From USMC to US Army?

Oh hey there blog I've been neglecting, want to hear about my day? I'd love to tell you. It was pretty awesome...

Let's review.

October 16, 2011 

I decided to run my bike off a cliff and ended up with this lovely injury. It ended up causing me to get discharged form the Marine Corps Delayed Entry Program and crushed my dreams of becoming a Marine.

Fast forward almost an entire year later...

July 7, 2011

I went to visit J in 29 Palms for the 4th of July. He and I are laying there watching TV and an Army commercial comes on. "Babe, why don't you join the Army...?"

When I got home, I hooked up with the local recruiting station and I slapped this on their desk.

Tuesday, I had a consult for my injury scheduled, but the doctor decided to take a holiday...So Today, I took another early morning trip to the MEPS, peed in a cup (again...) danced around in my underwear (again...) went to the doctor (late because of a broken X-Ray machine), came back to MEPS, slapped my papers on the Doc's desk and cried in front of the entire medical staff when they said, "Welp, you're qualified."

So there I am. Swearing into the US Army

Standing at an impeccable parade-rest. (That's my recruiter on my left)

And being really excited for that day to be over...

 I went out for an icecream with my mommy. 

WI may not have done this whole military thing exactly the way that I planned, (and I'm still a little bit sad that I'm not back in the Marine Corps DEP...) but here I am, enlisted again when I never thought it would be possible again.  Hopefully, this will end up to be the best choice for my life right now and for my future. I am so excited to have a whole new set of adventures and learn how a completely different branch works. I report to my unit next week and I start my road to becoming a Soldier...What the hell right?

Broken

Today's post is about October 16, 2011, the day all of my dreams were crushed. I explained it a little bit, but I didn't really give you a good idea of what happened. so here it is. All the gorey details (plus pictures!)

 

I went for a bike ride with one of my friends from the DEP. I didn't know that we were going mountian biking and I didn't bring my helmet, but I grew some confidence when I saw a lot of little kids coming up from the trail without helmets and their bikes. So, I hopped on my bike and headed down the trail. I had never mountain biked before, so imediately, it felt like a little too much. I took my feet off the pedals and started to walk myself down this first hill.

Right about now is where things go foggy. I'm not sure when I decided to take my feet off the ground and put them on the pedals, but apparently, I did. All I can really remember from this moment, was seeing a cement landing thing ahead of me and then...nothing. I remember the impact of the fall a little bit, but I don't even know how I fell or what happened. The friend I was riding with was ahead of me and looked back when he heard something strange behind him and found me unconsious in a bush. Apparently, the first thing I said was "Sgt. Oz is going to kill you."  That was our recruiter. That was when the concussion set in. I remember hearing voices and wondering what was going on.

I kept saying "I don't remember things. I don't remember things." and  "What day is it? Why aren't I in boot camp? Has J written me a any letters?"

I have now calculated that I didn't remember the last 3 weeks. J had been gone that long and I had gotten a letter 2 weeks before. Basically, I only remembered that Jake was gone. I think that was the scariest part. Not having a clue where you are or what has happened for the past few weeks is a very confusing thing.

I remember looking down at my arm and seeing it all deformed and telling the people around me not to call an ambulance (I was too worried about how much it would cost. My dad had a heart attack a few weeks before and I remember my mom saying how expensive the ambulance ride was even with insurance.) But of course, they had to call an ambulance.

I got the hospital and my by then my family had been called and they knew what was up. Finally, several hours later (I believe it was dark out and the ride was in the morning) I came to and was coherent. I had a neck brace on and my arm hurt REAL bad. My mom explained it all to me and said that I was going to need surgery.

They put in a metal plate at 9 screws to hold all the crazy fractures together. When I got it taken out, they asked me if I wanted to keep it. Althought it brings back bad memories, I wanted to see what was inside there. I had shattered my radial head, (also known as the olecranon.  Learned that one today in my research!)

and fractured a whole section of my raidus on my left arm.

So they sliced me open and put in all that stuff. The picture with the stitches is actually from when they took out all the metal in my arm in January, but it looks pretty close to the same. Except when I hurt it initially it was much more swollen and bruised. It was black and blue and very very painful. I didn't let anyone take pictures when it happened initially, so I don't have any, but just picture really bad and real ugly and you get it... I also had scrapes and bruises on my forehead and hips and knees and hands. It was a bad situation.

 I went through several months of physical therapy and now I have full range of motion and mostly all my strength back.  Physical therapy was not fun. It hurt a lot. The first day I went, I couldn't make a fist or even touch my fingers to my palm. I was in bad shape and when I was finished with it that day, I went home and cried over how helpless I felt. I did a lot of crying throughout those days. But I felt like I still had hope because they were going to take out all the dreadful metal and I would be able to go and be a Marine. Once I started to make progress, I was feeling really hopeful. I started going to DEP PT and pool functions (Stupid activities that the recruiting office makes you do) and I definitely thought that I was going to get my shot at being a Marine.  It seemed like now that I could extend my arm, the whole world stopped sucking all at once.

Well, some time passed. I surprised J as his graduation and we got engaged on Christmas and things didn't seem so bad. J left and then I got my surgery to take the metal out of my arm. The pictures to the left are of my scar today.  It is fading nicely and I barely notice it except for when I bump it really hard or it gets really itchy. But, the Marines don't care. I got discharged in February (or was it March?)  and now I'm really feeling lost.

I didn't have a back-up plan. I didn't need one. And now, I'm stuck in this dead end job working only 28 hours a week and just begging for something exciting to happen to shake up my week. I feel like I have my whole life ahead of me, but what is all that time with out a plan or a purpose?

So this is what I've come up with. 

The things I know:

1. I'm getting married to the love of my life...eventually.
2. I don't really like my job but it pays too well to complain.
3. J is getting deployed  next yearish and I'm going to be extremely without him for 7 months.
4. I'm lost.

The things I don't know:

1. Everything else.

Our Love Story

[EDIT: After reading this post myself, I realized that I said way too much stuff to tell a relatively short story. Here is the new and improved version of our love story!]

I think this will work best if I start from the very beginning.

On June 8, 2011 I swore into the Marines after a very long day at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station). It's a long process to get through medical and do all the paper work. By the end of the day, I was a proud Poolee of the United States Marine corps.

Shortly after my enlistment, my recruiter asked me to be a squadleader. In the DEP (Delayed Entry Program) it doesn't mean much to be responsible for other Poolees, but you're still expected to do certain things. In this case, I offered to pick someone up to go to PT.

Lucky me, that I had this responsibility, because if I hadn't, I never would have meant J.  On July 1, 2011, I pulled up in front of his house (I was way early...I was worried I wouldn't be able to find it...I had to kill time for over 30 minutes before I could actually call him to say I was there.) He got in my car and I said hello and introduced myself. I took a mental note of how handsome he was and pulled away from the curb.

After that day at PT, we texted a little bit and got to know each other. Not very well though.  A few days passed and it was the 4th of July. I was left high and dry without a date to go watch fireworks with. My friend had invited me to go with she and her boyfriend, but I wasn't about to be a third wheel. So after asking another friend from the DEP and getting turned down, I asked J. I was completely shocked when he accepted.

We drove up to this awesome look out point in downtown Salt Lake and watched fireworks all over the valley and talked about everything in the world.  When I was driving him home around 2am, I found myself thinking that wanted to just find more stuff to do. I didn't want the night to end...

After that night, we went out every night for the rest of the month. And the month after that. I went to Oregon and Seattle with his family. He came with me to bluegrass festivals and we spent the whole summer falling in love and having more fun that I ever knew was possible.

When it came time for him to go to boot camp, on September 19, 2011 my heart was broken but I knew that that day had to come eventually, we spent that whole Sunday enjoying each other's company before he had to leave me for 13 weeks so as to become a United States Marine.  That night I began furiously writing letters and getting in as much stuff as I could before my boot camp date (October 17, 2011) arrived.

Then, something very tragic happened that put a big twist on everything. On October 16th, the day that I was to go to the hotel to ship out the next morning I decided to go for a bike ride with a friend. He failed to mention that we were going mountian biking and I didn't even bring my helmet...Against my own better judgement, I went for it anyway and ended up getting injured very badly. I shattered and dislocated my elbow as well as fracturing a whole section of my radius. I also had a concusion that made me very confused. I didn't know where I was, how I got there, what had happened or what day it was and more. When I got the hospital, I was given morphine and a million other shots and they fixed me up and splinted me up and I had a BAD headache. I was a trauma 2. You can read the whole story here.

With J in boot camp, I didn't want to

tell him what had happened to me. His parents visited me in the hospital and I told them not to tell him what had happened. They tell you when someone you love goes to boot camp that you shouldn't bother them with things that they can't do anything about. So I chose to tell him that my boot camp date was moved back 3 months so that I could continue to write and receive letters up until he graduated. I told him my boot camp date was December 12th. He graduated on December 16th.

I'm Mean.

So I wrote him for the rest of boot camp and I showed up at his graduation with his family and I surprised him. He was so happy to see me. It was so worth the wait. 13 weeks apart in a brand new relationship was extremely hard, but when we met again, it was more amazing than ever before. It's true what they say; distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Seeing him march across that parade deck and try really hard to keep his bearing and not cry when he hugged me was possibly the best feeling in the world. I was so proud of my Marine and so beyond excited for my chance. (At that point, I didn't know I was going to get disqualified) He was a little bit upset that I had lied to him, but he got over it in a hurry because he was so happy to see me. All day he kept hunging me saying, "I can't believe you're actually here!"

Our first few days together were tough. I had to share him with his family and we barely got two seconds alone, but nevertheless, I was just so happy to be able to look at his face that I could really care less at the time.

On Christmas day, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Of course, I said yes. And herewe are. Waiting on the Marine Corps to tell us what to do and how to do it.

He is currently stationed with his unit and we are just waiting for the stars to align and the time to be right for us to be together forever and live happily ever after...