So i was a little overweight at the end of my military career. Not obese, but hefty.
One day, we were volunteered for the fire-fighting trainer. Great fun. Walking around a simulated engine room wiht real fires burning.
So we drink a lot of water, dress out and go back in the fire.
We come out, drink more water, everyone goes to pee, then we go back in the fire.
Except, i wasn't peeing.
Couldn't make it go.
And i'm not really sweating that much.
But we carry on. And when i was running the nozzle, i crouched down low to fight the fire and the nozzles on my breathing apparatus kept getting tangled up. I kept having to stand up from my crouch in order to get a breath through the tubes.
At the end of that fire, i still didn't pee.
During the next fire, someone lost control of his firehose and got knocked against me and slammed me against a bulkhead. hurt my shoulder.
During one of the breaks, after the debrief, one of the trainer guys asked me if i was okay. "Yeah, i'm fine."
"YOu keep rubbing your left arm."
"Yeah, it hurts a bit, but nothing major." I did not notice his eyes get big, not right then.
He asked if my chest felt tight. Well, now that you mention it, the guy that tightened my straps was a bit of a sadist, so the OBA fit me a little tight. "Yeah, actually."
"And have you had any difficulty breathing?"
"Yeah, that's why i keep standing up in the fires."
So there's no immediate reaction but he goes and talks to some other instructors.
They come back and tell me i need to go talk to our corpsman. And one of the instructors needs to take some paperwork over to base medical so he asks to get a ride with me. Sure.
I drive over and he tells me to park in back.
“But I usually park on the south side, where my corpsman’s office is.”
“It’ll be fine, we park here all the time.”
“Okay,” I’m dubious but complied.
Then he wanted to walk in through the ER entrance. No, no. They made it clear that only Emergencies use the Emergency room. But he assures me that we’ll be okay. We get two steps in, there’s a 1st class who starts opening his mouth to yell at us for using the ER as a lobby.
Before I can say ‘His Idea!’ this idiot beside me jumps two feet to the side, points at me and shouts “THIS MAN! HAS CHEST PAINS! AND DIFFICULTY BREATHING!”
I did have time to say ‘Oh, you bastard!’ In ten minutes I was naked, wired up, stabbed with needles, wrapped in probes and four doctors looking at my EKG. And they frowned.
“It doesn’t look like a heart attack!”
“It’s NOT!” I protested. “The OBA straps were too fucking tight!”
“…But we’ll hold you overnight for observation.” I get rolled into an ambulance and dragged to the city hospital.
They wouldn’t let me stand to go potty, so when I finally went, I used two bedpans. Another mark on the damned chart.
The civilian doctor kept asking why I was there. After 24 hours they let me put on my uniform and beg a ride back to base. Got to the office where I found I was in trouble for missing the morning muster and I’d been marked AWOL from the fire-fighting debrief.
The words I threw at the XO in response to the charge of sneaking out of the training session will add little to the narrative at this point in time.