IJCH - Inside JaiChai's Head (Meaning: My Warped, Personal Opinions and Musings)
From the Author:
Salutations.
I am JaiChai.
And if I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before, I'm delighted to make your acquaintance now.
I invite you to interact with everyone, learn, and have as much fun as possible!
For my returning online friends, "It's always great to see you again!"
Perspectives
Let me try to put things in the proper context.
I spent most of my adult life serving on active duty in the military. This is what I usually looked like "on the job".
Get the picture?
Kind of an unfeeling, dark hearted assassin type, right?
BUT...
Even the Toughest Warrior can Succumb to the Dreaded "Man Flu"!
Now, now.
Don't be rolling your eyes at me like that!
And don't you DARE belittle this serious condition and call it the "common cold"!
Common cold!?
Nothing serious, you say?
Au contraire mon frere!
It's the "Man Flu"!
Only the "Man Flu" can turn a "Swift, Silent, and Deadly" Special Operator into Pee-Wee Herman.
NO REALLY, IT'S NOT A MYTH!
Last week I was like...
Like most men, when I'm sick, I just get damn angry!
Admittedly, as an operational Independent Duty Hospital Corpsman, I wasn't known for possessing a Florence Nightingale style of patient care.
And recently, while battling the "Man Flu", I kept thinking it was payback for my years of less than stellar bedside manners.
Don't get me wrong. I loved treating injured people - the more traumatic, the better.
But on the flip side, I absolutely HATED treating whiny, sickcall patients.
Unfortunately, whenever I was injured and not fit for full duty (field ops), I was relegated to some clinic or hospital to augment their sickcall staff.
From the get-go, I never hid the fact that I didn't want to be there - not from the staff and not from the patients.
Everyone knew that I abhorred doing sickcall. Oftentimes, I volunteered for the graveyard shift in the Emergency Room.
When I couldn't avoid seeing patients at sickcall, I'd repeatedly get my hand slapped by the Department Head for, as he said, "Unusually Tough Love"; referring to my habit of sending the majority of my patients straight back to work.
What can I say?
I can smell a "malingerer" 10 miles away in a sandstorm...
I'm sure you can understand why I was so grumpy.
The only reason I was performing sickcall in the first place was because I couldn't be where I really wanted to be - out in the real world, jumping, diving - Hell, jump-diving, and blowing shit up!
Exacerbating my disgruntled attitude was the annoying, chronic pain from my initial injuries AND the sessions with those sadistic bastards in the Physical Therapy Department.
(I swear, they all must have the last name of "Lechter".)
So, if a patient didn't feel shittier than I did, I usually did this...
Anyway, back to the present.
After eight days of wimpy misery, copious amounts of fluids, high doses of decongestants, analgesics, antipyretics, antihistamines, and finally antibiotics, I'm feeling like my old self again.
Once again, I've returned from the "Land of the Wimps", slowly resuming the daily exercise, and somewhat ready to be around normal people.
What do you turn into when you're sick?
Parting Shot
By JaiChai
Mighty Kind of You for stopping by.
Truly hope to see you again!
About the Author
Believing that school was too boring, he dropped out of High School early; only to earn an AA, BS and MBA in less than 4 years much later in life – while working full-time as a Navy/Marine Corps Medic.
In spite of a fear of heights and deep water, he performed high altitude, free-fall parachute jumps and hazardous diving ops in deep, open ocean water.
After 24 years of active duty, he retired in Asia.
Since then, he's been a full-time, single papa and actively pursuing his varied passions (Writing, Disruptive Technology, Computer Science and Cryptocurrency - plus more hobbies too boring or bizarre for most folk).
He lives on an island paradise with his teenage daughter, longtime girlfriend and three dogs.
