RCU SHIP 04 DIV 741

my son called and said he might have to have surgery his tendon popped in his wrist he will have at least 4mo in a cast. I am so glad he is still excited about being there and all he talks about is finishing BC I told him to make sure to put that energy into healing and he will be fine

If anyone has the link to the FB group can you please share it so I can update the information section above.  TY

Hopefully the stress fractures aren't too serious. Most likely he will have some time to heal and then they will put him back in a division.  Hopefully someone else whose SR has been through it will chime in.  Encourage him to stay positive - this is just a minor setback.  Hang in there!

RCU will definitely be a test of their mental fortitude.  Do whatever you can to encourage them to stay positive.  They can get well and back with their division (or moved to another division depending on how much time elapses) - it happens all the time.  They must be strong!  Hang in there!

If they are given a new PIR you should be able to attend.  Depending on how long they are in RCU they could be sent directly to their A school with no PIR. 

You won't know this until they have recovered.

AmyLynnn - rest and meds is the best thing for your son right now.  He needs to get healthy!  Remind him that this is just a minor setback - no big deal.  He'll get through this and be stronger because of it.  He's got this!

Spoke with my recruit yesterday, he is in better spirits and beginning to feel better with the medications for pneumonia.  but feeling so defeated. His appointments with DR keeps getting pushed back and now they assigned him to a neurologist and cardiologist?

I feel so helpless! My recruit is afraid of the  domino effect and his future in the Navy. He is in limbo line about when he can continue training, and upset because he is clueless about will this setback  prevent him from going to A School.

He signed up for the Navy as a Junior, attended all DEP meetings, gave firm referrals and it doesn't seem fair to yank his job due to the waiting game.

Sorry.. Just getting frustrated and sad for him.

Did anyone receive their Sunday call from  RCU Ship 04 DIV 741 yesterday?

My SR did not call, and I am hoping he was cleared from medical and assigned a new ship and FFD.

Amylynn

I received a call from my son today saying he was being moved to RCU for sprained tendons in his foot/leg. I have no idea how long he will be there or his new graduation date. Dr's said it could take 6-8 weeks to heal. Please pray for complete healing and a speedy recovery as he was supposed to graduate on 8/30 and sounded really discouraged. Thank you!

AK907Tammy  - I'm sorry to hear that your son was injured.  The important thing is that he heals!  Remind him to stay focused and this is just a minor setback - hang in there and prayers for both of you ;-D

Thank-you for all your support while my SR was in RCU, unfortunately he will be heading home to get well, from complications from Pneumonia.

AmyLynn - I'm sorry to hear your son is being sent home.  Right now his health is most important so I hope that he can get home, get well and then try again.  We hope to see you back here soon. Thank your son for his willingness to serve.  We'll be waiting for you! 

(And please don't delete your account or all your posts will disappear.)  

B'sNukeMoM - Thank you! 

Dawne - My son was in RCU for 4 months with a stress fracture in his foot.  He went through all 4 phases of rehab and during his last phase he began running again and went way too hard.  He developed another stress fracture in his tibia.  He was given the choice of staying in RCU for three more months or separating and coming home with the option to return in 6 months.  He chose to come home and he's been home a couple of weeks now. I was able to send him books while at RCU but that's pretty much all they get to do in there.  For my son it was very hard having nothing to do and being so isolated.  But he had friends that had been there for more than 6 months due to various injuries.  I think it just depends on the person as to whether or not they can handle it.  The good news is that it did not discourage him from joining - he is definitely going back at the end of 6 months.  He was able to call me every two weeks while in RCU.  I'm happy to try to answer any questions you might have.  I know how hard it is not being able to hear from him or how he is doing.  Very frustrating. Hang in there!

I just received word that my son is transferring to RCU for a possible stress fracture in his hip. He said they were going to take an MRI and let him know more. For now all he could say was that his PIR date is being pushed. Has anyone had experience with this recently? It looks like older posts say they received a call about every 2 weeks after that first one. If I go to the RTC website and look at FAQs for RCU they say recruits only get calls when they complete their training/graduate.

Obviously I’ll send letters and roll with the assumption that “no news is good news” just curious about what to expect. ☺️ I know he’s a grown man that doesn’t need his “mommy”, but it  is surprising they let them call home every 2-3 weeks while in the normal training group/division but not when they’re bored to tears for the 2-6 months it might take to heal in RCU. Hoping they at least have light duty and/or something to study. Thx

RCU seems to be as much a mental exercise as a physical healing one. My son went in for a fracture in his leg and turned his boot camp experience into a 6 month long one. He definitely didn't get to call as often as every 2 weeks but I know it varies by who is running things and who (recruit) has messed up recently. However, it was such a treat to talk to him - we had to keep our phones off silent and available all the time, just in case!

Thanks for the feedback TravelinMom. Six months is a super long time to spend at RTC. I can imagine it becoming a huge mental process when all you want to do is get out and on with your new job! Do you recall how much time your son spent in RCU? 

Adding an update to my experience below in case it’s helpful for others in similar situations….

I just spoke to my son again today and received more details (he went in yesterday). Apparently he slipped and fell on some ice (he’s a California boy, not used to marching on ice) and instead of feeling better after a few days the way he usually would, it became increasingly more difficult to stand or walk so they sent him to get checked out. 

Once evaluated, RCU said it looked like he had stress fractures. They will do another MRI on Mar 31 and decide whether he will continue w/bootcamp or go home on April 2. It seemed like a really quick timeline for a stress fracture. I thought they took 6-8+ weeks to heal. Until I know more I’m going to work under the assumption that Apr 2nd is just a checkpoint to see if he is healing adequately enough to not be a future problem.

He asked the person monitoring his phone call a couple of protocol questions while I was on the phone so I got some good feedback They said he will get an hour phone call every Saturday if no one causes trouble (let’s hope the recruits don’t get restless and start acting out). They also said it was ok to send books. Fingers crossed all goes as it should ☺️

Boot Camp was 8 weeks I believe and the rest of the time was in RCU. Then they didn't have time to get his orders rewritten, he was in holding for another few weeks after that. He actually said being in holding was worse than RCU for him. In any case he made it through, was so relieved when he was capped (Navy cap), made it through A school and is in the field working now. When he came home on leave, he brought the recruit cap and burned it ceremonially in our chiminea - LOL! He wore it a looooong time, it seemed like so was glad to see it go. If your sailor gets sent home (he can usually choose not to, just know that), it may take a year or two of getting the appropriate waivers to try again if he decides to re-join once he's healed. Just know that in advance, they don't always tell you that part.

My son's injury was stress fractures as well but in the leg. So sorry your son was ASMO'd, I'm sure he didn't want that but the pain is no good either! Here's wishing him all the best in his healing, poor guy.

@TravelinMom I bet burning the recruit cap was cathartic and exactly what he needed - great idea 😁. Thanks for the insights, I’ll pass them on to my son. Glad to see your son made it through!

One more question... For those recruits that continued onto A school after being in div 741/RCU, did they end up going through the PIR ceremony? Sounds like they didn’t at some point in the past. Curious if things have changed. I’d imagine it would be tough given the recruits have been practicing their drill formations etc together for a while. I would think Battlestations would feel off as well if you were thrown into a group without knowing everyone’s strengths, blindspots and where you can fit in to help the team. Though I suppose that’s part of real-life simulation in the fleet.

Yes. My kid went through PIR but was in holding for about a month after that at RTC because they had to cut new orders. After exiting RCU he had 2 weeks of BC to complete and it wasn't enough time for his updated orders. Anyway, he was sent to A school  and it took a few months to class up but all went smoothly after that. Battlestations won't be a problem at all, even with the new ship your sailor will be in. Also, if you had tickets to PIR, just make sure he double checks with his new Div about the tickets, but that wasn't a problem in the end, either. 

class up, meaning for a class to form for the schooling he needed. They are in their barracks in the meantime so that isn't an issue. They basically spend the time working on quals for various watches, and performing said watches. Will likely be assigned a work group for various tasks around base - at A school.

Thank you such much for the response TravelinMom. I was hoping he’d get to go through the ceremony. Seems like it would be another big milestone in the transition from recruit to sailor.  I know the biggest deal is probably when they get their swap out recruit caps for navy after Battlestations.  But the “pubolic” PIR ceremony is where they get to share their accomplishment w/loved ones. Would be a bummer if they missed out after all the hard work! 

After ~six weeks in RCU my recruit was just liberated from his crutches and is on to Phase 2 of his recovery!!

Staci - that is fantastic news!

Staci - so happy for y'all! I know it's a big deal for you, too!

Thanks B’sNuke & Travelin Moms! After talking to him I’m almost more impressed that he’s making it through this than I was the core bootcamp training. Lol

They say he has a good 6-7+ weeks to go.

Yes, it's a serious challenge for them and a lot of them separate. When my son first got to RCU, 4 recruits had messed up ("hooked up in the laundry room as he reported it) and caused everyone to get punished - they secured all movies, books, games everything for many, many weeks -nearly the whole time he was there in fact. They overcame that eventually by playing D&D when they could - with a piece of wadded up paper! LOL - nothing like innovation and imagination! For a while we couldn't send him books either, but apparently my boy got so good at polishing shoes, they did allow us to send him that crazy parade gloss shoe polish and he relayed the story about how upon inspection, the RDC or whomever's eyes bugged out and he used some creative swearing and said his boots were ACTUAL mirrors - hehe. Cracked me up, the way he told it though.

When he graduated, they had him in Holding for a bit on RTC until they got his orders cut for his A school. Once he got to Pensacola, one of his duties while awaiting his classes to begin (called Classing Up) was being a spotter in the van that picks up the recruits from the airport. So he'd go collect the new sailors fresh from RTC. I asked him why he didn't want to be a driver. He said he didn't want to take that many lives into his hands - good call! He was a new driver when he went in the Navy at 17! But he apparently loved regaling riders of the van with his RCU stories.

TravelinMom, those are great stories! My son said they had a shoe shine competition coming up, I’ll ask him about the parade gloss. I’ll have to tell him about D&D too, I could see him doing something like that.

Luckily he can get books, though he’s running out of space for them.  He was told he needed 39 stamps to mail a book home - of course since he’s on crutches he can’t go to the NEX and buy any. We told him it’s cheaper to donate it to the library and buy a new one if he ever wanted to read it again.

He only got a 5min call last week though because several recruits were acting out. They’ve had people from a couple of other divisions (swimmers and FIT I think) temporarily moved to their spaces because they were causing trouble and had to have their compartments inspected by NCIS (I think that was the acronym). There were 3 separate incidents (one involved ~30 people out of a group of 40). It was almost as though the whole place went crazy for a week. Things seemed to be back to normal on his last call though. He does regularly tell us he likes receiving letters so I’m trying to get everyone he knows to write. 

Staci: Yeah, not worth sending those home. Let another sailor enjoy them. Another funny RCU story, when everything was "secured", we only got rare 5-6 minute phone calls before they started barking at him to end the call. I guess they were calling in shifts at the phone bank. Anyway, he wasn't allowed to receive books so we discovered how many pages of a book he could receive as "regular mail, cut a book down and stapled the pages (12 sheet, I believe), and sent him the book in pieces. It wasn't cheap but it was sort of fun and very funny. It was cracking up his RCU-mates for sure! The common literature title escapes me at the moment but it was definitely sailor-related and he hadn't read it yet. He was always a musician and I used to send him song lyrics, too, and created lots of questionnaires because he's not much for thinking of what to say when writing! The responses were keepers, that's for sure. We'd send those with SASEs. Anyway, it was a hard time but he made it great, and it sure made for a lot of stories!

TravelinMom - thank you for sharing your stories of your sons time in RCU and providing encouragement to Staci!  This is awesome ;-D

Agreed! These stories are the best and giving me good ideas. I find I’m struggling more with this than initial training. The phone calls help a ton though.

I’m a little worried about us being able to get time off work and book flights/hotel w/o much notice. Since he ended up in RCU after all of the assessments and just before OPFA he says they will likely send him straight to battle-stations once he’s healed enough to pass OPFA…I’m guesstimating we’ll have a few days to a week max to pull it all together. At least we have all of his stuff packed already. I’ll probably also pack myself a “go bag” w/list of last minute items in a few weeks so I don’t have to worry about forgetting something while we make last minute preparations. This makes it sound like getting ready to go to the hospital to give birth! Hahaha

TravelinMom - love the idea of sending portions of books, turns it into a series and something to look forward to - brilliant!. He couldn’t think of a book he wanted during our last call so I found the first 20 pages of a book series his older brother loved and sent it. If he likes it I’ll follow up w/the actual book. Good reminder on the questionnaires, I might try those again - they will be a great memory.

I truly appreciate all of you ladies thanks for donating your time to help a stranger!! 🥰

It seems they will give them the final 2-3 weeks (usually 3) if they are pre-Battlestations, after RCU. So when your sailor gets ASMO'd back to RTC to a new ship/div, you'll get that info and it's go time! By the way, it takes those bones quite long to heal and so they can get a waiver to use the stationery bike for the running portion and will do the rest of the OPFA as normal, if that's any consolation. And yes, those questionnaires are keepers! Do yourself a favor when you get to PIR, take cash, quite a bit, because they will offer some things before PIR you can't get later like official challenge coins if those are of interest, calendar, a few other things. Each item is $10 - $20 and they only take cash! Why they don't tell you this beforehand is beyond me, but like everything else I guess. (The "calendar" is of no use, seriously, it's the group photo printed on photo paper with the whole rest of the year printed on that same page so the photo is too small, and you will get a much larger photo if you bought any photos at all.)

Good to know! 3 week notice I can deal with no problem, 1 week notice in my household would just turn into a comedy of errors.

Was gutted that we didn’t get a call from our recruit on Saturday…then Sunday came and I got a Mother’s Day call!!!. Made my week. Hope all of you w/recruits in RCU were able to get a moment with them this weekend. 🥰 

Learned something new about the physical therapy my recruit is receiving for his fracture hip. Granted, everybody’s injury is different and will require different treatment, but I found it quite interesting so thought I would share.

During Phase 2 of his treatment they told him he would be using the bike instead of the 1.5mi run to test his cardio for the OPFA. To help prepare him, they used RBF cuffs (Restricted Blood Flow). They are tight bands placed around his legs to restrict blood flow/oxygen. I won’t get into the mechanics of how it works but if you Google it, you’ll find that it’s a common practice in therapy.  It sort of super charges your work-out by making certain aspects more difficult. My recruit said it was pretty uncomfortable and the post work out pain was more intense than a normal workout. But if you need your body to heal itself quicker w/o potential for added injury this appears to be a good way to go.

What was surprising is that they’ve also begun to have him use a special treadmill that is fitted with a pressurized chamber for your lower body that helps support your weight. It appears to be  technology from NASA that allows you to run w/less gravitational pull (the inverse of what astronauts use in space. For instance, if they set it so 60-70% of your weight is supported by the air you’ll only feel 30-40% of your weight. It probably feels like being spring loaded the way astronauts appear when they walk on the moon - almost like flying. It helps rehab your gait w/o too much stress on the bones. PTs say it’s better than rehabing in a pool w/water because they have better control over how much pressure/gravity is used.

I can’t say I envy what he’s going through, but I’ll admit, the treadmill sounds kind of fun…imagine running w/o achey knees  🤩 

Wow Staci!  So glad to hear that they are working with him and boy this all sounds so interesting.  I hope that recovery is quick and he can get back to training sooner than later.  Definitely keep us updated - and pass on to him that we are all cheering for him!

He's got this!

It's super cool, isn't it? For the OPFA, my son was given the option instead of running of swim, rowing machine, and bike. He has done bike in the past but will row I think for his next one.

Thanks ladies! I’ll let you know if we get another call this weekend and learn something new. ☺️

Hubs just received the call from my son that he’s heading back to a training group. July 3rd PIR! 🥰