Anybody with similar experience?
Certainly.
The victim of a vendetta by one particular woman doctor, a graduate, apparently, of some piffling little medical school in Alabama, who works/worked as a senior doctor for the CAA.
It would not be expedient to relate exactly in what low esteem she is held by one or more specialists of my acquaintance. The AMEs in SA would appear to be terrified of the CAA's medical directorate knowing full well, as they do, that racial bias will be applied against them if they go to bat too hard for pilots of a reflective tone of colour.
The only way to head these little fellows off at the pass is to go to your medical clutching a copy of the trace and letter from a recently completer stress ECG/Bruce Protocol. That can be done in the UK for a Class I as well. Blood pressures are monitored throughout the exercise routine and their presentation helps to allay any anomalies usually associated with the mythical whit coat syndrome and otherwise known as short term environmental stress due to job related loss danger. That's exactly the sort of level one's BP starts off at when the fire bell goes off on rotation.
This might all cost a little more than just a Class I ECG but it impresses the muppets at SA CAA and it usually keeps your AME happy because it lets him off the hook as having been responsible for your ECG should you subsequently throw a gasper in the cockpit.
Cardiology is no the only medical facet about which the SA CAA lacks a certain comprehension. The depths of its ignorance extends to urological cancers, prescriptive medication, skin cancer and no doubt, a host of other malaises including age discrimination. Finally and as an edited sign off let me just qualify the use of the word ignorance in the context of the SA CAA medical directorate. I don't refer to lack of knowledge, although that's certainly the case. I mean a slap my forehead inability to accept the findings and reports of consultants and surgeons on the outside without any medical basis or qualification to justify such bias and intransigence.
Last edited by cavortingcheetah; 3rd Apr 2016 at 07:14.