This was my first email to you and Thank you for l appreciate your help. Now I still have a couple of other questions:

1.  I have a couple of secondary questions to my service connected diabetes but they happened before by rating for diabetes so VA will probably deny them but SHOULD I STILL FILE A CLAIM FOR THEM?

2.  VA already denied my claim for ED because they said I had ED before by rating for PC. I just finished 45 radiation treatments yesterday so should I file another claim claim for ED stating that ED IS REALLY BAD BECAUSE OF THE RADIATIONS TREATMENTS?

Thanks again Jim for all your help

 IN MY NO 1 QUESTION ABOVE, Instead of typing "questions" I should have typed "conditions" so I confused you.  Would you please read 1 again using "conditions"  Thank you!

Jim's Reply

I understand the slight confusion...no problem. And yes, you should go ahead and file for any previously existing conditions that you believe are associated with the diabetes. If the conditions were recorded in your medical records prior to a diagnosis of DMII, you're correct that VBA will probably deny those conditions as pre-existing and not directly secondary to the DMII. So you file for an aggravation of a pre-existing condition. For example, if you had Peripheral Artery Disease (PDA...a well known secondary condition to DMII) diagnosed before the DMII was diagnosed, that won't be a secondary condition.

However, if the PDA has become worse since the diagnosis of DMII, then you file alleging the DMII aggravates the PDA making it worse. There's your service connection.