Planet of Doom

[titan5]

Title: Planet of Doom
Author: Titan5
Rating: PG
Characters: John, Rodney, Teyla, Ronon
Genre: Gen; humor and h/c for all
Word count: ~6000
Summary: It seemed like such a nice planet. Right up until it tried to kill them.
Author’s note: Set in season three so I can have Carson and Elizabeth. This was actually written for the planet prompt

Comments

Air Force regs

[pacificngal]

I do not know anyone in the Air Force and no one I can contact who has served in the armed forces for their knowledge on recovery.

However, I just Googled injury recovery and found this website:
http://www.realwarriors.net/active/disability/disability.php

I don't know, but I think there may not necessarily be a time limit, and since the Stargate program is completely fictitious and simultaneously highly classified (hee hee) and John Sheppard an invaluable member of the program, you can play with some of those regulations. I would suspect that even in reality the military would depend on the judgment of medical personnel to determine if an injury is progressing or at what point they would determine an injury is permanent and move to have the service member classified as 'disabled'. So, Sheppard would spend months in rehab and not have his service threatened, as long as there was some improvement and the opinion of his immediate care physicians is that he can still make a full recovery.

However, like you, I would hesitate to keep him out of service for too long. Just long enough to cause him some worry, angst, pain and force him to contemplate the real chance of his injury being deemed permanent. I think in the real world military it would be more clear cut. Service members leave the military all the time for such injuries, impairments/disabilities...not recovering enough to meet the requirements. But for a 'fictitious program' that relies on someone as specialized as John Sheppard (w/his gene and unique experience operating in another galaxy), his value and contribution could outweigh a slight impairment.

I think it's believable that the SGC might return him to duty even if some weakness remained in an arm/wrist/hand, as long as he could still perform his duties, especially if Beckett or Keller were backing Sheppard in giving him the additional months for a complete recovery while remaining in Atlantis, if the alternative was that an extended recovery time would require him to return to Earth. During that extra recovery time (where the limb/joint isn't at full strength or suffers from intermittent or persistent pain or weakness) Sheppard's daily routine would change. He's still valuable, even if he isn't going off-world fighting wraith or other bad guys, or getting in fire fights, etc. Technically, as military commander, he could do his job from a desk...but we know Sheppard wouldn't be satisfied with that. :)

I look forward to reading all of the stories you are working on.

Re: Air Force regs

[titan5]

Thanks for the info and the link. I was also thinking if he got to a certain point, he could still command the military of Atlantis even if he couldn't go out in the field. Of course we all know he wouldn't like being sidelined from the action like that, but short term he could get by and keep his position.