So yesterday I had a minor health issue while at the gym (lightheaded, tunnel vision, about to faint). I sat down to rest and wait it out, but a medic happened to be walking by on his way to lunch and made a big deal about me looking a bit pale and took me to the clinic here on the consulate. They did a bunch of tests (full blood work up, ekg, vitals) and everything came back normal. They think I was just dehydrated and a little heat exhaustion. The attending doc said he wanted to keep me overnight for observation to make sure my heart was ok, even though everything looks fine. They gave me 2 bags of saline to get hydrated and said again that everything looks good but they want to keep me there. I disagreed and signed a liability waiver and statement saying I was leaving against medical recommendation. They did not tell me that doing so would prevent me from being cleared to return to duty. Soooo....now I have to leave here and fly to a nearby country to get a whole physical and heart stress test before I can come back to work. I can't do the tests here because there's no cardiologist here. Unfortunately I can not just leave because my visa/passport is still someplace in Iraq in the process of being approved from when I got here in June. So the company has a couple days to track that down before I get kicked off this consulate and have to move to another, less secure camp, down the road from here. If they can not get my visa expedited in time, they will have to get me a special exit visa and cancel the other visa that was being processed. Which means I will have to wait for a new visa to be approved and issued to me, which will take anywhere from 1 to 6 months. So far my company is saying it's not a huge deal, lesson learned and now the whole company knows what not to do. However, as this report gets pushed higher, who knows what they might say.
God damn Ravin! You really know how to get into pickles dont ya? Hooing everything sorts out quickly for you. Damn that sucks.
Holy shit. That seems like something they should have told you. Not only all the paperwork but isn't that costing them money in multiple ways? Hope everything works out for you.
I do like pickles. This is the same company that was going to fire me because their vp lost my clearance paperwork, and the paperwork of about 20 other people, and was fined millions by the government for having people without a clearance working. So even though it wasn't my fault, crap rolls downhill. So who knows what corporate will eventually decide, but I'm pretty burned out on this job and the bull that comes with it anyway. Worst case I get fired and I can collect unemployment on a six figure salary for a few months. At least now I can say I was the cause of a company wide meeting about what not to do.
All the attending doc would tell me about the paperwork was that there are politics involved when somebody signs it. You think he would have come out and said in plain english that if I signed it, I would not be cleared to work. My fault, I should have asked a lot more questions.
on the plus side, if they fire you, you'll have a perfectly legitimate case against the doctor for causing your unemployment through professional negligence. You signed a liability waiver against your health concerns, not your professional wellbeing.
I'm not too worried about that. My company is so short on people, especially for my position, they made a backroom deal to keep me here as long as possible instead of sending me home. So I came up with the idea of doing a stress test here, overseen by competent doctor and/or nurse and then sending the results to our corporate doctor, who will have to bless off on it anyway. I even had a doctor and a nurse willing to do it, but the head doctor won't allow it. Evidently, they can read and interpret an EKG, even though they are not cardiologists, but not a stress test, which is just walking on a treadmill while hooked up to an EKG. Also, there could be some liability issues if anything were to happen to me while doing the test. Still waiting on my passport/visa. I have been told that it should have been here Thursday, but its now Saturday evening and they are saying it will be here Sunday. So....we will see.
Update: So I have spent the last week in Dubai. I got here on a Thursday evening and because nothing is open on a Friday, I did my medical stuff on Saturday. Got the all clear from a local doctor, who was originally from Basra Iraq where I work but educated in Boston. Sent everything to my company that evening and the site leaders were trying to get me to fly back the next morning, before the state dept had even given the ok. I just got the official all clear from my company's doctor on Tuesday. Still waiting on the ok from state dept but I have been told it has been verbally approved and the official paperwork ok should come anytime. Typical government paperwork b.s., takes a week or more to do what should take 5 minutes. So I will finally be going back to work tomorrow, Thursday. Been a fun week, a nice mini vacation, but glad to be getting back to work. I did have to pay for everything myself, flights, hotel, medical. Even though my insurance says that anything done outside of the US is 100% covered, there are a lot of exceptions to that in the fine print. It cost about $1k total for an EKG, with the 3d ultrasound of my heart, and a stress test.
Yeah I'm not complaining about the cost. I know if I had that done in the US it would have been $5k or more. Just a bit upset that insurance didn't cover it. Still going to call them back and try to get reimbursed.
