A friend/softball teammate recently left for Marine Corps basic training*. After a recent game we were talking about him, wondering how he was faring. Someone mentioned his propensity for crashing into fences and frequent diving/sliding led him to popping ibuprofen frequently during and after ballgames. None of us have been through basic, so that got us to wondering - do you have ready access to aspirin/tylenol/etc or is the trainee expected to tough it out?
Beyond that, lets say someone is 2/3 of the way through basic and breaks a collarbone. Does he/she have to leave and then start all over again? What about something smaller, like a busted finger or severe muscle pull, etc?
*for the curious - he’s in San Diego, actually I think he’s finished now, and he is looking to become an MP, which I guess means he goes to MP school somewhere else.
I can not speak directly for the Marines, my experience is with the Army. We had access to a small PX and could buy over the counter medications. Of course someone tried to kill themselves with Tylenol so it’s possible they could have put more restrictions on it since then. There weren’t any when I was there. As to being recycled it depends on what part of training you are in. In Basic you couldn’t go on and graduate until you passed the PT test which was near the end. A lot of the other stuff was not mandatory for graduation. If you got injured and could not take a PT test then you were put on medical hold. Instead of starting from the beginning they would place you in another unit that was around the same point in training as when you left. The only time you would get recycled back to the beginning would be if you were injured near the beginning of training. This was not the case with other types of training. I remember getting very sick during PLDC (primary leadership development course). I had to beg to stay in because I didn’t want to have to go through the whole thing again. In that case there wasn’t multiple courses going on at the same time so someone couldn’t just jump into the middle of it. In basic there is a new class starting every week.