Quick Update: Dental Clearance!

Hello, hello! Just wanted to write a little note because I'm a huge dork and am super excited to know that I had an update on my toolkit this morning: Dental Clearance!! Woo!

Now I know I sent everything together on Tuesday afternoon so that means they have everything. I also have read that it takes a couple extra days before the system will show that they are reviewing your medical files, so I will wait patiently to see that update on my toolkit.

Isn't it funny that even though most of us know we are going to clear these certain stages, we still get excited seeing those wonderful words written out on a webpage? Ahhh, what a great Friday!

Medical Review sent!

Well, finally after a much longer timeframe than I had previously expected, I have Fed-exed my Medical/Dental/and Vision forms back to the DC Office. I know they were delivered yesterday, now I'm just waiting to see how long before I see that they are actually in the hands of my Medical reviewer. I e-mailed them to let them know I had overnight shipped my documents and asked if they could let me know when they see them. So fingers crossed they see the documents soon!

I thought I would write down some of the reasons why my medical review took so long to get in order. First, as I have written about before, I was asked to get a form filled out by the Therapist I saw once in 2006. That took forever. First I had to find the name of the Therapist I saw (thank you gmail for your wonderful Archiving). Then I was able to mail him the forms required. After that and after he and I spoke on the phone to refresh both of our memories of that distant visit, I didn't hear from him for two weeks. So I reached out to him only to learn that he had lost the forms. Oi! Thus I needed to ask the DC medical office to please mail me a new form for him to fill out. OK, done. Sent him the new documents and didn't hear from him for another two weeks. I finally called and e-mailed until he responded, told him my address over the phone and asked him to put it in the mail that afternoon. Finally I got them back in the mail on this past monday, more than a month after I first spoke to him.

Another hiccup in my review process was the surprising reaction I had to the TB skin test. I showed a reaction of 9mm. For a healthworker or for someone who had spent significant time in a foreign country, that would be considered a positive reaction. However, I am in the lowest risk group since I am not a healthworker, not exposed to healthworkers frequently, and have not spent more than a week out of the US. I would have needed to show a 15mm reaction to classify it as a positive. I feared though that this might raise some flags and slow my process of getting clearance, so I called my medical contact and asked her if I should get a chest x-ray to verify I don't have TB, she said of course. So I had to set that up and that took a whole extra week. Finally I have everything back, I had a normal chest x-ray thank god, and sent everything off on Tuesday afternoon.

Now that I have sent the forms off, I have a renewed sense of excitement and relief. At least now the whole process is out of my hands, I either get an invitation or not. Hopefully I will hear back in the coming months that I have been invited because I am so thrilled about the possibility of this actually happening. I've been reading some great books lately to get me inspired about development work and I definitely recommend reading them if you're waiting to leave, in the application process, or even just thinking about something like the Peace Corps. The first is Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and a co-author who I can't remember right now...the second is Nine Hills to Nambonkaha by Sara Erdman.

Three Cups of Tea was an amazing amazing book. It was so inspiring to read and I flew through it so quickly I just couldn't put it down. It was so amazing to see just how much one passionate, motivated person can do when they really fight for something they believe in. It has me really hopeful about starting my adventure in Africa and helping a community as best as I can. I'm afraid that I might enjoy development/non-profit work that I will continue in that field for the rest of my life. I guess afraid isn't the right word, because it would be awesome, but I do think it would prove to be difficult in planting any stateside roots. Well that's getting way to far ahead of myself and I should just be happy to be a part of the waiting game now.

:)

Talk to you all (if anyone) soon!!

Keith

Medical Chaos: Part 2

So I thought I would write a little update on the recent activity involved in getting my medical paperwork complete.

When we ended last time I was telling you all about my frustrations with having to get a form filled out by a therapist that I had seen once in my sophomore year at Penn. Well, turns out they really do need the paperwork so I was patiently waiting to get the forms back from said therapist. A few days had gone by, then a few more, so I decided to call and check in with him to see if he ever got the forms and if he was willing/able to complete them. To my surprise, the therapist had lost my forms. How wonderful! You can really see how much he cared about helping me with this, that or his office might be a huge mess and he just decided to throw everything out and start clean haha. Anyway, I had to request new forms be sent to me and then I scanned and e-mailed them to him so he couldn't "lose" them. That was over a week ago and I still haven't gotten his filled out forms yet. I really hope he does this for me soon so I can stop worrying about that at least.

In other medical news, I went to my doctor on Friday of last week to get the results of my bloodwork, all good there. Except one little mistake. The doctor ordered the wrong Hep B test (Surface antibody instead of core antibody) so I now have to get another blood test performed and get those results! Oi, my arm is becoming a pin cushion already (I'm not even at staging yet! haha (I just knocked on wood, don't want to jinx my chances by mentioning staging before I'm invited)). So after we discovered this mistake we moved on to the next action item for the day, my TB (tuberculosis) test and Polio booster.

The nurse on site gave me the TB test, which was surprisingly a little uncomfortable and I winced a little, I'm really bad with shots and needles lol. And then the Doctor gave me the Polio booster in my other shoulder, that actually didn't hurt at all. Go figure. So to explain the TB test for anyone reading this who isn't 100% familiar, they inject a small amount of liquid in between certain layers of your skin on your forearm. Then you wait 48-72 hours before returning to have the spot looked at. A negative reaction will show nothing, just perhaps the little hole where you can see that a needle was inserted. A positive reaction can be categorized in a few different ways based on your health risk grouping (i.e. - people with HIV/Aids, Healthcare workers, people who have lived overseas). Basically a positive reaction to the skin test results in a raised, hard area surrounding the needle spot. For someone like myself who is in the lowest risk group, I would need a hard area with a diameter of 15mm or more. My test came back with a 9-10mm reaction! Needless to say, my doctor and I were shocked. The doctor felt thought that since I am very low risk that the 9mm reaction was still considered a negative reaction in his eyes. I was a little confused on his answer when I was in the office, not sure if he thought we should do more testing or if he thought there was a slight chance I actually had TB or not. So I e-mailed my point of contact in the medical office of Peace Corps in DC and let her know the situation (for the TB reaction as well as for the Hep B mix up).

She called me back this morning and let me know that, Yes I would have to get the other blood test, and that now I need to have a chest x-ray to verify that I do not have TB. I was so baffled as to how I would even have gotten TB, until my friend asked if my boyfriend had ever been tested for TB since he has moved back to the states from Egypt. Hmmmm I thought, and the answer was no, he hasn't. See my boyfriend studied abroad in Egypt from Jun 08-Jun 09 at the American University of Cairo and so living abroad for more than a month in Africa pushes you into a higher risk group. I need for him to get tested for TB and see if his test comes out positive, and in the meantime I will get a chest x ray done to double check if I am clear or not.

I really hope this is just because my body always reacts strongly to things like bug bites, needles, allergic reactions, etc. so hopefully that could be what caused my arm to get hard. Otherwise, if I have TB, that will most definitely push my application back. Luckily TB is entirely treatable by taking antibiotics for a few months and you're all clear. I personally don't believe I have it because I have none of the symptoms. However I have read that you can have TB for years and it be dormant and asymptomatic when all of a sudden one day the virus awakens (dum dum duuuuuum!) and you get symptoms.

Well all in all, this process definitely has been trying and difficult and has caused me to really think about whether or not I actually want to do this. As of right now, I still really want to do this as the next journey in my life and so will move forward in getting through all of these medical hoops.

On a completely unrelated note, I have been in "legal hold" for a few weeks, I wonder what that means??????

à bientôt