Well It was a quite an adventure to get through the whole application, it took 12 months for what I call Part I of the three part process. I've read in many blogs that people usually submit there medical kit, get cleared within a 1-3 months, officially invited to serve and get a departure date.
August 2012 - November 2012
For me it was a bit more complicated than that, after a month I was contacted by the occupational health nurse, she was awesome and really helped me a lot. The reason she contacted me was because I had high blood pressure. She ask me for an updated medical evaluation with three blood pressure readings. I asked her if I had to go to the doctor again to get those readings, I mentioned I didn't have health insurance and was paying everything out of pocket; I asked her if there was other options in other to avoid paying three visits to the doctor at $65 bucks a pop. Remember I had a minimum wage job and no health insurance. She really helped me out and said if I just went to a Walgreens, they could do a blood pressure readings for free. I went and got the readings and faxed them to her. Unfortunately they were still high, and said that I had to do it with a medical doctor.
December 2012 - February 2013
I was like Fuck!....More money to spend, but well it was my dream so I had to suck it up and deal with it. In order to get medically cleared I had to get my blood pressure down and go once a month to the doctor to get three blood pressure readings and send the final notes from the doctor. So by then I had gotten a good job (September 2012) and was able to afford the visits and started to get out of debt and save!
I obviously started eating better, exercising and all the healthy things to get that blood pressure within normal parameters. I really focused myself in this process, I really wanted to get better and be able to leave.
Doctors Visits:
December 2012
I got my blood pressure readings, high again and my doctor suggested high blood pressure medication and a healthier lifestyle.
January 2013
Blood pressure still the same, but lost some weight and kept taking high blood pressure medication.
February 2013
Blood pressure went down considerably, maintained weight loss! Hell yeah!
So after three months of eating better, exercising and taking medication that made me cough all the time. I was happy with the results. I sent my results immediately and got an email back five days later. The Peace Corp Medical Services is really strict, they really want you to go healthy as an ox, which is understandable. For those who don't know they want you to be healthy enough within there standards, because if something were to happen, some of the locations you may be sent too, don't have medical facilities near by, so for safety reasons they want you as healthy as possible. Being that said, I was told by Peace Corps once again that I needed to submit three more readings to make sure my blood pressure was stable. I got desperate and nervous that all this may delay everything again for departure. So I went to Walgreens again and got them for free and sent in a fax with the blood pressure readings. So by the end of February, I received an email and after everything I went through I was MEDICALLY CLEARED!!! Thank God! Finally!
In my nomination letter I was supposed to leave on March 2013, so I was a bit nervous that I probably would have to leave ASAP or wait more months in order to get invited, but I was very glad that I was already good to go.
Negative total:
$512+$225 (Doctor's visits and medication) = -$737
No comments:
Post a Comment