Pretty much. What got me is that he was an aviation officer with a pretty high rank. They have extremely strict entry requirements, regular psychological screenings, constant checks by flight surgeons. He was around 20 years beyond when a lot of psychiatric illnesses start presenting and as far as I know we never established an etiology for it. The only trigger I could ever think of was the needle piercing him but until that moment he showed absolutely no anxiety about the blood draw and I thoroughly explained why we were drawing two separate chest panels over the next few hours. One moment he fully understood what was happening and was discussing it, the next it was chaos. After really fine-tuning my sense of shit about to kick off from that line of work, I had zero indication anything was off about the situation.
Most mental illnesses disqualify you from flying so many pilots never seek help under any circumstances as they want to keep flying. The phrase between pilots is “the three most important people in your life are your doctor, your priest and your areomedical examiner. It is critical to ensure they never meet”. Or could be a product of trying to hide illness for a while so he could keep his job and pride.
Pretty much. What got me is that he was an aviation officer with a pretty high rank. They have extremely strict entry requirements, regular psychological screenings, constant checks by flight surgeons. He was around 20 years beyond when a lot of psychiatric illnesses start presenting and as far as I know we never established an etiology for it. The only trigger I could ever think of was the needle piercing him but until that moment he showed absolutely no anxiety about the blood draw and I thoroughly explained why we were drawing two separate chest panels over the next few hours. One moment he fully understood what was happening and was discussing it, the next it was chaos. After really fine-tuning my sense of shit about to kick off from that line of work, I had zero indication anything was off about the situation.
Most mental illnesses disqualify you from flying so many pilots never seek help under any circumstances as they want to keep flying. The phrase between pilots is “the three most important people in your life are your doctor, your priest and your areomedical examiner. It is critical to ensure they never meet”. Or could be a product of trying to hide illness for a while so he could keep his job and pride.