I know the plans I have for you

While I await the results of this week's PET/CT scan and doctor consult, I find myself subject once again to the shifting vicissitudes of assignment season...

I'd worried about next summer, about getting back into the mix, trying to get back underway again, wondering if the same miraculous alignment-of-the-stars that brought me my unlikely number one pick last year would somehow weigh ever so gently on the new detailer this year. Just keep me off the beach. This year counts as a staff job, right?

The summertime conversations with the detailer went well, but when the "shopping list" appeared in August, I found, uneasily, only three 378' OPS jobs open.

Since I knew my doctors wanted to check up on me a few more times, and since the detailer kept saying I was transferring next summer...and since I was fit for full duty, and had a replacement to take over my job, and a very supportive command...and most of all, since I was eager to reclaim my life, I started planning underway trips, even before I'd finished radiation.

My goal was to log a couple weeks aboard a 378' in the fall, in time to influence the detailer's decision in my favor - much like that fortuitous trip aboard THETIS last fall. Additional underway hours beckoned in the spring, six months of "open slate" outside of eight weeks for pipeline training. I called the ship schedulers (ah, the convenience of working on an island with well over a dozen different commands - easier to cut red tape) and found out who was going where, when. One trip in particular intrigued me.

I was already discussing possibilities with my command and playing with patrol dates when a request came out for a JG or LT to fill a TAO billet for that out-of-hemisphere (OOH) deployment. Bingo. An actual billet I could fill, instead of just shipriding for my own professional development. Negotiations ensued, and resulted in my getting underway with the ship for a couple weeks in November, just a day after I returned from South Africa, as a sort of trial balloon. Would they like me? Would I learn things quickly enough? Would I really want to deploy with them?

The singular answer to all those questions was a resounding "yes!", but the ship couldn't give me a straight "up or down" answer until they got the results of the solicitation. After all...I didn't yet have all the qualifications they wanted - underway 378' OOD letter, TAO qualification, the requisite experience. I could make the entire deployment, though, so the command was willing to qualify me en route. I allowed myself to get excited.

I should know by now that hope is dangerous. It wasn't long after I returned from San Diego, high with anticipation, that the detailer called. I'd known he wanted to get me off my medical support billet, but I'd assumed, naively, that it was for administrative reasons.

I had been counting on having the spring to recover my physical strength and mental sanity and get "back in the groove", log a final checkup with my doctors in the summer, and only then PCS to a new assignment, but the detailer was mulling other plans for me. Now that I was fit for full duty, I became a viable pawn on his chessboard. So, the offer: rotate six months early to backfill for two officers on a 378' who were leaving early. I'd fill the empty Weapons Officer billet until the summer, when I'd fleet up into the OPS position. And the kicker: the ship in question...was my top pick.

So why wasn't I more excited? Even the detailer was confused. How to explain? The dynamic nature of the 6-month OOH deployment, all that underway time, so much to learn, unique foreign port calls, daily challenges of a sort perhaps never to be repeated...in a word, Excitement!...what if I never have this chance again? I could argue that sending me on the OOH might more sense for the ship, or for my career, or even medically, but the truth is it will be an adventure, and how can I pass that up to sit in drydock?

The XO of the"top pick" ship started calling me, and it was mildly awkward. I didn't want to commit, but I also didn't want to turn him down outright - what if I was sent there? I found out there were no other volunteers for the deployment, but with two sister ships on the East Coast standing by, there were certainly a few qualified folks sitting there, potentially under-utilized and available for deployment. I counter-offered to the temporary assignment folks that perhaps they could cross-deck a couple people from the East Coast ships to Hawaii for the spring - they'd already be qualified and knowledgeable - and send me on deployment as a very willing volunteer and someone the ship already knew.

I asked for advice from friends, family, colleagues, supervisors, and mentors. The only consensus was that there was no bad choice. I kept encountering folks from the OOH ship on the Island; they greeted me enthusiastically, assuming I was sailing with them. To my great dismay, I had to be noncommittal in my replies. Their command cadre couldn't give a straight answer, because they were all overseas preparing for the deployment. My emotions were all over the map. The scheming side of my brain kicked into full gear, only barely restrained by the calm, carpe diem, "yes, sir" side that told me to quit looking a gift horse in the mouth. Was I wasting political capital and valuable time trying to fight this one?

It all rests, ultimately of course, on my PET/CT scan and doctor's visit this week, the first since I finished radiation back in September. I was supposed to check in with the doctor before I went to South Africa, but they botched the sequence of appointments and I was out of the country before they had time for me. The doctor, no doubt, will be taken aback that he might lose me permanently from follow-up care so soon. Forty percent of Hodgkins patients who relapse will do so in the first 12-18 months following the start of treatment (it drops off precipitously after that). So it is no stretch to state that checking in one last time after the OOH would ease his mind and be the most sensible, medical. Perhaps even if I go to Hawaii, I could check in with these same doctors during the drydock period, just for continuity of care.

But it is a dangerous card to play: I don't want to remove myself from being FFFD - concurrent with being available for worldwide assignment - and it is tricky to argue that I am safe to deploy short-term, but not to end up in Hawaii, with its excellent military medical facilities, for two and a half years.

I can't plan for packing, moving, renting out my apartment, finding a new place, visiting friends and family for the holidays (either the last chance before the OOH or the last chance for a couple years), or even buying tickets for holiday events, not knowing when I might ship out. Even as my friends, family, and colleagues become more invested in the career plans, ultimately, the decision is not mine to make. So I fill my time with relief processes and laps in the pool and studying systems and defenses of 378s. I try to trust that there is a master plan and prevent getting too excited, just in case the scan finds something. You can never be too certain.