Posted by Lieutenant Commander Alexis Kane (Assistant Chief Medical Officer) in Winters’ boarding physical

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Alex Winters (Chief Engineer) in Winters’ boarding physical

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Alexis Kane (Assistant Chief Medical Officer) in Winters’ boarding physical

<snip>

Kane scanned the elbow and looked at it, “No it didn’t. We can repair that. Does it give you chronic or intermittent pain?”

“Flex, extend, and rotate your elbow, please.”

Lt. Cmdr. Kane, AMO

“The pain is intermittent and, at this point, mostly sporadic, unless I go looking for ways to aggravate it.” Alex said, then did as she was told. Flexion and extension gave her no trouble at all. A pang that she could only describe as reminiscent of a tiny electrical shock shot through her elbow, up to her shoulder and down her lower arm as she made the rotating motion. For just a fraction of a second, she stopped breathing. Then she exhaled, slowly and deliberately.

She looked at the doctor and smiled. “Like when I do that. At the Academy, I was told during my pre-comm physical that it wasn’t a disqualifying condition given my range of motion, and that if I wanted to have it fixed, I’d be on light duty and with limited range of motion for anywhere up to a week. At the time, I was a division 1 soccer player. I wasn’t about to miss the final game of the season to have an elective medical procedure. After that, final exams, then graduation, and then I was lucky enough to be assigned a first duty station within three days. My boss there wasn’t the kind of guy who would have looked favorably on a new recruit choosing to go on light duty for even a day so, well … I guess the right time just never presented itself.”

~ Alex Winters, CE

The doctor gave Winters a look as if those were just excuses. “Your DH can not forbid you from having a medical procedure. And it should be corrected. That nerve spasm would have causes you to drop what ever you were holding, or even jerk your arm at an inopportune time. What If it were to cause you to make an incorrect and dangerous adjustment?”

Alex lifted one shoulder and, looking at her hands, said: “I don’t know. It never has. I guess I didn’t think of it like that.” She’d wanted to say ‘Well, you haven’t met Commander Devereaux’, but recognized it as the weak sauce that it was just in time to think better of it.

“I doubt you would allow one of your officers to continue to work like that if they could be helped.” She began moving the hand scanner over the rest of Winters.

Alex looked up at the doctor and barked out a short laugh, more of surprise than merriment. “Well, I think it’s safe to say that I plan on being a different kind of boss than the one I had for the better part of the last three years. Yes.”

“I can not force you to have it fixed, but I strongly recommend you do. It will only get worse as you get older. A week of light duty will not interfere with your work. You are the CE and will have plenty of paperwork and teams to delegate work. And light duty will not preclude you from crawling about the ship.”

OOC: any results on the rest of the scan?

Lt. Cmdr. Kane, AMO

“You’re right, of course,” Alex said. “So. When could this happen? I’d much prefer to get it over with before we get orders to high-tale it to our next medical disaster, if at all possible,” she said. “My schedule is pretty open, for now. It may not always be.”

OOC: Nothing else out of the ordinary.

~ Alex Winters, CE