FINALLY! Some answers....

So it has been 13 weeks since my medical kit was received by the Peace Corps Medical office in DC. 13 weeks --- that's roughly 67 business days. 67! I had not heard anything, didn't see an update stating my review had began, was repeatedly told that the process takes 8-12 weeks, even when I reached out at 12 and 13 weeks the same generic message was e-mailed back to me.

Finally I went on a phone call/e-mail rampage. I e-mailed my recruiter in NY, my medical point of contact, my medical nurse (whose name I didn't find out until week 12), a separate nurse who apparently was covering my original nurse while he was on vacation, as well as the pre-serviceunit e-mail address. Finally after e-mailing the pre-service unit with a desperate e-mail, I got a phone call from a nurse in DC who was covering for my original nurse. God bless this alternate nurse. She let me know that my nurse was again out on vacation and that she will start my review when she gets off the phone. GREAT, it's about damn time...oi!

Then two hours later she calls back and says that everything looks fine except I need to get a TB questionnaire filled out by my doctor just to get some final details on my reaction. Then once I fax it back, I should be medically cleared. HALLELUJAH!!!!!

I was so happy to see that I had a toolkit update this morning I almost screamed in joy when I saw it on my blackberry as I rolled out of bed. So my plan is to go home, get the letter, make an appointment for my Doctor on monday, he fills out the last little form, I fax it back, and hopefully by Tuesday I will be medically cleared.

This has been the most frustrating and annoying process I have ever been through. When you first get the med packet they stress several times that they need you to fill everything out ASAP and get it back because that will give you the best chances at receiving your original nomination. Well what about when you do that, and then no one even looks at your file for 13 weeks???? Seriously, I am an overall very healthy guy, it's not like it can take that long to go through my file. Or if you're swamped with people that are scheduled to leave before me at least let me know that you will get around to it soon. Leaving someone in the dark for 9 weeks, then not giving any real answers for the next 4 weeks, was really difficult. I think what made this whole thing a lot more frustrating is being able to read all of the blogs of you other wonderful applicants... I think for my sanity, I shouldn't have been checking everyone's blogs so often. Then I wouldn't have known that others were getting through medical clearance in 5-6 weeks, I wouldn't have known that people with the same departure date were getting through, or that people with the same departure date - who sent their stuff in after me.... - were getting cleared. I would have been anxious, but at least I wouldn't have felt forgotten or shafted. I guess sometimes, ignorance really is bliss...

Anyway....just seeing that little update on my toolkit has washed away all the anger and frustration and I'm super excited all over again!!!!! Really us applicants are just ragdolls that the Peace Corps gets to throw around at their whim, sometimes lifting us up, sometimes letting us fall into the dark. But overall I think they really do care about us and appreciate our desire to help. I can't wait to see a "medical review complete" check on my toolkit (hopefully next week!)

Until then all, I'm going to go pop some bubble wrap or scream into a pillow to get rid of any last waves of the last 13 weeks haha...

A la prochaine!

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

In the Medical Clearance Chaos

Medical Clearance...very, very, extensive. I am currently in the process of trying to get through the medical clearance portion of the application process. I have gotten my dental forms all complete, I had my physical exam/medical history check, I had blood work done (4 vials! that's a lot of tests!), sent a letter to a therapist I saw once in college for him to fill out, more about that later, and plan on getting a Polio booster and TB test this Friday. Once that is done, I should have all that I need to send off my medical packet to the Peace Corps Office in DC. I'm hoping that I won't end up having too many costs, I know I'm already going to have to fork over about 80 bucks for the full mouth dental x-rays + a filling correction that took place at the dentist a few weeks ago. I don't foresee too many extra costs from the Doctor as my medical insurance should cover most of it. But who knows how much all of that blood work is going to set me back.

Now onto my first frustration with the Peace Corps application process. I had mentioned on my Health Status Review form initially that I had seen a therapist. They didn't ask anything about when I saw him, how many times, or the reasons why. I said yes because I felt I needed to be completely honest since I am applying for a Government position after all. However, in reality, I saw a Therapist for one hour, sophomore year of college, because my parents wanted me to go. They asked me to go because I had just come out to them and they wanted me to get an "unbiased" opinion. Seeing as I didn't necessarily seek out therapy, nor did I ever see the therapist again and am a mentally healthy, happy individual, I think that the circumstances around this should not require me to get this Therapist to fill out a full evaluation on me. It's not that big of a deal, it's just me being impatient and wanting to send everything right now! haha... So I shall have to wait for this therapist to send me back the evaluation form I had sent him. In fact, I should give him a call and check up on that process :)

In other news, I am still so excited to be nominated and am hoping above all hopes that if I get my medical packet in this weekend, maybe just maybe I can look to hear about an invitation before the Christmas season. That way I can ask for things that would be really useful i.e.- a headlamp, a sleeping bag, solar charger maybe?

That's all for now, back to work!!