Hey military docs. I was wondering can someone get in the military with a dropped foot do to a severed perennial nerve?
Not likely, although I have seen people on profiles with foot drop following nerve injury while on active duty.
Drop foot would not be waiverable.
Some kid just got through ROTC missing a thumb. Where there is a will there is always a way. How do I make it clear to a doctor that I can physically handle military service? Collect reccomendations from civilian doctors?
Anything I can do to up my chances? Plus I doubt military service would aggravate it.
Anything I can do to up my chances? Plus I doubt military service would aggravate it.
How is it "academic" doctor. In what way would this prevent me from completing my duties as a soldier? I am as ambulatory and fast as I ever was. Explain to me why losing half a thumb is less debilitating than foot drop.
Anything is waiverable - with the proper connections. A 3-4 star General/Admiral or congressman/senator could probably get you in . . .
For the 99.9% - you're stuck with what you've got. Go to the recruiter and give it a whirl, hope for the best, and fight like hell. You never know. My brother had open heart surgery in infancy and got a commission - but had to fight for it.
. . . ..
Suggesting that the accession standards are subject to corruption--which is what you are really implying--is a misrepresentation of facts.
it does no one any good to suggest the DODMERB process is some kind of casino game where you never know what the outcome might be.
I have not been involved in the DODMERB process, so I can only speak to the other end of the equation. I'm sure the folks making the decisions are doing their best to make it a perfectly fair, reliable system. But from watching others go through the process and having worked with recruiters, the process certainly seems like a crapshoot from the outside looking in. If you sent in two guys who have the exact same condition - the impression is that one guy may get the waiver, the other not. Maybe one guy gets seen by a MD who is sympathetic, and downplays the condition; maybe the other guy's package gets looked at on a day when the reviewer(s) were in a particularly bad mood. It is a human institution and there is an element of variability.
We like to believe that the military has standard procedures which are always followed and never deviated - but personal connections can trump such standards. "Drug deals" have been, in my experience, the rule rather than the exception in the military writ large. And I don't know that it's a bad thing, frankly.
None of this is meant as an insult to the folks making the decisions (it seems as if you have first hand knowledge?) - and I'm not trying to give false hope to our OP (I'd put a paycheck against him getting a waiver). But I don't know that the system is as black and white as you make it out. My brother, for one, had one of those "non-waiverable conditions for which no exceptions are [ever] made." Yet an exception was made.
So my advice stands - go to the recruiter, give it a whirl, hope for the best, fight like hell. He'll never know unless he tries.
are we talking about the common peroneal nerve?