Armed Services after Thyroid Cancer?

Hey there Burt,

I've done some googling and found the medical entry requirements/exceptions for each.

It would look like his best bet is Navy or Air Force. They will consider someone who has had cancer in their  childhood or as a young adult. The problem being, you need to be classed as cured, and thyroid cancer isn't usually one you're ever classed as cured from and are checked for life for. So he could have an issue there.

Then with the army, they state, pretty much outright, that anyone on long-term medication won't be accepted. Which you can understand because trying to transport medication on manoeuvres or in the field won't be easy. And if anything happened to them, it wouldn't necessarily be easy to get more and meanwhile he'd be getting more and more ill every day and be useless to them, or a burden/danger.

That's all probably information you've already looked up yourself, but I don't think there's any more information here on such a specialist subject I'm sorry to say.

I hope he realises his dream, but it might be wise to perhaps prepare him for the worst and look at what else he might want to do instead. Just in case.

Lass

Xx

Hi, thank you for taking the time to research and reply so quickly, it's such a shame as he's fit as a fiddle and only needs a few tablets each day.  We'll submit a challenge and I'll update in due course as it might assist others in the future... 

Thank you again, 

Burt

We all tend to think of the military as just consisting of soldiers on the front line when there are scores of different roles that people can have - from medics to chefs to musicians in marching bands not to mention all the office work that goes on. I can't imagine that a lot of those non front line roles would be impacted by somebody taking thyroxine.

Also, when you think of all the thousands of people in the military, there MUST be some with underactive thyroids or thyroid disease that develops whilst they are in service and means they have to take thyroxine. So whilst I can see that we wouldn't want the SAS to be anything other than in absolute A1 condition - no drugs of any kind, no glasses, no other aids of any kind - there must be roles your son could do that are compatible with taking a couple of tiny tablets every day.

Definitely it's worth a challenge. I used to be on an international site where several members were US military women. So I wouldn't give up just yet.