I'm medically fit!

...or so the FAA says.

I passed my Class II FAA Medical exam today. Which means that I'm technically allowed to fly.

I suppose it makes sense, since the pilot is a single point of failure, but this was a pretty serious physical. They checked:

• height / weight
• distance and closeup vision
• color perception
• focus and eye movement
  
• urine protein and sugar
• heart
• breathing
  
• reflexes
• balance
• hernia
• medical history
• previous prescriptions

I dunno what I expected, honestly, something less "turn your head and cough-y", I guess.

Interestingly, my previous history of migraines was a big deal. The FAA form asked quite a lot of questions along the lines of "Have you ever had any heart disease?", "Have you ever been treated for depression?", "Have you ever has a substance abuse problem?" and "Have you ever had frequent or severe headaches?". I used to get migraine headaches quite often in college and graduate school... so I answered truthfully... "Yes".

Well, apparently there is a whole different scale I was not aware of in defining migraine headaches. It turns out I did not have "severe" headaches at all... but "moderate" ones. Could have fooled me! Anyway, "severe" is defined as prevents all activities. In my case, I would have preferred not to have been doing anything and just gone to bed... but if I had to do something, I could. And that is the definition of "moderate migraines" - inhibits, but does not wholly prevent usual activities.

After a bit of further explanation on the severity and infrequent nature of my headaches the doc cleared me.

So, I'm cleared. Classes start the week of October 8th. I've been reading the books... I'm ready to go.