Not A Blog™

After two weeks of waiting, my med hold orders finally came through on Friday morning. In true Navy fashion, things moved ridiculously fast once some instructions arrived. So fast, in fact, that the potential existed for things to go much worse than they did. That they didn’t go bad at all is nothing short of surprising, although much welcome after the rest of this series of unfortunate events.

We put in a request for a flight as soon as my orders came through. The Sato travel office (which handles all DoD travel arrangements), emailed us back at 3pm with my itinerary, showing a flight with wheels-up at 5. I wasn’t really happy about this, and was right on the verge of just flat-out saying “no”. It’s hard enough to catch a flight that quickly without being on crutches. But I figured I’d try it anyway and if it didn’t work out we’d just reschedule for tomorrow. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time on this deployment that I missed a flight.

Luckily I never really unpacked when I got to my NMPS site four weeks ago. I threw a pile of stuff into the one seabag I had opened, put all the valuable stuff in my backpack, and I was out the door. In contrast to pretty much every thing else that has happened to me since May 18, nothing went wrong.

I called the front desk to check out en-route to the airport and they didn’t give me any hassle about that. They just said to call when I need the receipt faxed to me. There were no lines at the airport at all which, on a Friday at 4pm is so absurd a notion as to be a physical impossibility. I went right to the ticket counter, checked in, went up to security and breezed through despite my implants (they did pull me off to the side for extra screening—something I’m just going to have to get used to). There wasn’t even anyone at the coffee shop where I stopped to get dinner.

The flights were on time. My connection’s gate was only two or three gates down from where we deplaned. On both flights I sat in a row with another uniformed military guy, and they were more than happy to help me get around and carry stuff. When I landed, the duty driver was there to meet me, and when I checked in at the Naval Inn at 1 in the morning, they were able to accommodate me, despite not having a reservation.

It’s too early to say whether or not this stop is an improvement over where I was. The base is huge, which is bad if you’re trying to walk, but not a problem if you have a duty driver to run you from place to place. It remains to be seen if the duty drivers here are more accommodating, although in defense of the others, they were short handed. One of the first things I want to find out when I check in with NMPS on Monday is if I can get a different room. Mine is not only on the third floor of a very large building, it’s also nearly half a mile from the chow hall, if Google Maps is to be believed.

I made the hike over there yesterday. I’ve found that walking this far on crutches is almost the equivalent of running. (Actually that’s not really an apt comparison because I’m not usually that fatigued after running for fifteen minutes. It uses such a different set of muscles in different ways than normal that there isn’t really any way to describe it.) I’m getting better at walking with them, but they are deceptively more difficult to use than they look. Besides, I’m not sure this walk is one I want to do on a regular basis, not because of the workout, but because it’s just not very safe. It would only take a minor fall to create a serious setback to my recovery. Again, whether or not I can get reliable pick-ups from the duty drivers will be a factor in deciding if I need to move.

That’s all stuff which I hope to have taken care of by next week. I also need to figure out who my provider will be down here, schedule a check-up, and hopefully schedule my second surgery.

It’s hard to believe it’s been three weeks since my bones were screwed back together. If I’m optimistic, that means I’m halfway to getting my cast removed. (If I go by the doctors’ estimates, I still have five weeks to go.) My leg continues to hurt intermittently, but not constantly as it had been. It’s worse if I leave it down and it swells inside the cast. If I keep it elevated, it’s usually fine.

It seems things are looking up. The worst part is still the length of time I’ll need to be here. I got in contact with someone else from my reserve unit who was recently released from med hold and he passed on a lot of good info and a few contacts down here to look up. I’m hoping to make the best of my stay here—if not a little fun and enjoyable, at least not as depressing as it has been.

-Ted