Thoughts

So as I have been through this whole process before I should be used to all the paper work.  At this point I am done with all the medical, dental, and eye review papers.  I received all my lab results back from the doctor on tuesday and everything looks good I think.  Thank goodness!  I got home that night and was checking things off the medical list going back through all the labs and making sure I had everything and it turned out I was missing the urinalysis.  So that involved a call back to the doctor's office the next day, which then of course means I have to wait several hours for them to call me back.  I get the call back and luckily the test was done and I just had to go pick up that lab result as well.  Tuesday I had also called my medical review assistant and left a message for her.  I had to have forms filled out by a urologist and I had faxed those forms to the urologist office and they faxed them back.  It was signed and had my medical records with it, but part of the form wasn't filled out.  So I called my medical review assistant to get a fax number so I could fax over what I had received to be sure that it would be sufficient.  I didn't want to mail the paperwork and hear from peace corps in a month saying it wasn't filled out correctly.  So the assistant gives me a call back the next day and is able to give me a fax number for a nurse to review the papers.  I later receive an email confirming that they received my fax but that it will be a week or two for her to review my information.  So now I'm not sure if I should just go ahead and mail my whole packet in or wait for her to get back to me.  Two weeks seems kinda long..  I could mail it in and then if they need more info just go back to the urologist and fax those papers back to pc.  I'm just ready to get all of this out of my hands!  I want it back in theirs so I can just wait.  I'm tired of dealing with doctors and receptionists and waiting on lab results or to be called back!  Patience isn't my strongest attribute.  If I'm working on something I just like to get it done with, lol so I just want my part to be done.  So I think I will give the nurse a few more days to review my papers and if I don't hear from her I will just go ahead and mail the whole packet in.

In other news I have made a point to record the ABC news 20/20 special.  They'll be interviewing several PC women that were raped or sexually assaulted during their service and what the peace corps did or didn't do.  It's also supposed to talk about the murder of volunteer Kate Puzey in Benin a few years ago.  I remember reading about it when it first happened.  I was still in the process of applying the first time and I kept up with peace corps journals and the peace corps website pretty regularly when I came across blogs that told what happened.  I was so shocked and so saddened and could not imagine what her family and friends were going through as well as the volunteers that were serving with her.  I remember seeing a photo of her wearing traditional African gear and holding a young child on her lap and she just had the biggest smile and the brightest eyes.  I didn't know Kate, but I feel sure the world lost a wonderful person and a bright light when someone took her life.  It truly saddens me that so many people are willing to give up their life here in the States to help others and things like this happen.  A young girl hopng to make a difference in another community ends up raped or sexually assaulted by someone in the very community she's wanting to help.  Why do we treat each other in these terrible ways?  When will the violence against women, against one another stop? 
I was telling a friend of mine about the 20/20 special and he asked if I should watch it.  I said probably not, but I know I will anyway.  I'm not sure how things like that affect my desire to serve, when I hear stories about some things that have happened to volunteers during their service I definitely have the "What the HELL am I doing?" thought.  But I also know many volunteers have completed their service without any major problems.  And the fact that these things are going on is the whole point to me.  The more people that know what it's like to live in Africa, to be a woman in Africa or in many other developing countries the more likely people will stand up when we hear about injustices being done to them. 
I feel like I ramble a lot when I talk, when I write so I hope that anyone that reads this actually gets something out of it. 
May God bless all the Volunteers serving away from their families, as well as all the men and women in our military, come home safe.