Off With Their Heads! (warning- the following post is a long rant)

I raised a stink today.  That is something I rarely do.  I may bitch and moan to friends, but I have a tendency to not look for confrontations.  Well today I looked for one and found one.

The gist of the long story is this:
The vaccine clinic corpsman at Medical DID NOT record Brother's shots.  It is not on the medical record and not in the computer.  It is not on his personal shot card because it was lost at our overseas screening  some time ago.  Then the corpsman tried to tell me I was wrong, or that I was perhaps lying about  the fact that my son DID get his two required 11 year old shots.  Little punk- he thought I was stupid and could give me a run around.  Oh how I wish Hubby had been there with me! In fact, I saw someone that looked like Hubby from behind, and for a second I thought it might be him. *sigh*  No- he is on a ship out in the middle of the big blue ocean.

At first when I tried to get the error corrected, he (the corpsman) wouldn't even come out to talk to me in person.  He kept sending the poor E-2 girl at the front desk to talk to me.  Finally I asked to speak to him.  He was the one who GAVE my son his shots- in fact he did a poor job of re-assuring my son (who is scared to death of needles), while trying to give the shots.  He claimed he WOULD have recorded any shots given.  There was NO way he would have NOT recorded it.  Really?  Is that why the other shots that were given to both my kids were still missing from the medical records (luckily they were in the computer though.)  After he could offer me no solution and it became obvious he hoped I would just back down, I asked to speak to his Chief.

Although the Chief apologized to me, tried to re-assure me that the corpsman know their job well, and had the vaccine nurse dig deeper to see if they could find something, Brother still has to get his shots for the 2nd time.  The nurse is a really sweet Japanese woman, and she knew how upset I was (I was on the verge of tears by then.)  She agreed to give Brother his shots this time around.  Not only do I want her to do it because I think she will be able to calm my son down (seriously- he HATES needles), but I will not let that damn imcompentent corpsman touch my children ever again. 

I know I am not the first, and I do take responsibility for not having had a new shot card made out.  This was a hard lesson to learn- and I will pay for it when I have to tell Brother about the shots he has to get in a couple of days.  Oh I will pay, emotionally and perhaps financially because I suspect I will have to bribe him to get him into the medical clinic door.  I PROMISED him he would not have to get any more shots this year.  Second time I have let him down in a week's time.  I FEEL TERRIBLE.

The nurse did say we could get an MD to sign off saying he is exempt from the shots.  But I know that will not help in the long run as eventually someone else will require it regardless.  Besides the fact I don't know if an MD would agree to that anyway.

So in two days I head back with Brother, I am so dreading it.  Know what I would like to do when we get there?  Find the punk ass corpsman and have him explain to Brother WHY he has to get the shots all over again.  Do you think he will even feel bad about it?  Probably not- but he would probably be embarassed- that's good enough for me.  I still wish Hubby had been there today to tear him a new one though.

ICE ICE Baby...

*(For my civilian readers- ICE comments are  "how are we doing?" cards for us military folks, you either complain, or give praise.  It then goes to the Base Captain to read.)

If you have read down this far- thank you for listening to me rant.  I feel better now.