USAFAMamaBear
Member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2020
- Messages
- 61
I have a son in his first year at the Air Force Academy. During recognition week he began losing feeling in his feet, he completed recognition and a week later was hospitalized where they found a demyelinating lesion on his spinal cord at the T8 level. He was diagnosed with transverse myelitis. He is home with us right now doing physical therapy five days a week and working with the doctors to help him through his recovery. He is walking but has no sensation from 2 inches above his belly button to his toes. He really can't feel anything but pressure. He was supposed to separate from the Air Force Academy this summer to leave on his church mission to Albania and Kosovo for two years, but this has been postponed because of him needing to go through the recovery process. He has some pretty big decisions to make and we're hoping to get some answers that might be able to help him. First there is a possibility that he might not recover at which point USAFA will require him to be medically separated. Second there's a possibility that he will recover and be able to stay at the Academy. In this situation could he still separate to leave on his church mission for two years and then reapply and get back in? We're wondering if having transverse myelitis on his medical record will disqualify him during that re-application process even if he has completely recovered from it? I'm trying to gather as much valid information as I can for him as he's working through these decisions. We had a conference call with his AOC who is also looking in to the information as well. I know since you have an intricate knowledge of DODMerb, That this would be a good resource to gather information as well. This young man's been through a lot lately and any help on understanding how this would impact him would be so greatly appreciated.
