28 July, 2000

The Physical

After fasting for twelve hours my stomach is doing some serious growling. Heck I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet! In an hour I will be able to eat and drink..or at least that is what I thought!!! I arrived at the clinic at about 7:45 to do the paperwork for my “Going Polar” physical, with my Smith Kline box of goodies and a FedEx pouch to ship everything. I met Dr. Fullerton at about 8 and he looked over the list of tests that were required and exclaimed “this is more than we did in the Air Force!” Then he said that this would be his first time to do a PQ for a deployment to anywhere as remote as the South Pole. His poking and prodding took about an hour, then I got to go to the EKG station for my very first 12 lead EKG. At first the nurse wanted to shave the contact points on my chest...after saving one she asked if I could stand a little pain when the leads were removed. I assured her that I could stand “a little” pain. I think that I must have a different idea of what a little pain is...maybe I should have suffered through the hair growing back! After the EKG it was down to blood draw to give my 6 tubes! This went very quickly and was actually painless. After blood draw and the necessary call to Raytheon to ask what tests were really needed, it was back up to the Doc to have a TB Test. In three days I can have it read and my forms can go to the Medical Department at Raytheon. Finally at 10:30 I got to eat...only 15 hours on an empty stomach. It is a good thing that I have my fat layer to live on.