Help with chronic urticaria medical waiver

[goarmy32324]

Hi I need help with getting medical waiver for my son. He's applying for USMA, got principal nomination, qualified for academically and physically. He has been disqualified for food allegy and chronic urticaria. He had history of nut allegies but they are mostly gone now. He's been having immuno therapy for past 4 years and it completes on Aug 2020. We saw his allegy doctor in December and got a letter that he's allegy conditions are resolved, has met minimum therapy of 3 years but recommends continued therapy until Aug 2020. I asked if he could do blood test and food challenge, but he says even if he shows no reactions to these allegens, he could still show positive so he was against it. We got his letter and went to see a military doctor for a second opinion. He was reluctant to write any letters without doing test first but cautioned that doing a test will open another can of worms. He suggested doing allegy test for cashews and walnuts which my son said he's still allegic to, and go from there. The test results came out negative for cashews and positive for walnuts which was about 5. I asked him if he could do food challenge but he says no due to the high number for walnuts. He says he could write a letter but he needs to recommend carrying epipen and avoid walnuts, and recommends to only submit son's allegy doctors letters. I was afraid that it wasn't going to be enough but we followed his recommendation. After few days later, the RC emailed the son that the disqualified condition hasn't changed, and tells him to consider reaplying next year. We were devastated by this, son called RC next day and he says son needs to finish his immuno therapy. The military doctor we saw told us son could stop the theapy in June before going to college. He told RC about this and RC says son still need to wait 3 months to see if the outbreak doesn't occur after stopping treatment. RC says the doctor's letter doesn't have any scientific proof and is inconclusive. He says the decision is final. What shoud we do? Son worked so hard for whole year and he was so close with his principal nomination. Should we give up? Anything we can do? We're willing to do tests but do we have enough time? Is chronic urticaria even waiverable? When RC says it's final, then is it over? Please help....

 

[justdoit19]

Honestly that all makes sense to me. And as devastated as you (he) feel right now, it isn’t the end of the line. Your son seems like a perfect candidate for a reapplication next year. All his issues will have time to resolve to the satisfaction of USMA, or not should that be the ultimate outcome.

Lots of kids don’t get in their first go around. These things certainly do come up. The military needs to make sure that everyone is A-OK to deploy and lead. They need that 3 months to make sure your son is good to go. And it’s in your sons BEST INTEREST to follow all recommendations so that he isn’t putting himself at risk.

I am not a dr or medical person at all so no comment on that process. But I’m a mom who understands how you feel. And shifting your focus from “it’s the end of the line” as far as attending to “not yet” is my advice. Lots of advice around the forums about what to do to prepare to apply again. Basically, mimic a plebes first year of classes and knock them out of the park!

On the whole radar of life this is a tiny little blip. It will make a nice story. As devastating as it is today, it wont even matter in a few years. Just a good story.