Let's be an Army Nurse!!

Fort Sill Holdover   Due to COVID, and the inability of the Army to pay to house 300 people for an extra 10 days in a hotel, we could not report to our next training location right after DCC was finished. So, we had 10 days of “free time” at Fort Sill, OK…. Woohoo. We were allowed to leave base with a weekend pass if we desired, but this girl does not want the ‘rona. So, my roommates and I stayed pretty much in our barracks with the exception of the gym, meals, and a few shopping trips. However, we did investigate the nearby Wichita wildlife refuge, which was awesome! There’s a pretty little mini-mountain called Mount Scott where you can drive to the top and take lovely pictures like these! There were also some lovely bison, longhorns, prairie dogs, and unseen elk that don’t like to be found out in the open (I don’t blame them in that heat). The refuge is HUGE and stunning, and the wildlife are all able to freely roam wherever they please on the refuge. Here I am on a dam alon...

Testing     On arrival, each soldier is immediately swabbed and ushered into your room with roommates. The medics doing the swabbing... had never done it before, so they got to practice on you! They take their sweet time scooping your brains out of your nose, and they don't care if you cry or cough. Then they do your other nostril. Once your eyes and nose begin flooding all over your face, you haul your things inside and are given folders of paperwork (that you don't fill out and turn in until the last day apparently), and you wait in your rooms for 2 weeks! Luckily for us, all 303 people were negative on the first round, which was apparently pretty rare. Or so we thought.      On day 10, they swab everyone a second time (same amount of snot and tears) because the virus can incubate for 2 weeks before showing symptoms. Unfortunately, around day 7-8 when they got all of our negative results back, the rules were relaxed somewhat and we were all allowed to hang out...