Q: What was your health like before you went to the Gulf War? A: I can't ever remember being sick. I never had a broken bone until I started in athletics..... never had an illness. I remember having colds and having the flu a couple of times, but never like pneumonia or any of the winter type illnesses that would keep you bed bound. I cannot ever remember being bed bound. ............ Q: Were you given any vaccines in preparation for the Gulf War? A: Yeah. When we were deploying -- they had their little boxes of their hyperdermic needles and everything and we'd stand and get shots in each arm or our butt and you move on to the next station and shot some more or shot in your forearm, and then at the end of the line, there was a partition set up for your GG shots, your gamma goblin and several other series of shots.
				Q: What were they? A: I don't know. The only one that I know of that a medic had told me and that was yellow fever. I do remember that shot, but the rest of them --....we were in a hurry and so you didn't have a lot of time to ask and since that time I've come to learn that it wouldn't mattered if I asked anyway, we wouldn't have been told what the shots were. For instance, like anthrax and botulinum,we wouldn't been told what those were. We were not supposed to have knowledge of any shots or anything that they gave us in case we were captured over there, we wouldn't be able to tell me what were inoculated with. Also,I mean these shots were experimental, so of course they're not gonna tell us you know that we're using experimental drugs and even though it's against the Nuremberg Code we're still gonna do it anyway. Q: How did you find this out? A: Through my research over the past six years, I found out. Q: Do you have any information about what kind of vaccines they were? A: Well, I do know speaking to our old battalion commander, -- he has reassured me, and I believe that he would never lie to me.... He told me that our unit did not have anthrax and botulinum, and I believe him. Now he might have been told differently, I don't know. I don't believe people above him. The higher ups over Lt. Colonel, I don't believe..... I think the Pentagon and I think the VA and the National Institute of Health and I think a lot of these people -- oh yeah, the information we have now about the NIH is unbelievable and their collation with General Blank and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. We received those shots and then once we got overseas, three months later, we had to go through it again, and they told us that every three months we would have to get these shots for the duration of the time that we'd be there. I feel like a walking medical experiment in a sense... I know my past, I know my health, and my physical being. They took what I considered a perfectly healthy, all American boy and turned him into a crippled old man. I have illnesses that old people have, I have aches and pains and cramps and headaches and I've never experienced that kind of physical pain before, that kind mental anguish before that I have now. Q: When did you first learn how bad you were ...?? A: When I was 30, I was told you probably won't live to be 40. We don't know what has attacked your body except my very first consult sheet from the VA hospital they stamped on it that I was exposed to chemicals. They found things wrong with me that were very un-normal. I was the first Persian Gulf veteran that they had seen in this hospital and there was only about 13 of us in Michigan at the time that had gone to VA hospitals and I thought great, you know, I mean they don't know what's going on here. I had gone to family doctors, I had gone to bone specialists from referrals from family doctors that they just could not figure what's wrong with me. I mean my knuckles were swollen, my feet looked like toxemia, I couldn't walk, I was crawling everywhere, I mean they had no clue what was going on with me, so they said go to a VA hospital. When I reported to the VA hospital, they looked at me and they said they were amazed I had an enlarged prostate, I had welts all over me, I had rashes, I had -- my -- it was the weirdest thing; while I would talk to the doctors blood would just start seeping out of my skin. There would be no wound, no scratch, no cut, but I -- but the doctor would hand me a Kleenex, I would have blood just running right out of the pores of my skin. They wrote on my medical records that I was exposed to chemicals and it was unclear which chemical... About two weeks ago, my arm, I was sleepin', this is the second time it's happened to me in six years -- my arm just raises up and it's like I can't move it. You know, I'll put it down and it won't go down. My leg, I woke up two days ago ....and I went to get up and my right leg would not move. It was like my right leg was not even part of my body, I couldn't even feel it, it was just totally numb and just there. I couldn't even get up. About a half an hour it straightened out. Q: The war ended. You came home. Could you describe when you started first to feel symptoms and what were your symptoms. A. My mom would notice me -- 'cause we stayed here with my mom and dad when we came up here and my mom would get up for breakfast in the morning and I would be at the table holding my head, like 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. I just had my arms over the head and she would ask me what's wrong, and I'd just tell her, -- I can't stand this headache, my head's gonna explode..there's no words to describe that pain. It was very similar to like an ice pick running right through my eye or like a magician's box where they put the swords through all the different sides of the box, that's what my head was feeling like. I would go to bathroom and I'd walk away and five minutes later I felt like some was still coming out. Diarrhea constantly. I was 30, 40 episodes of diarrhea a day. I mean I was always in the bathroom, running to the bathroom constantly. Everything I ate, everything I smelled, everything I did, I'd just vomiting up and I thought --I honestly believed that it was just I was having a hard time acclimating back to the States. I was used to that weather over there, that smell, that stink, that stench, the nastiness of the Arab countries and I get back over here and there's trees and there's oxygen and pollution, and cars everywhere, and you know maybe I'm just having a hard time with that. It will go away. Well, in that 30 days time I started breaking out with these big red spots all over my body that would get like dry skin on 'em and if I -- the ones that are on my back, if my shirt snagged against them or something, it felt like somebody had touched me with a lighter or a flame or something, just burned, but I got back to Fort Bragg 30 days later and our battalion was coming home and everybody took a leave and I think it was about June -- the end of May or June, or early July -- I can't remember exactly when, but our battalion reformed and went through our command changes and everything and we started our PT back up, our physical training. Every time I would try to run I would violently vomit up. Now I've been ridiculed by a man named Mike Fumento who wrote an article called Gulf Lore Syndrome. I describe my vomit as fluorescent looking, kind of like chem lights that you'd break and the shiny light. I've described it like that to congress and to the press and he's made fun of me saying you know that there's no such thing as fluorescent -- and I mean he's taking it too serious, so I don't care I'm gonna say it anyway. My vomit was a bright orangish-yellow and every time I would try to run -- and I would get delirious and I'd almost pass out and guys would actually have to -- you know, fellow friends and veterans would grab me and take me to the side of the road while I would vomit and spit up this stuff and an ambulance would have to come get me. The medics, Scott Rafferty, I'll never forget this man because he took care of me almost every day that this happened to me. He would pick me up with the humvee ambulance and boom, boom right away, IV's in each arm, and I'd get rushed to Womack Community Hospital on Fort Bragg. This was a daily occurrence. It happened every time I tried to run. I would just violently vomit up this orangish-yellow stuff.........

 
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