You are separated as a Officer Candidate Disenrollment, Code JFW1. Your description of service is “entry level separation.” Members in this status do not receive a discharge certificate or characterization of service at separation.

So things are at a stand-still until I receive official orders to TDRL. It turns out because I don’t have (and won’t be getting) a DD 214, nobody is able to register me. All they can tell me at the national VA headquarters and at the local level here in Boston, is that cases like mine are handled at a regional level. Try calling your regional VA office and the call will go straight to the national headquarters.

A Marine Officer who graduated OCS in 1967 found my site and offered some excellent advice to getting things worked out. He recommended I get in touch with my local Disabled American Veterans. Let’s hope they will be able to assist me with the VA.

I was placed on the TDRL because my condition was not deemed “stable” by the PEB. While on the TDRL, I’ll be reevaluated every 18 months and limited to 5 years max on the TDRL. At the 5 year point, if not sooner during a reevaluation, I will be removed from the TDRL and either found fit for duty or permanently retired.

I am going to register with the VA tomorrow, and begin the next chapter of my life.

It is now time to move onto the next step and make my leg strong and usable again. I am going to physical therapy twice a week and doing exercises at home the other five days a week. I also rejoined my gym yesterday, I can’t wait to get back into shape.

In August, I went to Newport Naval Hospital where I was given a full physical, just like last time. A Navy orthopedic doctor then wrote up a dictation summarizing my injury and my current status. The PEB paperwork, 2.5 years of monthly doctor’s dictations, and the notes from my 3 surgeries were all put together last week, and after a few revisions, I signed off on them. My package will be sent to the PEB this week, and I should hear their decision hopefully by the end of the month.

(For more information on the VASRD, check out this site.)

If you have any of the following conditions, you will not be allowed to register:

• Chronic back pain requiring ongoing medical treatment (including chiropractic care) and/or daily or frequent prescribed pain medication
• Herniated, bulging or slipped disc anywhere along your spine diagnosed in the past 2 years
• Single back surgery in the past 2 years
• History of a spine fracture, if caused by bone disease
• History of a spine fracture in the past 2 years, if caused by injury
• Placement of rods or pins for scoliosis
• History of a hip or pelvic fracture and/or repair

– www.marrow.org

Figures. I can’t donate blood until March of 2009, due to the 4 units of someone else’s blood I received during and after my surgery. At least one day I’ll be allowed to do that again, and I’m not banned for life.

Until this point, I was on a non-weight bearing status, and was desperately looking forward to a change. Well that change finally came this past week at my 3 month follow-up in NYC. The surgeon looked at the film from an MRI I got last week and said things looked great. He was able to show me where the new bone graft was integrating with the old hip. He said I can start putting weight on my leg, starting with 30 lbs. I’ll slowly increase the weight on my own over the next 3 months. Hopefully in September I’ll be able to walk unassisted and never have to use crutches again!

He had a couple things to say which were tough to hear. The first was that my leg most likely will never have the same range of motion that it had before, because the structural damage to the head of the hip is already done and won’t heal. The second was that the healing process could take up to 2 years to complete. I never thought that this whole process would take so long.