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Well, what's there to say? My name is Michael Bradley Jackson, and I was born on December 17th, 1970 in a little bitty town called Dallas, Oregon (population currently about 10,000). I was raised by my grandparents in an even littler town called Perrydale, Oregon, about ten miles from Dallas, and I went to school there for twelve years. I graduated from Perrydale High School in 1989, and after taking the summer off, promptly joined the U.S. Army as a military policeman. After mucking my way through basic and AIT at Ft. McClellan, Alabama, I spent my first two years in the Army in Muenster, Germany doing some stuff that I won't be able to talk about until they declassify it in about 2042 (!) From there, I moved on to Ft. Stewart, Georgia, where I had a blast for about a year and a half, which included a four-month trip to Panama. After that, I parted ways with the active Army for all of about ten months, during which time I tried and failed miserably at being a civilian again. In July, 1994, I re-joined the Army, and spent a three-year stint at Ft. Hood, Texas. While ther, I got to take two lovely trips abroad, first to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to deal with the Cuban migrants, and then later to Bosnia to play babysitter for grown adults. I also made sergeant during that time AND discovered ANIME! I got turned on to Bubble Gum Crisis right before the trip to Bosnia, and have been hooked ever since, in fact. After getting back from Bosnia, I left Hood in 1997 and went back to Germany, this time to Schweinfurt. I spent the next six years there, and, after a trip to Croatia and another to Kosovo (I just can't seem to stay away from the damn Balkans!), I met my wife in 1999. After spending another quiet four years in Schweinfurt, I packed the family up in late 2003 and moved to Ft. Polk, Louisanna and, within five months, was smack in the middle of Afghanistan! I weathered that out (bored out of my mind!) and made it back home in April, 2004. Since then, the wife and I bought a house and moved off post (better than paying rent for on-post housing after they privatized it!) and managed not to get blown away by Hurricane Rita (the unsung menace; nobody seems to have anything but Katrina on their minds). Last August, I was diagnosed with an 'acoustic neuroma', a type of benign brain tumor. True to form, though, me being the kind of person to have bad luck and good luck at the same time, this is one of the most 'friendly' types of tumors you can have. I had two surgeries up at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in October and November of 2005 to correct this, then I underwent radiation treatment from February to March, 2006 to hopefully 'deactivate' the tumor. Unfortunately, that didn't work out quite the way they'd hoped and a few months later, the tumor sharted swelling and caused hydrocephalus., necessetating a hasty trip back to Walter Reed. I had a couple of surgeries up there, including the emplacement of a VP shunt that successfully alleviated the hydrocephalus. After that, I spent a couple of months at the James A. Haley veterans hospital in Tampa, Florida recovering and then came home to Ft. Polk. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the drama; after developing new symptoms, I was advised to have more surgery on the residual mass of the tumor in June, 2007. Basically, I went around the same merry-go-round then as before, Walter Reed to Tampa and then back home again in October, 2007. Since then I've been trying to get things back together and have been facing possible early retirement from the Army. Righ now I've been transfered to a unit here on post called a WTU (Warrior Transition Unit) and am doing my best to remain productive until whatever happens happens. |
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