Geriaviator, I can but echo Danny's call for you to get yourself 'fit for purpose' ASAP and be back on parade posting your contributions again. Danny seems to have explained the technical procedure to an equivalent Haynes Owners Manual level, so I'm sure that the medics will refer here if at all in any doubt.
Danny:-
"it was no longer the RAF I knew, but a different one with a different spirit. By no means a worse one - but simply different."
Sooner or later I think that everyone who has served comes to that conclusion. I suppose that the Service changes because it has to, indeed if it did not it would become moribund, it's just that we all prefer the familiar rather than to experience change. In my case I didn't feel that so much at the time as I'd only done some 13 years (sorry, get some what in?), but it's certainly the case now that the present RAF is far removed from the one that I inhabited.
Also like you, I was lucky. Having bet everything on my PVR going through (and there were many other possibilities if it hadn't, usually as OC GD Flight at some remote far-flung outpost) I had to find gainful employment in the airlines. I wrote to every appropriate one listed in the annual Airlines of the World edition of Flight International. Most replied noting my application but unfortunately....
I duly left, put the required IR on my CPL for it to become an ATPL, signed on the dole and, being now in Bournemouth in April, looked forward to the prospect of a blissful summer of drawing Giros awaiting developments, while enjoying the beach there. It wasn't to be. Phone rings. "Am I looking for a job? Dan-Air want 2 pilots to start next week on a 1-11 course." He had one of them and if I wanted the other report to the Fleet Manager next day with my log-book. Duly did so, and started Monday at the grandly named Training Centre (a shed on a Horsham industrial estate). Great outfit that I stayed with until its demise over 19 years later.
So I too was lucky, and it is my belief that luck is an essential ingredient in any career. Of course, the Good Lord helps those who help themselves, but the wise leave some room for His help also!