Finally - waivers granted - don't give up

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Me3boys

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Dec 5, 2019
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I've had two sons go through the waiver process the last 6 months (one for Army ROTC and the other for service academies). We've had to jump though so many hoops and have completed an endless amount of AMIs, but within the last two weeks, both have been granted waivers for ROTC and three service academies.

For those with peanut allergies - I've received an education around the types of allergies, false positives, the links between birch and peanut on skin tests, etc. If your candidate has never had an anaphylactic episode, make sure you get peanut component testing (see here for study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22738678) and plan on doing a food challenge. We were very lucky to find an allergist who knew to dig deeper beyond a simple skin and blood test.

For those with a history of injury or surgery, start pulling medical records, doctor visit notes and surgery reports as you are likely going to need to provide them and it will save you some aggravation and time waiting for the medical facility to process and release the records. Also, if you need additional tests, X-rays, MRIs, etc, stay aggressive in getting those appointments scheduled. We live north of Boston, and it took Concorde over 30 days to find and contract with a facility for us that could do some imaging. We ended up at a location in Rhode Island, lol. I can't imagine how long it would have taken if we weren't contacting them every other day.

Bottom line - stay aggressive and don't give up.
 
Good post!
Not always the case to be sure, but it does occur.
But good outcome😁
 
Have your sons, not you, comply with the DoDMERB sticky “FAST”
 
Me3boys, I'm assuming the allergy questionnaire was required first for the peanut allergy issue. Did you provide any other documentation initially with you returned the completed questionnaire? Like an allergy consult record your son may have had? Or did you wait to see if they asked for it?
 
MLR72 said:
Me3boys, I'm assuming the allergy questionnaire was required first for the peanut allergy issue. Did you provide any other documentation initially with you returned the completed questionnaire? Like an allergy consult record your son may have had? Or did you wait to see if they asked for it?
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His "allergy" only came up when they were reviewing surgery reports for a broken elbow four years prior. The box "peanut allergy" was checked off for some reason on the hospital surgery report. On the first AMI, we added a letter from his primary care physician that he has never been treated for or shown symptoms of an allergy. Not sure that did anything - as the next AMI came back looking for blood and skin tests. We went beyond by having the peanut compound test and the food challenge done at the same time.
 
ChoirDude said:
Still waiting from USNA and USAFA but nothing since August.
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USAFA was the only academy that we ever saw AMI from. USNA and USCGA never submitted AMI. For USNA, we asked the Blue and Gold Officer to reach out and ask for us. He did and received the reply that it just takes time. However, we got waivers from USCGA and USNA right after the last AMI results were submitted. Can't say this for sure, but perhaps they were just letting USAFA take the lead.
 
I have waiver under review fr Asthma etc.. (1 DQ condition since late Oct 2019) fr USMA. So far nothing for AMI, but I sent PFT, MCT, second opinions, coach testimonials. Received Qualified for Academics (4.0 GPA, 1490 SAT ), and Physical, 2 Noms but no changes.
 
Hmmmm - I’ll leave you all with this. I can’t help folks with theoretical speculation of unknown individuals on a public forum. So “if” someone wants answers...see my post above at 10:21 this morning. Thx 😊 🙏
 
Me3boys said:
I've had two sons go through the waiver process the last 6 months (one for Army ROTC and the other for service academies). We've had to jump though so many hoops and have completed an endless amount of AMIs, but within the last two weeks, both have been granted waivers for ROTC and three service academies.

For those with peanut allergies - I've received an education around the types of allergies, false positives, the links between birch and peanut on skin tests, etc. If your candidate has never had an anaphylactic episode, make sure you get peanut component testing (see here for study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22738678) and plan on doing a food challenge. We were very lucky to find an allergist who knew to dig deeper beyond a simple skin and blood test.

For those with a history of injury or surgery, start pulling medical records, doctor visit notes and surgery reports as you are likely going to need to provide them and it will save you some aggravation and time waiting for the medical facility to process and release the records. Also, if you need additional tests, X-rays, MRIs, etc, stay aggressive in getting those appointments scheduled. We live north of Boston, and it took Concorde over 30 days to find and contract with a facility for us that could do some imaging. We ended up at a location in Rhode Island, lol. I can't imagine how long it would have taken if we weren't contacting them every other day.

Bottom line - stay aggressive and don't give up.
Click to expand...
Hello , thank you for your post! Can you please explain the difference between oral food challenge and peanut component testing?
 
Oral food challenge is exactly that: The applicant eats the offending food in front of the allergist.

Peanut component testing: blood test
 
Oral food challenge - start at 1/4 of a peanut - chew thoroughly, wait 15 minutes to see if there's a reaction. Then move to a 1/2 peanut, whole peanut, up to 6 peanuts at a time. Takes about 2-3 hours and can be quite boring.
The peanut component test is a blood test, but its not the typical allergy blood test, and its specific only to peanuts. This test looks for the specific peanut components and provides a value for each component. It may show you that the "regular" blood test showed an allergy only because the component ARA h8 value is high - and studies show that high ARA H8 actually signifies a tolerance for peanuts.
 
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