Bypass, coronary artery (New)

• right shoulder pain (New)

This is everything I claimed for him, I submitted within 5-10 pages of diagnosis for each one highlighted and a cover page with his social and name and VA file number. It seems like everytime I think it’s closer for an official rating I check the VA website and nothing. We filed an intent to file in July 8th, 2025 and offically submitted the claims on Oct 24, 2025. The VSO in our county was literally zero help, didn’t help with anything even when we went in person multiple times I had to do everything by myself including pulling the offical deck logs off the Blue Navy archives. I just want to make sure I did everything correctly and didn’t mess anything up for him. 😭 

The reason I mailed it in as well was because I had originally submitted everything to his VSO who claimed to read it over to submitted to the VA on my fathers behalf. When I was rechecking the PDFS I had emailed him I realized I didn’t convert then correctly so it was literally all blank. When I emailed his VSO asking him if they were blank or not he emailed me back saying oh yeah they are actually all blank 🤦🏽‍♀️ If the VSO really “looked over them” he would have noticed that they were blank. I ended up printing everything creating cover pages and mailing it all the Intake center in WI to make sure without it a doubt the information would get to the VA. I also quick submitted some of the information but a lot of it wouldn’t load. I also uploaded the diagnoses to his QTC examiner so they had this for his appointments as well as printing it out for my father to bring physical copies to his appointments. I know this probably seems like a lot but I’m trying my best to make sure my dad is able to get some type of benefits.

Need advice this is all so confusing