Or, your other choice, is when you tell the provider doing the accession physical that you have a breathing difficulty, you can call it Reactive Airway Disease (same ICD 9 code) but that meds control it. Then they don't have to check the ASTHMA box, and No waiver required.
then you can do like some other lowlife's have done, and use it to keep from getting deployed to the dessert. Just keep in mind, that this will put you in the same category as the women who get pregnant just to avoid deployment.
The Twisted True Tale of An Asthmatic Lowlife
Nice. I guess I was just such a lowlife...but only because my O-6 FP who had been my PCM for 6 years (both at Travis and Andrews) essentially ordered me to get a methacholine challenge test to dx or rule out asthma. I never tried to use my disease to "weasel out" of assignments; instead, the Air Force did its best to try to kill me, despite my MEB, profile, and diagnosis.
Here's my story.
Starting around 1999, with the stress of ongoing civil war at Travis between the nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologists, I started experiencing wheezing (for the first time since age 6) when I came down with URIs. This was exacerbated severely when I developed whole body urticaria due to an allergic reaction to something (? pesticides, ? environment) at CMRT (Continuing Medical Readiness Training, now known as MURT: Medical Unit Readiness Training) in the desert of Orinda, CA. After that episode, I kept having bronchospasm and wheezing during URIs. My then-O-5 FP, who had been my wife's attending during her FP residency, advised me as above: he would only put down "Reactive Airway Disease" on paper, else I would require an MEB (Medical Evaluation Board), which could (could) recommend separation for asthma. At the time, I was still a gung-ho USAF Medical Officer. I felt it would be dishonorable to cheat the U.S. taxpayers out of the remaining 6 years of my ADSC. I decided to follow his advice and suck it up without treatment. As a result, I went on to have several frank asthma attacks which frightened me, including a bad one at a fall festival filled with bales of hay, for which I self-medicated (lucky I was a physician).
Fast forward to Dec., 2002. I had gone to a pediatric asthma CME conference in Baltimore with my wife. There, the distinguished, nationally-renowned pulmonologists stated in no uncertain terms that "Reactive Airway Disease" was a misnomer: patients either had asthma, or they didn't. Yes, bronchospasm can occur in the absence of asthma (smokers under anesthesia comes to mind), but most of the patients previously dx'd with "RAD" were asthmatics. When I went into the FP clinic later that winter wheezing like a big dog, my FP Colonel put me on inhaled steroids and albuterol and ordered me to see our pulmonologist to initiate the MEB process. You see, between 1999 and 2003, my FP had been deployed to the Middle East. There, he had the unfortunate experience of several troops nearly dying on him in tents from asthma attacks triggered by the dusty, dry, allergenic conditions of The Sandbox. When he investigated, every one of them had had signs and symptoms attributed on their records to "RAD"; they had wanted to stay in the military, so they had gone along with this fig leaf.
I kinda dragged my feet, not because I was still a gung-ho USAF Medical Officer after two LORs for trying to do the right thing for my patients (see my website), but because I dreaded the methacholine challenge test. If you've never had an asthma attack, you wouldn't understand. When I was deployed to Turkey, I had a severe asthma attack caused by an LAPD Reservist who came directly from riding horses to my Combat Hapkido class without washing his hands...very bad.
Anyway, I eventually complied. After my pulmonary consult and methacholine challenge test (where I desatted to the 70s and thought I would die; only several rounds of albuterol broke the iatrogenic attack), the pulmonologist recommended in writing on his consult that I be separated "for the good of (myself) and the U.S. Air Force". Here's the crux: the medical recommendations of a board-certified internist mean nothing compared to the "Commander's Impact Statement". My evil, tyrannical Commander, Col. Rusty, stated essentially that I was a critical part of the Surgical Operations Squadron, one of only a handful of clinical anesthesiologists (true), and that, bereft of my godlike healing powers, the entire hospital would fall into a gaping chasm in the earth and perish (false). Accordingly, the MEB came back from HQ Randolph as RTD (return to duty), with WWQ: NO (Not World Wide Qualified), i.e., no deployments, with a special prohibition against exercising in "cold climates". I shrugged, and did not fight this determination: I only had a year and change left by that point, and, again, did not want to go the rest of my life feeling I had cheated the U.S. taxpayers out of my required service to my country.
Having said the above, the Squadron continually tried to make me go out in the freezing cold and run. Moreover, the microcephalic *****s at Medical Readiness across base tried time and time again to put me on deployment rosters. I had to fax my MEB and profile to them THREE separate times, because they kept "losing" my paperwork in their angst to put bodies onto chalks. Finally, in late 2004, one of the NCOs told me that, due to a "short notice" deployment tasking, HQ AMC was considering taking me off of Non-WWQ status and deploying me anyway. I asked him: "Do you think that some functionary has the authority to overrule the determination of the three physicians on my MEB? Do you know this for sure, or are you just making this up." He gulped, and admitted that he was pulling this out of his lower alimentary tract. He just desperately needed a 45A3 body to get on a plane, and everyone else in my Flight was wriggling like silicone-treated eels to get out of the tasking.
This did not excuse me from our maniacal MSC Squadron XO's program of enforced exercise in order to keep up with the Jumpers. I ended up having to get dressed in PT gear and stand in the freezing rain on "Mandatory Fun Run" days to act as a "Road Guard", while OR techs ran past me sneering and laughing at the "disabled" LtCol who couldn't even suck it up and run or walk with them. Excellent for my morale, I must tell you.
So, there you have it. You can have asthma and stay on active duty. If you develop severe symptoms, you may be able to keep them quiet (if you have ignorant and/or unethical health care "providers"), or you may be forced into an MEB. Know that your MEB and profile are meaningless "recommendations" to the Line Commanders in charge of your life. When I left AD in June 05, it was becoming clear that nothing short of decapitation would prevent the "needs of the Air Force" from trumping non-WWQ status, given how desperately short of bodies every single medical AFSC was.
So, I wouldn't worry about looking like a "lowlife" to your peers and subordinates; I would worry more about some O-6 loser stamping "Non-WWQ Status Rescinded by Order of Command" on your chart and deploying your sorry self to the desert, where you may wake up in a tent one dusty night seeing your dead relatives beckoning to you at the terminal end of the worst asthma attack of your foreshortened life.
My advice: do NOT Go Into the Light (GIL), even though you will be GIL Qualified by that point with a sat of 0.0.
Hope this helps,
--
R
