Update On The New Job

Ben's been at his new job for a couple weeks now. And honestly, he is loving it! His is the only military guy in his office. The rest are all civilians. Overall it's a pretty easy job. Just requires a lot of attention to detail, which is not a problem for him. It's nice having him home for lunch every day, and it's great having him home at a decent hour every night. He's home before 5 almost every day. And he's usually happy when he gets home! Unlike when he was in the 623rd and wouldn't get home until around 6pm and he was always grumpy and stressed. So this has been a good change. Ok, more than good. It's been a great change. Plus, they gave him a new set of orders so he no longer has any thing to do with the 623rd. YAY!!! He is officially a part of USAR-J, which makes us happier than words can describe. They didn't change our PCS date, so it's still 5 April 2011. Which means we have right about a year left, if that. We'll get to take our 30 days "moving leave" before that, which means we'll be leaving Japan probably early to mid March. Yes, I'm already starting to count down the days. :)
Just on a side note, for those that are curious.... still not a whole lot of progress with a diagnosis for his pain. We FINALLY convinced the drs here to put him on the meds that work. And what do you know, he's feeling better. Well other than the cold or flu or something he's got now. But the pain in his side isn't as bad. And we FINALLY got another appt with the specialist down in Okinawa. We'll be headed back down there the end of March. Yeah, we have to wait another month. Apparently the dr will be on leave (again) for another month. You would think they would have more specialists down there, or at least not send their one away all the time. Ugh, it's ridiculous. Who knows, maybe someday we'll have an answer.

Ben's New Job

We were informed this morning, that Ben had an interview with the Post Command Sargent Major, CSM Franklin. They need someone who has about a year left for a protocol. Basically that means he works for the CSM and the Post Commander (General). They "volun-told" Ben and one other guy that they were interviewing for this job, and basically that one of them would be taking it. So Ben met with the CSM Franklin this afternoon. After talking for a little bit CSM Franklin asked his current First Sargent really who could they do with out. The 1st SGT said they didn't need Ben, which honestly I don't really understand. He's in charge of making all the training schedules, just went to this class in Hawaii for that job, and so much more. But whatever. Now we're not entirely sure what all he's going to have to do. Just that he will work for the CSM and General, schedule all their meetings and such, he will actually work here on Zama instead of having to drive an hour out to Depot (YAY!), he won't have to deal with all the retards that he currently works with, and this guarantees he won't deploy from here again. He also has to start taking some college classes, but they are online so it shouldn't be too bad. Overall I think it's going to be a good thing. He's still kinda unsure about it, but I think it will all work out. Definitely be a new experience!

Can I Scream Now?!?!

Have I told you how frustrated I am that we still don't have a diagnosis for my husband and we're having problems with the doctors here in Japan? Let's rewind about a month. After our trip to the Urgent Care at Yokota, we had to follow up with the doc here at Zama. He said (in not so many words) that he doesn't know what else to do for us and that we should think about getting out of the Army. He gave us a new medication to try, and low and behold, it worked really well. It was a super strong anti-inflamatory. They only gave him enough for a week though, and the doc was really surprised that it worked as well as it did. I mean, that was the best Ben has felt since this all started. But when he ran out they wouldn't give him more (because of the potential side effects). They gave him a different prescription that didn't work nearly as well. So once again, he was hurting pretty bad. And by now it's pretty obvious that we aren't going to get much help. His doctor here said he needed to go back down to Okinawa to see the specialist, but the specialist was out of town and wouldn't be back for a week or so. Fast forward a couple weeks... He's still hurting. He goes in for a post deployment follow up appointment, the doctor looks through his records, and says yes he needs to go back down to Okinawa. So we talk to the case manager so we can start getting everything set up to head back down. She's looking through his files and although two different doctors said he needs to go back to Okinawa, neither one of them put in a referral. Even though we've been down there before, we have to have a referral to go back. She says she's going to work on it and will get back to us. A week passes by and we still haven't heard from her. In the meantime, Ben has another really bad flare up but there's nothing we can do 1) because it was the weekend and 2) because the doctors here are retards and wouldn't do anything even if we did go in. A few days later Ben has to go to Hawaii for a class. (Oh darn right?!) It's a two day class, so he's only there for like three days. He flew in Wednesday, and left Saturday. While he was gone, I went back in to talk to the case manager to see what's going on with this appointment in Okinawa. She told me one of the doctors here at Zama had called down and talked to Dr. Plott (the GI doctor in Okinawa) and he basically said don't bother setting up an appointment, there's nothing else I can do diagnostically. That's when I got upset and kinda blew up at her. I told her "he's been in pain for 7 months and they don't know why and you're telling me there is nothing else they can do?" There are more things they can do because they don't have a diagnosis yet. Then the case manager told me that he should just go into the ER at Tripler since he was in Hawaii. So he did. Friday after his class he went into the ER. He had to wait a few hours before being seen because they were busy, but he was seen. He explained to the doctors what was going, what the doctors here were doing (or more like not doing), and they weren't very happy. There are plenty of more things that can be done to diagnose this problem. For example, no one has tested for parasites, done a stool analysis (which should have been one of the first things done when they decided this was a digestive problem), they haven't sent him to an allergist to see if it's a food allergy or something, among other things. So you can't sit there and tell me there are no other tests you can do, when there are. Apparently because his blood work, CT Scans, and Colonoscopies all came back clear, that means there's nothing wrong. Those are the only tests they've done. One of the last CT Scans he had done, his spleen and some of his glands were swollen. But no one did anything about it. They did another scan when he went into the ER and everything was back to it's normal size. So it's possible that he just had an infection before. Or it could be the anti-inflamatories he's on are just masking the problem. We don't know, because no one bothered to check after that first scan. There wasn't much else they could do test wise for him, due to the fact that he was flying out the next morning. So they gave him a shot of Dulodin, gave him a prescription for Vicodin, and told him to come back to Zama and get a referral to go back over there to see the specialist there. He didn't get to see the specialist because it was Friday night and they were already done for the week. Typically they would have hospitalized him until they had a diagnosis, but they decided they just want him to come back. In the meantime, I'm freaking out all day because I have no idea what's going on. Just when I finally decide I'm not going to hear from him that night, he gets back to his hotel and we talk and I start feeling a little bit better. He flies back to Japan the next day, getting back Sunday (yesterday). So now today. We go into Sick Call to get this referral back to Hawaii this morning. She looks through his records, but there's no notes or anything from his trip to the ER over the weekend. That's partly due to the fact that most of the doctors at Tripler are civilian, so they have a little leeway putting them into the military system. Plus being a day ahead doesn't help much. But all the test results that they did are in there, so she looks at those. She then tells us there is nothing else they can do and that we should just go to the Med Board and get out of the Army. That's the second doctor here to tell us we just need to get out of the Army! That's not what we want. We want a diagnosis. So I kinda went off on her, and was like well the doctors in Hawaii said they could do this and this and this. Her response was "I'll be right back" and left the room. She came back five minutes later and said we needed to go talk to the case manager. Didn't even give us a chance to get a refill on the vicodin since he'll be out tomorrow. So we go back and talk to the case manager. And we explain again the events of the weekend. She tries calling the doctor in Okinawa, but he's with a patient and will get back to us. We tell her what the two doctors had said about sending him to the Med Board and we look up the regulations about it. Yeah, it's not even possible to start a Med Board without a diagnosis. So they can't Med Board him out of the Army without knowing the cause of the pain. Which means these doctors have to get off their lazy behinds and find out what's wrong. We ended up leaving with out an appointment in Okinawa or Hawaii. We're waiting for Dr. Plott to call us back and find out what he wants to do. When we talked to him while we were down there in September he said the next step (after trying all these different medications) would be an exploratory surgery. But now he's saying there's nothing he can do... Something's not right here. So yeah. Until we hear back from him, we're kinda stuck. We can't put in to get a second opinion, until he definitely says yeah there's nothing else I can do. After that, we can say we want the second opinion and they'll send us to Tripler. So once we get there, I think we'll finally get an answer. The doctors there were much more friendly, optimistic, and willing to help. So it's just a matter of the doctors here in Japan doing there job and putting in the referral to send us there. It's such a headache. It's extremely frustrating and stressful. Is it really that hard to just give us an answer or send us to someone who wants to give us one and wants to help?!?!

Adventures at Costco

I went to the Costco that is not far from here for the first time today. And amazingly enough, it was very similar to the stores in the states. I went in search of a cake for our FRG meeting later this week and some new pillows for the dogs. I found a cake. It has pink and purple hearts on it because all the other ones said "Happy Birthday". I didn't find a dog pillow though. They had some beds, but they were kinda small and I don't think the dogs would lay in them anyway. They had some blankets too, but we decided we're just going to make our own. So all I got was the cake and a bag of dinner rolls just because they looked good. Overall, the prices were alright. A little more expensive than the states. For example, a dozen muffins cost about $9. But some stuff seemed to be priced alright. It was nice to see so many "American" things too. Even the check out lines were short. I did have a slight problem when trying to use my card. I had to fill out an "International Card" form, but was still able to purchase my items so it all worked out. We got lunch as we left (Chicken bakes and mango smoothies) which were pretty good. I think I may have a new favorite drink. :) My only complaint is that they don't take credit cards. Ok, they take American Express, but not Visa or MasterCard. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but oh well. It was a fun trip though. Can't say I'll do a whole lot of shopping there, but I'm sure we'll be back.

Italian Food Japanese Style

The past couple weeks I've been going to water aerobics with my friend Izzy, and then we usually go out for dinner afterwards. Last week we went out for Mongolian BBQ, and tonight we went for Italian. There is a little Italian place down the street from her apartment, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. The menu wasn't big, but it was fairly cheap. We ended up getting a pizza and some spaghetti to share. They were the perfect serving sizes.

The pizza was pretty plain. It had sauce, cheese, tomatoes, and basil. And it was on like a flat bread. It was really quite good.
The spaghetti was pretty good too. It had a garlic sauce, mushrooms, and uncured ham. I like my pasta cooked a bit longer, but it was still good.
Overall I give the restaurant an "A". It's some where I think I'll go back to. The service was great, the prices were decent, and overall it was just a nice little place.
We stopped at the little supermarket at the train station on the way home to grab some dessert. It's just about strawberry season, which I love! I love Japanese strawberries!

We also got some Hi-Chew candies (because they are the best candy ever!), a little cheesecake type thing, and some banana/whip creamed filled crepe type treats.
Everything was pretty yummy! I think it's been a successful dining night. :)

Dinner with the Lt

Ben's unit has gotten quite a few new people in the past couple months, including a new Lt (lieutenant). I have to say, she is pretty cool. We drove her around to help with in processing before Christmas, and last night we took her out to look for a car. Afterwards she took us out for dinner. We ended up going to a little Japanese restaurant just outside post. It was actually really good.

We ended up ordering pretty much everything that looked "safe."

Lt acting all excited for the food.

Overall, the food was pretty good. We had chicken, steak cubes, dumplings, fried potatoes (ie french fries), oysters and mushrooms, calamari, spring rolls, teriyaki pork, and rice. I think that's all. The table was full. Each time the waitress brought more out we had to rearrange to make it all fit.

It was a great night. We got there about 9 pm and didn't leave until almost midnight. It's nice to have someone that Ben works with that we can actually sit down and have a good time with. There's not many in his unit that we can do that with.

The receipt a the end of the night. It was great of Lt to pay for it. We'll definitely have to do it again. It was so nice to get out and socialize for a while. :)

New Niece

As of last Wednesday, we have our second niece! Ben's younger sister, Rosea, had an 8 lb little girl. I don't know all the details. Just that she was in labor for 6 hours, everything went smoothly, and she weighs 8 lbs. They named her Lunetta, Luna for short. And I'll be honest, I really don't care for that name, but she's not my child so it's all good.

That puts us at 2 nieces and 2 nephews right now, with another one on the way. Ben's older sister, Savannah, is due in July. I wish we lived closer so we could see them more often. I was amazed at how much the boys had grown when we saw them while we were home. We still love 'em though. :)