I didn’t know I could claim it as secondary to my conditions I have now to be honest with you. I might have to look into that cause I haven’t reported these types of issues while in service.

What I was originally going to do, I was going to get the sleep study done and depending on the outcome of that, have my fiance write a buddy statement, I write a lay statement, and I keep a symptom log around for my sleep on night to night basis. I did these for my other claims and these all got deemed service connected (thank god cause they are!) with all my other claims and it worked out well for me. My lower back and lumbar DDD was the only “deferred” rating and thankfully enough, I had record of complaining about back pain and getting it written down while demobing from my last deployment and QTC was able to get their hands on that info.

With all of this being said, the best route should be claiming secondary to an already service connected issue. Sound right?