Some catch, that Catch-22! Of all the challenges to be faced when deciding on a career as a pilot, the most difficult to overcome, once it stands in your way, is the medical one. Danny, you have flown the creme de la creme, the ultimate in piston technology, and moved onto the new white hot heat of technology, the jet turbine. Two very different technologies powering two very different airframes, yet having a common feature, sheer beauty! You mastered them both, but now here is something that cannot be controlled, that leaves one at the mercy of the men in white coats. Once they draw the breath in through their teeth, all hope and ambition can be destroyed at a stroke.
Your problem was a "weak chest". Mine was hay fever. Half way through training the pollen count went through the roof. I reported sick, was given some pills, but the eyes kept streaming and I kept sneezing. Like you I was packed off to CME. I was seen by a number of high ranking doctors, the most junior being a Group Captain. Eventually the "Board" decided that I could continue in training subject to a course of ever increasing doses, both in quantity and potency, of a "soup" of everything that I was deemed to be allergic to. So on a weekly basis I reported to Sick Quarters for yet another fix.
As it happened that year our course was lucky enough to be packed off to the USA for a whistle stop tour of military academies and bases. So fix day found me at West Point where a very dubious Army MO obliged me by injecting yet more of the dollop. Eventually the treatment finished and off again to CME for their decision. No sucking in of breath thankfully, but some timely advice from I think an Air Marshal. "Always remember, once you report sick we have to decide what is to be done with you. It might not be what you wish." That somewhat oblique yet pointed comment stayed with me thereafter so that my only contact with their trade was for the annual medical. Of course that was where the real challenge lay, and could not be avoided. Mess up a simulator session or a check ride and you can make sure to do better next time. Mess up the medical and you are on a hiding to nothing, unless you are Yossarian of course! Some catch.