My reason for not being around much

[Quakindude]

Man, its been a long as hell month. Lots of doctor's appointments and I'm pretty exhausted. Throw in the electrical issues we've had, which are now verified, certified, all those other fied's, fixed and completed, and my ass is whipped. Still haven't heard anything back from the city or our lawyer about this last go round. But the contractor is interested in helping pay some of our costs. So waiting on the lawyer to get back with us on that.

Anyway, here's the skinny. As some of you may or may not know, I'm being medically evaluated for separation from the Army under a medical discharge. I've been tremendously worried about this as I only have 19 years and one month in right now. Theoretically, I could be put out with a severance pay of about $40k and that be it. Unlikely given my test results, but it HAS happened to others, so I was worried.

Through out this testing, one thing has become clear. I am not in very good shape mentally. Big surprise huh? :P Seriously though, the Army has diagnosed me with Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury from an explosion I was near in Iraq in 2003. To keep this short, lets just say I had zero confidence that the Army would take care of me after my brain surgery if I didn't "get better." So I toughed it out until two months ago when I ended up in the hospital, against my will, for a couple of days. Got out, then ended up back in the hospital for 7 days. Three were inpatient, four were outpatient. It was all about the weakness on my left side causing my right side to be overly compensatory and in the end, it has pulled my spine out of whack. The Doc's think this is what is causing the majority of my headaches. But during this, they also discovered I have severe obstructive sleep apnea, the no shit...kill ya if you don't use the BIPAP machine...kind brought on due to either brain damage from the explosion or the surgery. They don't know for sure.

So I've been going through a tough set of tests for the last month. My cognitive thinking is moderately impaired with executive processes being severely impaired. I'm not going to get real descriptive of my problems, but I will say that my memory, organizational skills, ability to multi-task, make simple decisions and so on has been affected. My biggest complaint being lack of mental clarity and difficulty making decisions. It has taken me over an hour to get to this point in this post, just trying to clearly explain things and proper grammar is time consuming.

So what's the point? Here soon, I'll be out of the net for an extended period of time. Right now, anywhere from six weeks to three months. The Army is sending me to the Shepard Center in Atlanta. It will start off with their Out Patient and move to Day program. I will, hopefully, relearn some of the basic thinking skills I'm having so many problems with now.

My medical team, and there is a team of doctor's working with me, six at last count, is determined to keep me in the Army until I hit 19 years and nine months of service. At this point, I can be officially retired just as if I'd spent 20 years in service. I had thought that it was a day over 19 years, but that's not the case. There's documented instances of people being PUT OUT of the Army in a comatose state with less than 30% disability!!! At less than 30%, it means a ONE TIME payment to the individual and NO benefits. I have no problem telling you folks that had I of not struggled to stay in the Army, I would probably be homeless right now. There's no way in hell I would have managed to hold down a civilian job in the shape I've been in. Luckily, I've had an excellent chain of command and Soldiers willing to take up my slack and help me out so that I could at least get to this point. Since the Army is just now diagnosing me with MTBI, and everything is extremely well documented in that explosion incident, I get the "chance" to be rehabilitated, which will put me over the 19 years and 9 months needed to get my retirement with benefits of at least 50%. So unless things go horribly wrong, our financial future isn't looking as bleak as it did just last Friday.

So there it is. Maybe I will sleep good tonight.

Sorry for the long post.

Tom

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Quakindude

So there it is. Maybe I will sleep good tonight.

Sorry for the long post.

Tom

Hopefully, you obviously need a break buddy. Take care of yourself, we'll be there when you come back. =)

It's a good thing you'll get your retirement too. It would have been extremely shitty if you got canned before your twenties.

[Capper]

Hang in there Tom

[PTRMAN]

Best wishes for a recovery, Tom. Prayers out to you and your family.