Sick In Alaska

As some of you may know, I've been sick up here in Alaska. This is no ordinary sickness; it has kept me bed-ridden for 3 days now and even has made me cancel flying. This is not ordinary for me as I typically only get sick about once every year and a half or so and when I do, it's usually gone in a day. Even though Mom and Rachel told me to go to the Dr. this weekend, I waited until today (Monday) to do so because "I just figured it'd go away like usual". Well, it certainly has not. The Dr. gave me some Sudafed, Afrin, and even an Inhaler! Funny thing is, the Afrin and Sudafed are strictly for de-congestion and that hasn't really been my problem. I have those wheezy lungs, you know the ones that sound like a gurgly noise. Yuck, I know, I'm sorry, but I have to paint the picture for you. My chest has been real tight and honestly, Bronchitis and Pneumonia have started creeping into my mind. The weather up here leads itself to a prime environment for this as it's mid 30's with constant drizzle and cold rain. For those that played sports growing up, it's like conditioning for basketball where the coach would make you run outside in that Midwest crappy fall weather, meanwhile you swear your chest is going to freeze shut since it's got that cold, sharp pain. That's what I've been dealing with up here. Nevertheless, I've finally got some medicines, I've gotten lots of sleep, and let's hope I knock this thing out in the near future.

Moving on, nothing much else has been happening up here. We are scheduled to leave on the 22 of October now. That's 2 days later than originally planned due to "tanker slip". What that means is that the two air refueling tankers that had been allocated to support our jet movement from Alaska back to Korea got re-tasked for other missions. This happens quite often, especially since we are not deploying to the combat theatres (Iraq/Afghanistan) and those movements get priority, rightly so. You'd probably all be surprised what all goes into getting 12 A-10's from one continent to another. It's quite an undertaking.

On that note, I'm going to check out for the night. Hopefully, I can go to work tomorrow to start getting back into the groove of things. Whenever you're trying to come back from sickness, it's always tough to get caught up. Not only is your body still recovering, but you're behind everything that has been going on while you were absent. I remember as a kid, I loved being sick and staying home from school. Not so much theses days.

Love Rick