In The Navy (FT “C” School), Part 2

About half way through “C” School I started feeling like crap. It didn’t hit me all at once, but over a week or two. It was late fall and I just felt tired all the time. It kept getting worse too. After two weeks I had no appetite at all and was so weak I just slept when I got back from school.

My friends took notice when I stopped drinking and slept pretty much all of the time off of school. They had good intentions and this one guy we played cards with sometimes decided I needed fresh air and exercise. He was into working out a lot and dragged me out into the cold fall air and we tried running up and down a long staircase between the upper and lower parts of the base, near the Sub School. It almost killed me. After a few times up the stairs I was throwing up (dry heaves) and collapsed. The guy was sincerely trying to help, I know that. He helped me back to the barracks and I dropped into my bed sweating, more from the fever than the exertion.

The next day I dragged myself up to the Hospital at the very tippy top of the base. That was a fun walk, I stopped and rested often. I got there and after some time was taken in to an ER like room. A Corpsman came in and looked me over. I told him my situation and he prescribed a regiment of Aspirin, of all things. It was for the fever. He figured I had a cold to get over.

I went back to the barracks and just stayed in bed. I stopped going to class and got worse and worse. I was not eating anything and just drinking water or juice. It went like that on for three more days before I asked my friends to take me back to the Hospital. They did, and this time when I was weighed I had lost 10 pounds in 3 days. The fever was no better, so they admitted me.

I won’t go deeply into the obvious treatments they tried, but for the next 3 weeks my condition deteriorated. Antibiotics did nothing to help, so this was obviously something worse than your average infection, flu or cold.

I became the Hospital’s star patient. Everyone wanted a chance to come pull some blood (which I needed more than them at this point), or take my vitals and say “Uh huh” while they checked my pulse or prodded me, which hurt like hell. I was getting worse. Still not eating at all and really just sleeping most of the time. I was on an IV for fluids and it was really great when they had to rotate from left arm to hand, then right arm to that hand with the IV. I couldn’t even go to take a piss on my own and had to be helped. Then a few days later it was a bedpan, because I couldn’t get up. I was literally dying.