RussH
Its been a while...
Feb 04, 2010
Its been a while since I have blogged on here. A lot has gone on since my last post, Thanksgiving, Christmas and new Years to be exact amongst other things. I was even supposed to go see Dr. Crookes in November for my 6 month check up, but that didn't happen as my boss inhibited time off longer than 16hrs(2days). Oh well.I broke my tooth back on June 1st when I went to see Dr. Crookes, I called my dentist and he said that there wasn't anything that could be done until I got home. Peter told me that I was doing awesome in the roughly 2months since surgery. Anyhow my dentist looked at my tooth in November as he couldn't do anything until then. He saw the break and was wanting to send me to a specialist, I told him that I would have preferred if he did it.
Thanksgiving was the first major food holiday since my surgery and I was concerned about eating. I am still learning what I can eat and what I can't and there are some items that just made me so GI unhappy. I made it through Thanksgiving without much issue, so I was quite happy. I took Alex on our first long trip together, we traveled almost 300miles south to Las Cruces to watch the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It was awesome and even though we were in the nose bleed section, I wouldn't have changed it for the world. I loved it and it as her first time seeing TSO, just watching her experience the show was worth it. I saw my dentist again because of a couple of small dental issues that he wanted resolve, I asked him about the broken tooth and he still wanted to send me to a specialist to extract it. Then the hospitals' Christmas party came...oh wait it was called a holiday celebration. I am sorry, it is a friggen Roman Catholic hospital and yet they choose to take out the most important holiday of the Roman Catholic church from their celebration. Anyhow, Christmas came and went as did New Years.
The new year was suppose to be a new beginning and something wonderful, but that was not the case. Only days after the start, I got into an argument with a pharmacist because he was violating hospital policy and a directive from the head of the pharmacy. The next two days, I was scheduled off for an extraction of the broken tooth...which was successful. I was on the second day of leave, still in pain and drugged up mind you when my boss called me and said I was on administrative paid leave until further notice.
Monday came around and was called into HR where the director just said your fired. He sided with the pharmacist over his compliance person/pharmacy technician. The tech is far more easily replaced than a pharmacist. So with only 8 days left before my 5 year anniversary with the hospital they decided that I my services were no longer needed.
That same day a massive earthquake ravaged the tiny country of Haiti. That day I realized that this separation could have been a very good thing, as the DMAT team could be deployed to that area. On the 16th we had the first team training of the new year where our commander informed us that we are most likely going to be deployed earlier than our on-call time of February. I did my first team briefing where I informed the team of our current communication capabilities and the necessary information on how to use the radios, satcom units and other toys in the logistic section. We are preparing to deploy into one of the most austere areas that our team has ever deployed into. January 25th came and went and we didnt deploy so the team expected to deploy on the first.
January 30th at 0800hrs EST, our commander received an alert from our command center in DC informing him that our team has been put on ALERT for a deployment on the first. The email informed the deployment team that we should have our bags packed and ready to go at a moments notice and that we would have a mission by noon that day. Well it didnt happen, the commander emailed us again and said that we were still on ALERT. We are 5 days into our on-call month and we have yet to deploy to Haiti. We also have a small possiblity of deploying the extreme northern edge of Washington state and into Canada for the Olympics. So I am down to 266lbs from 432lbs and I am 66lbs from my initial final goal and only 74lbs from my revised goal of 192lbs. I am feeling great other than not having a job, I have applied for unemployment and I have applied for about 20 different jobs plus putting my resume up on USAJOBS and Monster.com. My stalker aka Alex has been a constant source of reassurance and support, not to mention stick by me during my weightloss. She really does care about me, maybe even love me, hell she has stuck with me for nearly 5 months. Her family loves me.
More to come later, gotta jam over to REI for more supplies for potential deployment.
