5/21
We did our basic rifle marksmanship last week. I shot the worst since I’ve been here on our qualification day but still qualified easily on the first try. So, with that out of the way , should I have to stop training for rehab, I’ll start again in week 4 instead of week 1. I’m pretty happy about that.
I’m currently in the nuclear medicine waiting room at the hospital. My bone scan is today and I’ve already had my radiation injected and am drinking 1 canteen of water 1 hour and going to pee about every 4.2 seconds. I thought that I would find out today if I had a fracture, but I guess I won’t know until tomorrow. I’m pretty much used to the whole I’ll find out when the Army decides to tell me thing, though, so it’s not such a big deal.
There are 10 of us waiting here, drinking water, all sharing one bathroom. It’s funny because as soon as one person come out, someone gets up to go in. I understand now why our briefing include instructions to only use the one in the clinic and not go out into the hospital. At the time, I didn’t get why someone would go out into the hospital when there’s one right here.
Basic training is interesting, huh? Paragraphs about where we pee…
Man, hanging out at the hospital is pretty awesome. Everybody here is so polite and the food was awesome. I mean, in the real world it would suck pretty hard, but in Fort Leonard Wood, it’s sweeeet. For desert I had a stale cinnamon roll with about half as much icing as a good one would have. It was delicious. The other girl that is here (also getting a bone scan of the same heel) was excited because she got a coke for lunch. Pop and cigarettes are the two things most folks lust after around here. The other girl was surprised when I got Gatorade instead of coke because we drink Gatorade (not a choice - the Army knows about hyponatremia
, it seems) every day. Everybody knows that I love Gatorade. So I’m happy that it’s compulsory.
I’m finished at the hospital and back at the barracks, on personal time, even, They didn’t’ give me the results today like I’d expected. I’ll get them tomorrow instead. I’m really nervous about it because there was a part on the screen that was brighter than the res and the guy kept pointing it out to a girl he was training. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s just something normal. I surely have no idea what parts supposed to glow on a bone scan, y’know?
We were supposed to move from red phase to white phase on Friday but we’re still in red phase because our company commander feels like we haven’t demonstrated that we are ready to phase over. As soon as they decide we’re ready we’ll get longer phone time and actually be able to do things like go for runs without the platoon or fo to the PX more often. Also, a really awesome privilege of white phase - instead of being punished as a platoon when one person screws up, we’ll get individual punishments. Life will be so much sweeter then.
We had our first shake down type inspection this morning. We had to open up our lockers and stand with our nose to the wall in the hallway while they went through everything. They really, really screwed up a bunch of peoples stuff but mine didn’t’ get it so badly . I heard them talking about an inspection yesterday so I made sure everything was all squared away. I think that the people whose stuff really got torn up were the ones that had messy lockers. I had to leave immediately after for my Dr. stuff, but from what I saw, it was the slobs that had EVERYTHING dumped out. I also had to leave before I got to see who was in trouble for what contraband, but I’m sure somebody had something stashed away. As our drill sergeants say frequently, ‘there’s always one.’
There are lost of phrases that are seeping into my vocabulary because the drill sergeants say them so much. “Jacked up” and “Squared away” are staples “High speed”, “holy crap, privates” ,“freakin”, and (probably my favorite) “ this is why we can’t have nice things, privates” are also heard frequently. I think that freakin is the worst one. Our d.s.’s aren’t technically supposed to cuss at us, so lots of cuss word substitutes are thrown around. Freakin’ is the most common but we also hear a bunch of “bull jacks”. Oh, and I forgot “la dee da dee, everybody” You really have to hear the cadence of that one to get the full impact. But trust me, it’s great.
5/22
Okay, this has to go in the journal. Hey people that are supposed to be writing me - I haven’t gotten mail in 2 days!! Quit slacking!!!!
Anyway I didn’t’ get my results today - I have to go back tomorrow. I’ll write more then. I’m just having competition with one of my battle buddies about who will get mail from the most different palaces and she pulled ahead today, so I had to put that message in there. <3
5/23
Okay, I definitely do have a stress fracture. I’m still in training for at least one more week. Next week we’ll see what’s happening.
Right now it’s lights out and our drill sergeants are playing music for use over the PA system.
Our drill sergeants are awesome.
<3
J.
