poolee with medical waiver

[bman49]

I'm curently a poolee with a medical waiver for my left knee because of surgery when I dislocated it and tore my patellar tendon. I disclosed this with MEPS and they told me I'm good to go. However, my knees in general are weak. When it comes to running or rucking I'm fine. They just get sore if I'm putting down lots of miles, but if I twist my leg with a lot of force or have a lot of latteral movement like in football they like to dislocate.

My question is this. Should I really be going infantry with not so great knees? I scored high on my asvab (89 with around 140 GT) so I'm qualified for every job. I want to become a grunt because I love the grunt lifestyle. I live with my uncle, who is a former Ranger so he takes me on difficult hiking trips, and hard runs up and down mountain ridges. We are about to take a 15 day hiking trip through the Sierra Nevada mountain range with about 60 pounds on our backs while hiking 16-20 miles a day. He thinks I'm good to go in terms of being a grunt and is actually pushing me to go recon like my brother. I'm sure I'm going to make it through boot. I'm just worried I'm going to make it through ITB and end up being a liability to other grunts if I actually go on deployments. So I digress, should I try for infantry or should I look into another MOS so I'm not a liability in the ****.

If my profile isn't what it should be, please let me know and I will change it ASAP.

[thewookie]

Only you know your body. If you don't think your body can handle the rigors of being a grunt, then maybe you should consider alternatives.

But for me, you don't know you are going to fail until you do. So, unless you try you will never know, and always wonder. Worse case, if you break they will try to fix you and put you back in the grunts, if you can't do it, you might get a med discharge, or they will try to retrain you to do something else.

Decisions, decisions. I would see how things go in the mountains, if you can do it without much pain, then maybe your block is more mental than physical.

Worse case if you can't be a Marine then you could go army and be a ranger.

Good luck