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Medical Condition "Bible"

picklesuit

Dirty Hinge
pilot
Contributor
Interesting that being a transvestite, exhibitionist, voyeur, missing one or both testicles, having your penis partially or fully amputated, and having sex change surgery are disqualifying. I think you will see that change soon what with all the Bradley/Sheila Manning crap and how we are to blame for not being accepting of our shemale members...
 

Tycho_Brohe

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Do you mean like a hairline fracture?
I would assume most fractures are breaks, since they are in fact synonyms.
 

Renegade One

Well-Known Member
None
I can Google if a fracture is a break. What I want to know is if I should tell him.
Always willing to defer to FedDoc or NavOffRec or others who know far better, but here's my thoughts:

Look…I doubt that ever having had a "truly broken bone" has ever been a DQ factor, so long as it has healed normally and you're "good to go". Too many football/hockey/lacrosse players who have become NAs to think otherwise. A fracture…a hairline crack…whatever. Best advice I can give you at this point is to be truthful and honest…don't try to "parse words"…ask questions if you don't know. If you're sweating this, several courses of action, depending on how "guilt-ridden" you feel:

1: "Fuggedaboudit"…probably never come up again. They won't give you a full-body scan MRI at NAMI.

2: If you, like myself, are the product of 16 years of Catholic education and just can't sleep with the whole "lying thing", there are still two options:
2.A: Go to confession…bare your soul to your Confessor…say the freaking 5 Hail Marys, and then…See number 1 above.
2.B: Tell the recruiter the true skinny. Again…I doubt it's a big deal. Explain why you were confused and come clean on outcomes.

I do think you're thinking too much. I never told my recruiter about my unfortunate 7 months in a Turkish prison…
 

jcj

Registered User
(I'm a general & trauma surgeon & I know a fair amount about fractures. I also do some work with clinical informatics.).

As Tycho-Brohe, R1 and others have pointed out, "fracture" is a synonym for a break, which usually means of a bone. There are exceptions, for example cartilage can be fractured without a fracture of a bone. And there's also this unfortunate problem - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penile_fracture.

As NavyOffRec points out it's helpful to know if you were seen by a doc for this, but unlike some other medical problems it's usually hard to tell if you have a fracture, sprain, strain - whatever - without seeing a doc & getting x-rays.

If you have had a fracture (diagnosed by a physician) then yes, you should report it. If you saw a doc, ER, were seen in the hospital or whatever, you (or your insurance company) got a bill - which would have a billing code (called an ICD-9 code) indicating a fracture. I'm not talking about your medical records (of course it would be there too), I'm talking about your billing records. These records get added to various databases and once the record exists, it literally will persist forever. Your permission for them to do that with your data is in the fine print of the forms you sign every time you get seen somewhere for health care.

I don't know if the Navy routinely checks outside health records for officer applicants (NavyOffRec mat be able to tell you), but even if they don't if there is a problem later (accident, illness) they can get to these records easily - and you don't want to be the person who has something in the past you should have reported but didn't. So if you have had a fracture in the past,that was diagnosed by a physician, you should consider calling your recruiter with something like "as I was thinking about this I remember I had a fracture of (whatever) and I forgot to list it on my paperwork".

The other thing to know is the medical standards for officer accession and for flight status are over in the DOC's corner forum. As R1 said, a healed fracture generally isn't a problem with flight status - but the actual determination is made by a military physician or flight surgeon based on these standards. I am not a flight surgeon, but if you want to give more detail I'll be happy to look up what you have in the standards & tell you if I think you'll have a problem. Or you can PM me the info if you want. There are some flight surgeons who sometimes visit the board who might help.

But in general if you have had a medical problem in the past and you're asked about it later for entering the military, buying insurance or whatever, you should report the information the best you can. With everyone moving to electronic databases & records it is really easy to get caught if you cheat.
 

Renegade One

Well-Known Member
None
But in general if you have had a medical problem in the past and you're asked about it later for entering the military, buying insurance or whatever, you should report the information the best you can. With everyone moving to electronic databases & records it is really easy to get caught if you cheat.
Penile fractures included? ;)

Honestly, Doc…great and informative post. Thanks.
 

exNavyOffRec

Well-Known Member
In pretty much all cases if you saw a doc then there are records, and if there are records it needs to be reported.

What not to report, "mom said I sprained my ankle", "dad said I cracked a rib", "aunt Bernice says I have asthma", "brother says I have my head up my ass", and so on.

*disclaimer.... if any of the above are actually a doc, then reported it, except maybe the brother one.*
 

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
It always perplexes me when people ask what they should and shouldn't report. The instructions couldn't be any clearer. If a dude can get shot by a gun in the face and still become a pilot then you shouldn't have to worry about that broken wrist you had when you fell off of your bike while landing that sweet jump off that homemade ramp when you were 10. The only thing that the MEPS docs care about is if it healed correctly or not. Same goes for every other issue out there. Some things are NPQ for military service - and they are that for a reason. You shouldn't hide that stuff either. Why? While it may have been your dream to serve since the day you were born, something is wrong with your body (perhaps through no fault of your own) and it puts you in an additional medical risk group that the DoD simply isn't willing to accept. Those are the breaks. Life goes on.
 

jmcquate

Well-Known Member
Contributor
I got an ankle hairline fracture during PLC. It healed up and I was back at Camp Usher the next summer. Broken bones are fine. Lying through omission is not.
 

Tycho_Brohe

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
The other thing to worry about is stress fractures, I've heard of two people get NPQ'ed for stress fractures at OCS. As in, they had stress fractures at OCS and didn't heal in time or something like that. IIRC, one of them is on here and has reapplied.
 
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