Hey ASUpilot...
Cheer up, I'm in the waiver boat myself. Besides my age, I'll need one for my knee. My recruiter is shopping around at the local bases/facilities for a "friendly" Doc for my physical. Bethesda, MD., an hour from where I am, is on the list of places he might send me. I had surgery to patch a bone tumor in the right medial condyle of my left femur. (imagine a bone with a pair of knobs on both ends. The end of my femur that connects to the knee had the tumor in the right knob. It was more like a cavity then a tumor, the right hand knob of my femur had a golf ball sized hollowness in it.) The void was patched up with cement and the excised tissue got the pathology treatment and came back as a benign type of growth, good news! However the name of the type of growth is Condroblastoma (say it ten times real fast!) It's rare in children and teens and practically unheard of in people over twenty. Boy, if it wasn't for bad luck...Anyway, according to the med textbooks, it has the characteristic, however unlikely, of returning at any given time bad news! The exact type of med conditions the services avoid like the plague, pardon the pun.
My recruiter told me straight up today that he thinks there's no way I'll pass a physical, no matter who I see, and that it's only a formality on the way to applying for a BUMED waiver, which he has repeatedly informed me, is the final voice on acceptance, to answer your question. His plan is to have my whole package together when he submits the waiver so he can say: "Look, he's a great candidate, we gotta have e'm!"
Yes I have been monitoring your posts as I have a great interest in the waiver process myself. My recruiter has assured me that I have a decent shot at a waiver due to the low numbers of newbies. You might too. I don't know what you should do, but if I were you I'd try to get someone from BUMED on the phone in person. If not, you might wanna try the AF, their vision requirement have gone through the floor, and they are allowing PRK, wheras the Navy isn't, from what I've read. They may be a little less strict.
Think positive.
Hey ENS. Wickham, dig the new forum! I've been promoted again!
FLY NAVY Y'ALL!
D
Edited by - Dave Shutter on 08/29/2000 00:02:45