Membership Services
Member regains medical after heart valve surgery
‘I was a little bit naïve, and AOPA helped me through it.’
Don Hull is an aerospace engineer in Huntsville, Ala. In 2008, Hull’s doctor detected a heart murmur that he believed would be helped with medication.
The following year, the situation was worse and required surgery. At that time, Hull was told his mitral valve could be repaired and did not have to be replaced. Unfortunately, several days after the repair surgery, a second surgery was necessary to totally replace the valve. All of this left Hull with no medical. That was in April 2009.
Although he’d been an AOPA member since 1984, the year he earned his private license, he had not joined AOPA’s Medical Services Program. When Hull was told he would need surgery, he telephoned AOPA to ask about this service and decided to join as he knew he wanted to get his medical back.
“My medical expired on the 31st of March, a week before my surgery. I would have self-declared that I wasn’t able to fly, however,” he says. Now enrolled in AOPA’s Medical Services Program, he was told that AOPA would help him submit a package to the FAA.
“What I submitted was more than 300 pages of my medical record, including 150 pages from the hospital where I had the surgery – it was every entry in my medical record from the day I went in to the day I was discharged,” Hull says. He says he did not submit anything to his AME or to the FAA without talking to AOPA first. “AOPA reviewed every piece of paper,” he says.
Hull says the review period might have added a few extra weeks to the process, but he says it was well worth it in terms of his own peace of mind. He says, “I have heard horror stories of people’s paperwork being hung up for months, and I didn’t want that to happen to me.”
After he submitted his package to the FAA, he heard back once that the agency required four items and he had 30 days to submit them. Hull jokes, “I went into panic mode and called AOPA. I realized that I could supply all four easily – in fact, they already had two of the items.”
At the end of June, Hull says, “AOPA sent me an e-mail saying they had just checked and that I would get my Special Issuance Class III Medical, and sure enough, a week later I got it in the mail.” The special issuance medical means that Hull must pass the medical exam every year instead of every two years.
For Hull, joining AOPA’s Medical Services Program was well worth it. He says, “From the standpoint of accurate advice, AOPA knows what they’re doing. There’s a peace of mind that comes from knowing you have a third party to talk to and to ask questions.”
November 9, 2010
