A Marine Mom with a medical question

[jalredrrt]

Dear Sirs,
My son is an active duty Marine currently. He accidently fell out of his top rack aprox. 6 weeks ago. He suffered a mild concussion and immediate hearing loss in his left ear. He was treated for ear wax and a round of antibiotics with no change in hearing. After arriving home for the holidays, we took him to a reliable ENT. An audiogram was performed along with a stat CT scan. Results were a healed skull fracture and an 80% hearing defecit. He was placed on 60mg of steroids with a taper. A repeat audiogram showed no change in hearing. The MD stated this may be a permanent loss and that a hearing aid would be a help.
Our son is a devoted and intelligent Marine. He is a 81 MM motorman. How will this affect his career with the USMC. He scored extremely high on all his test and could haven chosen any MOS.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance and thank you for your service to our country.

[GySgtRet]

Ma'am make sure that when your son goes back to his duty station that he has a complete copy (or originals) of everything that was done to include all medications especially the steroids as Marines are subject to urinalysis at random. This can effext his career in a negative way as long as this was not a horseplay incident, drunken brawl, etc...If your son reported to sickbay (BAS) after the incident occured right away chances are he will not be looked upon negatively. I am not saying that your son has done anything wrong he needs to let his command know exactly what when on and who knew about it etc,...if there is anything else to add.

You and yours have a Happy New Year.

Gunny out

[Zulu 36]

Ma'am make sure that when your son goes back to his duty station that he has a complete copy (or originals) of everything that was done to include all medications especially the steroids as Marines are subject to urinalysis at random. This can effext his career in a negative way as long as this was not a horseplay incident, drunken brawl, etc...If your son reported to sickbay (BAS) after the incident occured right away chances are he will not be looked upon negatively. I am not saying that your son has done anything wrong he needs to let his command know exactly what when on and who knew about it etc,...if there is anything else to add.

You and yours have a Happy New Year.

Gunny out

I agree with the Gunny, including the information on medications. He should take copies of everything he can, and/or at least have the full and accurate names/addresses/phone numbers of whoever is holding the original medical reports and CT films.

To ease your mind a bit, the steroids that would have been given in this case are corticosteroids, not anabolic steroids (the body builder's poison). Corticosteroids would have been given to reduce inflammation. But he should still have a note or letter regarding the use of the medication just in case.

If he has this serious of an injury, his command should conduct a line-of-duty/misconduct investigation. If he simply fell out the rack while sleeping,
it is considered line-of-duty and he's cool. If he was drunk and grab-assing around, they may call it misconduct and he is out-of-luck for any disability.

It sounds like he did report to sick call, so that is a good thing in that it was documented contemporaneously with the accident. It was a bad thing that his problem was misdiagnosed.

As far as his status in the Corps is concerned, that will depend on what the Navy medical people think (if he's a good Marine, his CO should stick up for him if necessary).

Personally, I think it's a benefit for mortarmen to have bad hearing because they're going to eventually anyway. Plus they should ALL have their heads examined.