A: Well, at this point, the symptoms and -- I still hadn't had a clear defined diagnosis except for the stomach viral infection. We came up here, we moved back to Niles and we lived here with my parents for about ten months until -- I was remodeling their second house -[cough]- 'scuse me -- like wallpapering and cleaning up the yard and stuff. My parents own another house and it took me about ten months to get that ready to move back into the way we wanted it done.

Q: Wait, just one second. So you were doing this when you were sick--How was that?

A: At this time, I was only having headaches and nausea and diarrhea. I wasn't having the chemical sensitivity yet, I wasn't having the forgetfulness, the mood swings. I didn't experience any of this yet. Just four or five basic symptoms that hung in there with me and so we moved into the house and then what we wanted to do is open up our own little restaurant and in South Bend we opened up a little tiny food joint, I mean just a small one inside of a bar. A friend of mine owned a bar and she had a kitchen that was inactive and she said "would you like to have the business?", and sure, you know, it's free, we've never done anything like this before, but let's do it and surprisingly enough in four days we earned our first dollar profit, and we did well.

We were making between $200-$400 a night sometimes, and we did very well for just the two of us and I had gone out and bought a new pair of tennis shoes and -- 'cause I was on my feet a lot and about three weeks after I'd boughten those shoes my feet started hurting really, really bad, like needles, and I thought well, it's just the shoes. You know, maybe it's just a cheap pair of shoes or something, I'll go out and buy a newer pair. I went and bought two new pairs of shoes and my feet only got worse, and one morning I woke up and this knuckle right here and -- let's see, it was -- I'm trying to remember, it was my right hand, it was this knuckle right here. These were outsized, but this one right here swelled up like a golf ball. I mean I just woke up one morning and my hand was like this and this knuckle was like that, and I -- I mean I'm freakin' now, I'm thinking what the hell is wrong with my hand here.

So I called my family doctor, right away he got me in, he sent me for x-rays, we came back and he couldn't figure out. He said "I see nothing in these x-rays that should be making your knuckle do this." So he sent me to a man who was a bone specialist here in South Bend and I went to him, and this man was amazed. I mean he just kept looking at my knuckle. He's like "oh, my God", you know, "I don't see anything like this unless it's a break usually." So he again sent me out for more x-rays, different views, different machines or something, I don't know what he did differently, but it was -- his film was different than what the other doctor had, and again, he could not see anything in the x-rays that would cause this.

So he gave me five cortisone shots in one knuckle and he said come back in about three weeks and we'll check the swelling. I didn't even make it to three weeks. These other two knuckles here swelled up just like it and then my feet --

My feet had swelled like elephantitis, black, blue and purple. I couldn't walk on 'em. If I touched my feet to the floor just getting out of bed just to touch my feet on the floor, it felt like I was standing in hot fire. So I would have to crawl from room to room. I'd have to crawl everywhere and obviously the doctors didn't know what was wrong with me, they were definitely not going to do anymore cortisone because they thought that helped spread it.

So what they did is the suggested I go a VA hospital, and that's when I went to the VA, but now at this point I'm scared. You know, now for the first time in this -- dealing with these symptoms and these illnesses I am scared to death. My feet, I couldn't put shoes on because I didn't have any to fit, my feet were so swollen. I had -- Kim and I had just had a son in May of '92, so he was just a couple of months old. I couldn't work our grill anymore, our restaurant, and she couldn't do it alone. I mean the demand for our food was so high there was no way she could have done it alone and we really, at that point, didn't want to hire somebody because we were having to use this money for medical care and we eventually had to close down the grill and Kim, my wife at the time, she got a job at an RV industry place converting vans and I stayed home with the kids. Now our daughter at this point was 2 years old and our son was just a couple of months old and I refused -- I refused to let people help me in a sense. I guess airborne pride or male ego, I don't know, but I would literally lay in bed all day long until my son needed me or my daughter and I would crawl out of bed, and I would crawl to his crib, with my one good hand, 'cause my right hand was pretty much worthless and it was bent over like this, I would lift myself up to his crib and I'd snatch him like a monkey. I mean I would grab him and I'd hold him and I'd crawl to the refrigerator and I would get up and I'd open the refrigerator and I'd get his formula out and I'd get his formula and I'd crawl over or scoot over to the microwave and -- I mean that's how I took care of my son.

Until there was days that I just couldn't wake up. I mean I would just -- I'd hear them crying or my parents would be calling and I would wake up and I would go in and check on him, but I would -- I'd fall asleep. I mean I'm holding my son on the couch feeding him and I'd fall asleep. I was never so ill that I couldn't take care of them, I was just ill enough that I wasn't comfortable with the way I was taking care of them. My dad would come over sometimes and actually pick me up out of bed and carry me, like when I was child, to the couch and lay me down, or my aunt and my dad would come over and watch the kids while I was allowed to sleep all day.

I didn't know what was going on. I mean I didn't want to be awake, I didn't want to move. If I just moved a shoulder or if I reached to scratch something, it was just so much pain. My knee swelled up, my feet were swollen still, but then what happened to my feet is I started getting areas in my feet that were swollen like one ankle joint would swell and then I would get like a -- what looked like a vein running down my foot would swell, but it wasn't a vein, it was just an area that would swell up real bad.

My vision -- it was getting to where I couldn't focus on things. I would see things and I would think that they were there -- not like I was having a mirage or anything, but like I'd swear I saw my keys laying there, but they wasn't laying there, or I would look at my keys and not see them sitting there. I don't know what it was, if it was an attention problem or what, but I was -- I just didn't trust my own eyesight anymore and then driving -- I -- a friend of mine lived about six miles away and I've driven to this man's house a thousand times or more. I got totally lost coming home from his lost.

I love to drive....but I know it was getting bad. My body was still on a fast track so I would drive 70, 80 miles an hour and it feel 40 or 50 miles an hour to me at the time. I didn't realize I was going that fast because it seemed slower to me. Sometimes now when I walk, even though my feet hurt real bad, I walk faster than people that I walk with actually because it doesn't feel like it's that fast to me. It feels much slower.

I'd get lost just driving from my house to here a couple miles away I would get lost. I mean I would totally just have to ask Kim. I don't even remember the street I'm on, or I don't remember where I'm going I'd be on a road and I'd totally forget where I was going. .....it was to the point where I couldn't drive alone. People were scared to ride with me because I was driving so fast. I've never given up driving, but I've slowed it way down. I'm more particular and careful-- it was incidents like that that got me start realizing it's getting worse, it's getting worse.

Then I started having mood swings. Violent mood swings. For instance, I remember one incident I was trying to use a salt shaker and I can't remember if it was humid or if the salt shaker got wet or whatever, but the salt clumped up in it and just that little -- 'cause I couldn't get salt on my food I threw it. I mean just, boom, I threw it. I have hit walls. These -- it's a rage that comes upon me real quick and then is gone just as fast and I don't even remember it, I don't remember what made me angry, I don't remember, you know, what actions I took. Never physically violent. I mean I've never beaten anybody, I've never beaten my wife, I spanked my son one time. I do remember spanking my son one time under one of these fits and as I snapped out of it, I immediately called Dr. Murphy in Washington, DC and told her something is wrong. You know, I am realizing I cannot control this anymore and she immediately put me in a hospital in Michigan and ran a few tests, but the Michigan hospital screwed up and they discharged me before I everything was done -- but, I mean that's how I progressively watched this. When I felt each symptom got to a point where I couldn't control it anymore, I was on the phone with Dr. Murphy or some hospital or some doctor saying, you know, I'm realizing this now, you guys gotta do something about it.

Q: Were you having anymore symptoms?

A: Kim was having a problem with burning semen and a lot of gynecological problems, yeast infections. Wherever my semen would land on her skin it would leave a rash. I mean like if -- I don't want to seem too graphic, but we did not want to have another child, okay. Birth control pills were not very healthy for Kim, we did the condom thing and all that and that was a bad experience, you know, at that time and we didn't know that there was burning semen problem. Kim just always had this burning after we would consummate our marriage and there was times that, you know, you would draw and ejaculate and if it landed like in an S shape or something, that's a red mark she would have on her skin. It would be -- it was really wild. Now I've heard -- I've heard Dale Cooper from Soldier of Fortune write it -- he explained it like -- he said we said it was like napalm, we've never said it was napalm. Napalm was a whole different thing compared to semen so I don't even know why he made that comparison 'cause we never did, but it was the strangest thing. I mean wherever it landed on her stomach or her thigh, or if it landed on her arm or hand or something, it left a red patch there and she was constantly having problems and then she was diagnosed with having tumors and cysts on her uterus which is -- if you want we can get into that whole thing at Walter Reed, but that was -- that was a prominent symptom, the forgetfulness, the mood swings, the eyes, I had no strength, I couldn't open up a mayonnaise jar or a pop with those plastic caps that you have to snap that little ring around it. I couldn't open those. I would either have to put it in the crook of my arm and open it that way or have somebody do it for me. When I drive, if I try to shift gears, it felt like somebody was running a needle right through the palm of my hand so I had to go to an automatic car after that. You know, I mean I've done everything that I could possibly do to adjust to this because it has never adjusted to me. So I've had to adapt and overcome it -- you know with it other than it adapting to me.

Q: Let's talk some more about your wife's symptoms more.... What was going on with her?

A: Well, she had started to have all these female problems, the infections, the burning, the irregular menstrual cycles. Sometimes her menstrual cycles was like tar. It would be a real dark, muddy, blood looking color like a -- I mean just a purple. I mean not a blood looking color, it didn't look like blood, it looked like a thin tar. It was blackish color. It was terrible when she would have these things and her menstrual cycles were so irregular sometimes she'd be on her period for maybe a day or two and two or three days later she'd start up another one for maybe two weeks, and it was like his throughout the year, all the time, and she started getting real bad lumps in her breast. These lumps would grow. Not just a small lump that would stay small, they would grow and then they would shrink again and sometimes they would grow so big that she would wear three different bra sizes. You could actually watch her breasts get bigger from these lumps and then when they'd shrink her breasts would get smaller. Kim's a very flat-chested woman, she didn't have breasts to begin with, but when these lumps would -- I mean it looked like she had breasts when these lumps got bigger and -- you know, that we watched very closely. Family doctor again, you know, everything he could do, could not figure out. He even wrote up a consult sheet to the Pentagon saying that he believes that her illnesses were do to a connection with me somehow.

Skin would peel in between her fingers. It was really weird. It wasn't like a rash as much as it was -- she would get like these little white pimple looking bumps in between her fingers and if she scratched 'em, they would turn into like -- I don't know what to call it, but it was like her skin was just peeling away in between of her -- in between her fingers, and it was something that she -- if she left alone, I mean, she wouldn't peel 'em, and it didn't go down into her hand or onto her arm anything, it was just always right in between her fingers, and she -- on the palm of her hands, she would get these red dots all over her and on her thighs, her butt, her back, and her breasts, the same as me, we would get the same rashes. The same red dots, the same rashes and probably the most prominent symptom that she had was she had developed a soft spot in the back of her skull that was about this big around when she first noticed it, and our family doctor took x-rays of it and you know this is a phenomenon he thought -- you know why is the skull softening and thinning here. Well, over a short one-year period, two more spots had appeared on the sides of her head that was also caving in and very thin.

That's when Ross Perot got involved with this and Ross Perot started sending her to neurologists, and bone specialists, and head doctors, and all kinds of things -- about $15,000 worth of x-rays and medical work-ups. They had discovered that bone in her skull was thinning almost to like paper in these areas. Now the one in the back of her head over a two-year period had gotten to where you could place your whole hand right into the dip of her skull. It was kinda like -- you know them cubes that are not perfect, they've got like dips and shapes and you can roll 'em and they'll land on the flat spot and stay there? That's what her head was like. Over a period of four years, she received five total spots and there was the beginning of two more smaller ones that we thought, but you know, we haven't been able to check on those.

Q: One other thing about your own symptoms--Susan mentioned you had a problem with mosquitoes?

A: This is funny. Mosquitoes die on me. The mosquitoes that bite me, die, and I've had so many people watch this -- I've invited people over to watch it. You know, come on over here and we'll see if these mosquitoes bites me, and I will actually sit out without a shirt on, try to get these mosquitoes to bite me, and if they'd bite me, they'd die. Or if they even land on me enough to taste me, or whatever, they'll hurry up and fly away, but if they are on me long enough to suck blood, they die right on the spot.

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