Continued..
Injury is an everyday part of training. Some came unprepared, some are the victim of bad luck or poor judgement and some seem like they are nursing phantom symptoms in order to get out of physical training. Undoubtedly, the running is brutal. It is every morning and it is sometimes in the dark. The pace is often too much for the same people over and over. You adopt the same strategy for all matters of training. Finish some where in the middle of the pack where you don't draw attention to yourself.
The same cadet finishes first in the run every day. He is a gifted runner and he also enjoys a cigarette, quite often sneaking a smoke just before running. The same cadet finishes last. He is a doughball and a constant complainer. Midway through training he will get a physical excuse from the run and will be held over into the next overlapping class due to his deficiencies. Eventually, he will be graduated and arrive in the field but you will despise him for his laziness and shirking his duties. One particular time he almost gets you killed. And fittingly, he makes rank.
But back at the academy you find yourself again in the tank. Everyone is required to repeatedly dive to the bottom and return to the surface. Apparently this is to desensitize you to the possibility of having to enter water for an attempt at lifesaving especially to a submerged vehicle. You've never been this deep before and you are a bit claustrophobic but to the bottom you go. During one dive, your ear seems to ache and as you get to the bottom a sharp pain in your left ear drum accompanied by a rush of water makes it a certainty that something disturbing has happened. You lose your sense of direction, equilibrium and float to the top where you crawl out on the deck, blood oozing from the left ear.
The academy nurse, an older man who seems a bit challenged medically peers into your bleeding ear and announces that it is clearly just a broken blood vessel. He stuffs cotton in it and tells you to report back to the tank. The only reason you don't have to go back in is that they don't want blood in the water. But for the next two nights you lay in excruciating pain and survive training and instruction during the day.
Finally, you report back to the nurse and tell him the pain is unbearable. He begrudgingly sends you to a nearby medical center which just happens to be one of the finest facilities in the state. A surgeon examines you and advises you have ruptured your tympanic membrane.....your eardrum is destroyed. If you can just tough out the final weeks of training and graduate, he will build you a new eardrum by harvesting a part of the muscle behind your ear and attaching it in the place where your original one was. He explains that he will do the surgery through the ear canal. This doesn't seem too bad but like many other plans, it doesn't work that way. He ends up cutting your ear and laying it open onto your face. The surgery is a success but recovery is slow.
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