Personal Status Update: Okay, the nuts and bolts of the reason for currently being Stateside have been duly recorded herein. So now for a personal moment.
Roughly two weeks prior to flying Stateside (State of New Mexico), in the Arabic country across from Iran that I was working in, a foreign national(s) sabotaged the porch section of the villa that I was staying in. Security for the compound containing these villas was supposed to fall on my employer, yet as of April of 2008 they've made the excuse that they were on a "bridge contract" and that meant there was no guarantee they had the contract thereafter so they didn't have to provide us any security. Before they removed the security, we used to have both a host country police officer and a private guard. So without security our front gates were left wide open 24/7 so that we constantly had foreign nationals wandering around claiming to be doing maintenance. As most of us don't speak any of the Persian, Arabic, Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, or Sri Lankan dialects, we had to shrug and leave them alone.
SPOILERS! (Click to view)
When I stepped onto the porch to go to my rental car and got hit/broadsided by the sabotage, I was lucky enough at the end of everything that the only injuries so far were to have my feet about head height as I went with it and only landed on my complete left side. Unfortunately I landed on marble stairs, hitting my left hip, left torso along my rib cage, and bicep muscles. My combat reflexes had me on my feet and in motion in both anger and defense. That may not have been a good thing to do injury-wise, but I'll be damned if I'm taken by surprise and then assaulted because I was mewling about being on the ground like some weak American. No, strength and reflex tossed me back on my feet ready to fight. Fortunately no one was present to beat down, because I was and am still VERY put out that my employer didn't feel it was worth the military's time to investigate, since it would point out that they hadn't provided us security in 1 1/2 years in our compounds (yet in their own compound they have it all, including higher walls and locked fences...). They also didn't want me to inform any of the others about it to prevent most of the 95% new people from leaving en masse. (maybe you should actually PAY THEM and they'll stay over something like this...)
My girlfriend had come out carefully behind me, concerned for my welfare despite the dangers. The car was undamaged, fortunately, so I was able to drive with her to the nearest Arab hospital (the military base only has a small troop medical center) for X-rays and intensive testing. From the blast along my left side against the marble stairs, I had really severe nerve 'lightning' shooting all over my arm and back. The left hip was very sore and was stiffening quickly. Since I couldn't control the left arm much I simply ignored it while watching for any ambushes resulting from the sabotage. I was prescribed by a good Egyptian surgeon some cocktail of B-vitamins for nerve repair, Cataflam and something else for anti-inflammatory, and some really nifty pain pills the size of Rhode Island.
Full spinal pains resulted in X-rays showing massive muscle spasms pulling on the tendons of the spinal structure, and a scoliosis of the upper spine. There was something else along the lower spine leading to the pelvic structure that I couldn't understand what he meant. I never told my mother what happened, because she had enough worries with my sister and the loss of her granddaughter that I was afraid this would put her over the edge.... Now that I'm Stateside I'll need to TRY to get the Veterans Hospital to look at me and possibly to more scans on my left arm and neck areas. I now get major neck pains leading to headaches, my spine seems too loose and pops out of place easily, my left arm I sometimes lose stability with (not quite strength, not quite painful), and if I shake my head I get pains behind the top of the nose canal above the eyes. We'll see.
Compound that with an accidental washing of my 2-yr old passport w/microchip almost making it impossible to even leave the airport and Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport harassing me repeatedly and taking my locking D-ring (for rappelling but also part of my military gear damnit!) which was used to hold my keys, and so far this past month has been a literal PAIN. <insert violin smiley here>
