The Guard, and the usual, SNAFU
Nov. 18th, 2005 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI am overdue for my five-year periodic physical.
If my last one hadn't been 18 months (and a host of pain in the ass hurdles) late, this one would be 3 years late, instead of just a bit more than 18 months.
Last time I had to go to MEPS. MEPS, for those who don't speak MilAcronym is Military Enlistment Processing Station.
Hell on earth. Hundreds of wannabe recruits, all being jerked around by the usual sorts of meat-market apathy and their own ignorance, coupled with a sort of institutional disdain. It's a rite of passage, this being treated like cattle, because you aren't a civilian, and you sure as hell ain't one of us.
Somehow (maybe it was my PT uniform) I didn't get treated quite so badly by the staff. The doctors, however, mostly treated me like dirt. Some of them were the same hacks who'd given my my enlistment physical, almost seven years before. Timeless and ancient, they still seemed like superannuated animitronics. Oh yeah, the seaman who took my weight, refused (I almost had to shake him by his white cracker-jacks) to believe me that the chart to look on was prior service, not enlistee. If he used enlistee he was going to mark me unfit for service, because I was underweight. Sheesh!
This time, because of the war, there's a shop doing physicals up the road. I was supposed to go in today and get the bloodwork done, so I could go in later tomorrow and see the doctors. Only, in that way which is only the Army's I was late. Some of it was my fault. I have a sprained finger (my left pinky) from allowing it to be under someone's foot while I was being tossed about the dojo last night. This slowed me down, and I was about 25 minutes behind the time I was told to be there.
I had checked the time this morning. Only someone at the unit failed to get the word to me that instead of 1300, the appointment was for 1000. Had I managed to get there at 1300, it probably could have been done.
Oh, well, I can go in tomorrow at 0630 (which means being on the road at 0545) and all will be sped along. Since I am not deploying, it doesn't matter that there are lots of other things going on; I (for the price of a couple limes worth of Corona) will be sped to the front of the line and ought to be home, cooking for Alexa's birthday, not later than noon.
In the realm of the strange (and I blame it on the war) two people thought I was going to be getting an over 40 physical (which means fasting, and a prostate exam). Before I went to Iraq, I got carded about 1/3rd of the time (I was 35), now people think I'm more than 40 (I'm 38). Go figure.
BTW, typing with a splinted pinky is only slightly less frustrating than typing with one which is sprained, it does, however, hurt less.
If my last one hadn't been 18 months (and a host of pain in the ass hurdles) late, this one would be 3 years late, instead of just a bit more than 18 months.
Last time I had to go to MEPS. MEPS, for those who don't speak MilAcronym is Military Enlistment Processing Station.
Hell on earth. Hundreds of wannabe recruits, all being jerked around by the usual sorts of meat-market apathy and their own ignorance, coupled with a sort of institutional disdain. It's a rite of passage, this being treated like cattle, because you aren't a civilian, and you sure as hell ain't one of us.
Somehow (maybe it was my PT uniform) I didn't get treated quite so badly by the staff. The doctors, however, mostly treated me like dirt. Some of them were the same hacks who'd given my my enlistment physical, almost seven years before. Timeless and ancient, they still seemed like superannuated animitronics. Oh yeah, the seaman who took my weight, refused (I almost had to shake him by his white cracker-jacks) to believe me that the chart to look on was prior service, not enlistee. If he used enlistee he was going to mark me unfit for service, because I was underweight. Sheesh!
This time, because of the war, there's a shop doing physicals up the road. I was supposed to go in today and get the bloodwork done, so I could go in later tomorrow and see the doctors. Only, in that way which is only the Army's I was late. Some of it was my fault. I have a sprained finger (my left pinky) from allowing it to be under someone's foot while I was being tossed about the dojo last night. This slowed me down, and I was about 25 minutes behind the time I was told to be there.
I had checked the time this morning. Only someone at the unit failed to get the word to me that instead of 1300, the appointment was for 1000. Had I managed to get there at 1300, it probably could have been done.
Oh, well, I can go in tomorrow at 0630 (which means being on the road at 0545) and all will be sped along. Since I am not deploying, it doesn't matter that there are lots of other things going on; I (for the price of a couple limes worth of Corona) will be sped to the front of the line and ought to be home, cooking for Alexa's birthday, not later than noon.
In the realm of the strange (and I blame it on the war) two people thought I was going to be getting an over 40 physical (which means fasting, and a prostate exam). Before I went to Iraq, I got carded about 1/3rd of the time (I was 35), now people think I'm more than 40 (I'm 38). Go figure.
BTW, typing with a splinted pinky is only slightly less frustrating than typing with one which is sprained, it does, however, hurt less.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 05:25 am (UTC)When I was five I dropped a Navy doctor to his knees. I didn't mean to. He kept hitting that stupid rubber hammer in places where I didn't seem to have a reflex.
"When I tap you, you're supposed to kick!"
I hated the nasty tone to his voice. I gripped the edge of the exam table and when he tapped my leg again I swung out and kicked with all my might. I got him right in the balls with my steel-toed corrective orthopedic mary-janes. The conflicted look on the nurse's face was priceless, even for me, even at 5 years old. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I learned a lot of swear words in that exam room in Yokohama.
"He told me to kick!" I wailed as my mother dragged me out of the hospital by the arm and scolded me in a loud voice. We tried again a few days later. I think this was a required physical for entry into grade school. It had to have been 1967.
Fast forward 1983. I'm in Anchorage, Alaska. I've checked into Emergency with dehydration and dry heaves after 3 days of flu. An ex-army nurse of dubious gender comes in to give me an IV for fluids. I've never had an IV before and I'm needle-phobic after all those callous and ill prepared immunizations across the globe.
He stabs me in the back of the hand with no warning. My other arm comes out in a round house swing and I pasted him right in the jaw. It was sheer reflex, I did not mean to cold-cock him. As two other nurses hold me down, he scolds me for soiling a needle. He gets another one and after some effort gets the IV in. I lay there for 3 hours while they pumped two bags of glucose and saline into me and thought of that poor doctor back in Japan.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 05:34 am (UTC)In general, I've been well treated. The dentist who wore the earplugs, well if he'd ever walked back in, I'd have walked out. He was a brute. The filling feels like a wad of chewing gum, I can still smell burnt dentin, and the fucker was done in something like 20 minutes, from novacaine to "now spit."
But the doc who swabbed me when I thought I had a case of the clap (it was a yeast infection, she and I had funny chemistry) was swell. The nurse who gave me the shots (a local, and then the antibiotic) the guys at Charlie-Med, and then the CSH in Mosul, and everyone (until I got to Madigan, where they were indifferent. I was sick, I was going to get better, or not, and if I did, then I would be sent back to theater, or not) else seemed to not only care, but want to do what they could.
But I've heard horror stories.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 06:51 am (UTC)The old Madigan.
I had an advantage, though; my dad's MSC, so he was working at MAMC some of the time, and knew everybody most of the time.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 06:48 am (UTC)The worst medical treatment I ever had in the military was getting my wisdom teeth out (shocker). It wasn't at DLI (real shocker!). No wait period for the novocaine to take effect, it hurt like a bitch, and he was patronizing as hell about it. I wanted to kick him in the balls, but it's probably better that I didn't.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 06:51 am (UTC)As I was typing that, I remembered two that were pretty heinous, but also a little gross, and I'm sure you didn't really care to read about them. :-)
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 03:01 pm (UTC)My darling
The hospitals don't suck as much as the TMCs, in my opinion.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-19 07:34 pm (UTC)While the wait time for physicals there is long, once I got called they went very quickly and professionally. I recall one time being in there on the same Saturday that Bush the Elder was getting his check-up. (Yes, he got precedence.) The place is light years away from the MEPS stations, from what you describe. I actually joined up so long ago that we had AFEES (armed forces entrance and examination stations) instead.
As for that over 40 physical, I can only allow as how it's all the more memorable when the examining physician is a lovely lady LtCmdr.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-22 02:38 am (UTC)This is the feeling that Cain and
no subject
Date: 2005-11-22 03:20 pm (UTC)My name is Joe and I was in the Michigan National Guard from '87 to '90 and then active duty Army from '97 to 2000. Yeah, I know, most people go active duty first, and then the Guard, but I'm fucked up, what can I say. My first MOS was communications, 34K and my second MOS was mechanic, 63W. On my dream card I requested to be sent to Europe, Uncle Sam sent me to Ft Riley instead. I had to go through boot camp and AIT twice, as I had a 7 year break in service. My second time through boot camp I was 32 years old and beat out all the youngsters for the high PT award for that cycle. Not too bad for an old man, if I do say so myself.
I now live in New Orleans, but I still have friends who are in the army and are sitting ducks over in Iraq. I hate the way this government is fighting a war on terrorism by using conventional tactics. The war on terrorism, if there can even be such a thing, is a guerrilla war, and should be fought by using spies and special forces, not by sending our soldiers out into the desert wearing full uniforms so the enemy can easily recognise them and pick them off piecemeal. I'm not a pacifist, but I think if you're going to fight a war use the tactics that that particular war requires.
Anyway, that's enough about me. I look forward to reading your posts. Here's my email if you need it, jak_66442@yahoo.com
66442 is the zip code for Ft Riley. This email account was set up for me as I was out processing back in Sep 2000 and I still use it to this day.