frontline: last battle of the gulf war: veterans: interview with james simpson

Q: Can you give me some examples?

A: We watched him learn to over compensate. He'll double check, triple check things that he has done. He can't remember, he couldn't remember if he had turned off the stove or he would start writing himself notes so he could pick up the kids at school or take them here or take them there. Jim is the most compassionate and understanding and patient man I think I've ever encountered. And it came to a point that he got angry because I was gone. And he's never ever questioned when I had something I had to do, like my grandmother being ill. You know, he came to me and he said "You're neglecting your family." And I knew then that it was obvious he couldn't handle the stress that he was having to deal with as far as taking care of two children and a home and his work. Which is normal for any family.

I was very shocked that he would say that to me, because he was -- he's the type of person who would say "You go and do what you have to do, and we'll be fine." He had managed this household many times before with children, and never had a problem, in fact, sometimes can make it run better than I can. He's a really, a wonderful father. But he found it difficult to be close to the children. He was spending an enormous amount of time staying away from them. I noticed he did not want to have physical contact with them. Then I finally figured out, it was the fear that he was afraid that he was going to make them sick. It was almost like that they had a generic relationship. They would have a verbal relationship but not a physical connection.

Q: So Jim, how long were you sick before -- in the battalion you found out that other men were sick? How long had this gone on?

A: It had probably gone on for about two months. The main thing that I noticed was that I was losing weight and I was losing muscle mass. That was the two key things that I noticed. The other things I had basically attributed to thinking I was just having trouble getting readjusted to being back home. And, like I said, -- we have one of the flavors that we deal with, we call it the fake flu. You feel like you've got the flu, and it has all the symptoms but a fever, and it is not the flue -- that's the reason why we call it that. But there were many times where I thought that I had the flu and I'd miss work, or I couldn't do my side jobs because I thought I had the flu. And then I find out that these other soldiers were having the same thing.

W: They were having anger outbursts too.

A: Yes. Anger outbursts was another big thing. I'm usually -- I won't say I don't have a temper. Yes. I can be a screaming sergeant sometimes, because you don't have the time to sit there and -- now excuse me guys now, listen, and it's like Get your -- in that and do it. I mean, that was, and that's how we survived there, was -- I didn't put up with silliness when we were on the job. You get in there, you do the job, shut up, and I don't want to hear about it until after we get to barracks tonight, then we'll discuss it.

Q: And this was spilling over into your personal --

A: Yes. Now I'm suddenly -- you know -- and I thought, Well, I'm having problems with the fact that I just can't tell people -- and then I see backsides and elbows running and doing it. Where I have kids questioning why they have to do their homework, why they have to have the stereo turned off when they're doing their homework, things like that and

Q: Now, Jim, when did you realize, when -- you were afraid that you were going to pass this illness on to the children. Was this before you thought it was --?

A: No. No, it wasn't until after I started hearing about other soldiers that had these illnesses and their wives coming down with strange things, and even in some cases, some kids coming up with some strange things. That's when I started getting a little nervous about certain contacts with my kids, and I -- we were getting to the point where paranoid of -- No, I drank out of that glass, you leave this glass alone, don't drink our of my glass. No don't -- you know, this is something that I half ate, I'm not sharing my sandwich with you that way. I mean we've got to break it up and hand it to them, we don't --

Q: You weren't telling them though that -- what you thought?

A: Correct. I mean, I did not want to scare my children. I did not want to create a hysteria, but I wanted to be careful.

Q: What do you specifically believe is the cause of your illness?

A: I believe I got into some sort of nerve agent. Whether it was something that we blew up -- I really don't believe it was in any of the SCUDS because the SCUDS that hit, there was too high of a -- too loud of an explosion. Chemicals that are delivered through missiles and so on have a lower level of explosion, otherwise it just destroys whatever organisms or whatever they're trying -- they have in there. I believe it was stuff, things that Hussein had --...And he used in various points. I believe it was on the equipment that came in. This is just the only explanation I can have. Why I have stronger symptoms than some of my soldiers is because I was around the stuff more. We had what was called a sanitary area where they took all this -- all the equipment came in, once it was processed it went in there. I was one of the few people that was allowed in there, and then of course they had to bring in all the war souvenirs, which is another sore point with me. This junk that the Iraqi army had, and everybody had to have their little souvenirs. All these Patten wannabes had to bring their souvenirs down there and so I had to be constantly be going in around that. And that stuff was filthy.

W: Most of the equipment he dealt with was brought in from Kuwait. You know, had been in the war itself and then it was brought to the port for them to sanitize to send back to the United States --

A: Or Germany or wherever.

W: Or wherever. And so it didn't have anything to do with whether they exploded ammunition stuff. That very possibly is one of the ways that these soldiers have been made sick. But in -- it's not in -- the military and the government and the United States people are all looking for a pat answer, that this is the one thing, this is the one thing that is the same for all these soldiers that made them all sick. There is no one answer.

A: Yes. They still use DDT over there. We don't use it here.

W: But we grew up around DDT.

A: Yes. I mean, we used DDT when we were younger, and we didn't have those kind of problems. But, there's also the different types of things --bacteria life that's over there. The oil fires, being around the paint, the silly medications that they threw us on. No, I was not one that got the shots. I was ordered to load my troops up and send them down to get their anthrax shots. We were running a mission, we were running around the clock getting this mission done. We didn't have time to load everybody up and go down there. How I didn't get in trouble for that I don't know. But, we didn't, and my soldiers did not get sent down there. We did have the bromide tablets, some of us took them, some of us don't, I -- at first I was telling everybody, no I didn't take them, then I remember when we turned them in stating, Wow, I've got a lot of these left over. So that meant, yes, I did take some of them. But I believe, and I can't put my finger on it, some word got out somewhere to stop taking them and not take them anymore. And I have talked with other units where some of the soldiers, once they started taking those tablets, were suddenly, they were hitting them really hard. They would get deathly ill immediately. Where others, they just kind of felt like they were floating around.

Q: What kind of a job did you hold before the Gulf.

A: I was a survey crew chief for a surveying engineering firm. We did land surveys. It could be a 700 acre farm. It could be just a market survey in a subdivision. We'd lay out work for subdivisions, septic systems, wire systems. The job entailed a lot of math. Quite a bit of physical effort. You know, you're humping around a lot of heavy equipment. You have to keep very tight notes on everything you do. It has to be turned in. You can't make mistakes. You can stick a building across a property line and then the company's got to buy it. I enjoyed it. I did not consider it a high stress job. I enjoyed it because it got me outdoors. Getting to tramp through the woods and tramp through all these farms. And before that I was in retail security...I have an associate degree in criminology....

W: And he always stayed calm and cool.

A: Yes. And there the only -- the problem was trying to hide the scratches and the bumps and bings from the kids when I came home, because they didn't appreciate seeing -- and that kind of shook them up. But I had seen a whole lot worse than I saw when I was in the Gulf. So that was the reason why I did not put stress to it. And to this day I still get angry when somebody tries to throw PTSD at me. I'm sorry, I've been through a lot worse than I what I went through over there. Over there was a challenge. It was a job. I did my best. I enjoyed it. It was one of the big events in my life. I would do it again. I would have no problem doing it again. I wish I could. But physically I can't do anything like that. And that's frustrating.

But, as far as the stress goes, and this is another time where the anger pops out, when I get in, when I get to talking to a doctor or, even talking with some of the therapists, or nurses, and then they start bringing up, Well, there's this post traumatic stress disorder, it's like, you're going to lose your teeth. Let's drop it. It's already been proven there's something physically wrong, or, my belief is we got into some kind of a nerve agent. I believe it was on the equipment that came in from Kuwait that I handled loading onto the ships. It's just one theory I have. There are so many things that we were subjected to over there it could -- it all ties in -- it could all tie together, and the fact that each soldier -- that no two soldiers had the exact same symptoms either. We had some guys had some really bad rashes. Me, I just had a few. But, I was a land surveyor, I'm out around poison sumac, poison oak, poison ivy. No, I was not allergic to those things before, but once in a while I might get a little bit of a rash, before the Gulf, from something I ran into in the woods. And I had a few small rashes for a week or two. Then I didn't think anything of it because I'm used to -- you know, I probably picked it up in the woods someplace. It went away. It wasn't like what the other guys were having. But, the fatigue, that was the one I could not understand, where it was coming from. I could not sleep well at night. I'd go to sleep, within an hour, 45 minutes, two hours, I was awake again. My legs would ache and it would wake me up. Anything would wake me up. I'd constantly have to get up and go to the restroom, which was one thing I noticed when we were in the Gulf. ...

Q: Tell me about the job you've taken on.

A: Yes. Well, to back up a little bit to get just how we got there. I had known, a friend of mine that owns a filling station. I'd known him before the Gulf. I was a regular customer there and had minor repairs work, repaired, minor repairs done on the vehicle done there. He knew about my job; knew about my being in the reserves, and we got to the point where I was just having too much trouble doing my civilian job. And one day, while on the civilian job I had to shut things down. Had to have them bring me home. I thought I was having a heart attack. I could not focus. I was having trouble breathing. I mean, you're talking about a $35,000.00 piece of equipment here and you can't focus it. Now my eyes were so blurry. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't think. It was a nice day. It wasn't even windy. I didn't have the wind whistling through my eyes, which gets on my nerves, you know. But, and I had these horrific chest pains and I got him to bring me home and Linda took me down to the VA where they tests and they found nothing. Then I got back and that was the time when the employers decided they're going to put me on medical leave because, they knew what I was doing. I mean, I let them know, yes, I am sick. I have to take medication, keep an eye out, you know, this changing things. But I would do the job. The boss would send me out on two jobs and say "Do this one first, and then if you've got time do the second one." Well, I'd go out and do the second one. I'd get things turned around. I had to triple check everything I did. Any kind of computations I did, I did them three times to make sure I didn't -- It was taking me longer to do jobs. When I'd get off work I'd spend an hour, an hour and a half at the office past quitting time, just catching up on my paper work and getting myself geared up to being able to drive home, because I could not drive at this time, I was so fatigued. Well they finally decided, We're sorry but, you need to take some time off. They thought if I would just take two weeks off, three weeks, a month, whatever, and get the proper medical treatment, that I could get back on my feet and come back to work. And said, No. I'm sorry, it's not that way. Right now there is no cure for this. They don't know what to do with -- So after being off for a period of time, Ken just kind of cornered me and say "Why don't you just come work for me a couple of hours each week. Just basically doing some clean up, fill in on the register --"

W: He was trying to keep us from killing each other.

A: Get me out of the house, basically.

W: Because he was now considered disabled by his employer. He was not employable. And the military didn't know what to do with him, and because he could not work, they said they would put him on incapacitation status, which meant that we would get an income, but it also meant that he couldn't do his reserve job any more. Because, by the way the laws and the standards are for the military, if you are on incapacitation you cannot do your reserve job. That means you're totally incapacitated as far as their standards go. Even though the military had never at that point decided he was too sick to do his military job. I mean, he had still been going to drill. He had still been doing the job he'd always been expected to do for the military. But the double standard way, Well, we can put you on incapacitation status and give you a pay check so we can check out what's on, but you can't work as a military soldier in your reserve status any more while we're doing this. So, he didn't only his normal and regular job and employment, bit they took away his part-time job too. So they stripped him of any kind of meaningful way of supporting his family. And then they left him to sit at home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And when you're 40 years old, or 39 years old, that's not natural. And my business and my job was here in the house, so we were together 24 hours a day. And that's not healthy.

A: I couldn't -- when it came to mowing the yard, I'd mow the front yard and that's about as far as we got. And then next day we might mow the middle part, and then the next day we might mow the very back. Then the next day we might weed eat the whole thing, you know.

Q: You were so fatigued that you couldn't eat?

A: Yes.

W: Literally, he gets so fatigued that he cannot eat. And if he has to make, like a sandwich because it's lunchtime or whatever, and I had to cook a meal for lunch. He will literally have to sit here and think about it and save up the energy and strength to where he might remember that he's hungry and needed to eat, and then he'll get up and make a sandwich, which could turn into a major event, because probably his hands aren't functioning at the time and his brain's not working with it, so it can be quite a challenge watching him make a peanut butter and honey sandwich. But he literally lives on things that he can make simply. Anything that is complicated -- he was always a good cook and always did part of the cooking in the house because of my working and going to school and one thing and another, and it got to the point where the kids were begging him, please don't cook.

W: I had my business here and my children were in middle school and high school and they had activities, and we were in the time of our life where we were busy, but he couldn't keep up, and he was in the way. Honestly, he was in the way. He was either taking a nap when we needed to be doing something, or he was sitting here like a vegetable, trying to wake up, drinking coffee at the table when we're trying to do other things, or cook, or function, or he would be wandering through the house aimlessly, or fall down on the floor because his legs gave out, and I would have clients in the other room doing hair, and they would hear this horrible crash, and the kids would come through and they'd get upset because dad's laying on the floor, and they want me to stop and they want me to go take care of it. They want me to go pick him up, and it's like, he'll be alright, and when his legs start working again he'll get up. And if he doesn't then I'll help him. But I couldn't run. I could not be everything for him. I could not do everything for him. If we take that away from him, then he's got nothing.

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Q: Can you give me some examples?

A: We watched him learn to over compensate. He'll double check, triple check things that he has done. He can't remember, he couldn't remember if he had turned off the stove or he would start writing himself notes so he could pick up the kids at school or take them here or take them there. Jim is the most compassionate and understanding and patient man I think I've ever encountered. And it came to a point that he got angry because I was gone. And he's never ever questioned when I had something I had to do, like my grandmother being ill. You know, he came to me and he said "You're neglecting your family." And I knew then that it was obvious he couldn't handle the stress that he was having to deal with as far as taking care of two children and a home and his work. Which is normal for any family.

I was very shocked that he would say that to me, because he was -- he's the type of person who would say "You go and do what you have to do, and we'll be fine." He had managed this household many times before with children, and never had a problem, in fact, sometimes can make it run better than I can. He's a really, a wonderful father. But he found it difficult to be close to the children. He was spending an enormous amount of time staying away from them. I noticed he did not want to have physical contact with them. Then I finally figured out, it was the fear that he was afraid that he was going to make them sick. It was almost like that they had a generic relationship. They would have a verbal relationship but not a physical connection.

Q: So Jim, how long were you sick before -- in the battalion you found out that other men were sick? How long had this gone on?

A: It had probably gone on for about two months. The main thing that I noticed was that I was losing weight and I was losing muscle mass. That was the two key things that I noticed. The other things I had basically attributed to thinking I was just having trouble getting readjusted to being back home. And, like I said, -- we have one of the flavors that we deal with, we call it the fake flu. You feel like you've got the flu, and it has all the symptoms but a fever, and it is not the flue -- that's the reason why we call it that. But there were many times where I thought that I had the flu and I'd miss work, or I couldn't do my side jobs because I thought I had the flu. And then I find out that these other soldiers were having the same thing.

W: They were having anger outbursts too.

A: Yes. Anger outbursts was another big thing. I'm usually -- I won't say I don't have a temper. Yes. I can be a screaming sergeant sometimes, because you don't have the time to sit there and -- now excuse me guys now, listen, and it's like Get your -- in that and do it. I mean, that was, and that's how we survived there, was -- I didn't put up with silliness when we were on the job. You get in there, you do the job, shut up, and I don't want to hear about it until after we get to barracks tonight, then we'll discuss it.

Q: And this was spilling over into your personal --

A: Yes. Now I'm suddenly -- you know -- and I thought, Well, I'm having problems with the fact that I just can't tell people -- and then I see backsides and elbows running and doing it. Where I have kids questioning why they have to do their homework, why they have to have the stereo turned off when they're doing their homework, things like that and

Q: Now, Jim, when did you realize, when -- you were afraid that you were going to pass this illness on to the children. Was this before you thought it was --?

A: No. No, it wasn't until after I started hearing about other soldiers that had these illnesses and their wives coming down with strange things, and even in some cases, some kids coming up with some strange things. That's when I started getting a little nervous about certain contacts with my kids, and I -- we were getting to the point where paranoid of -- No, I drank out of that glass, you leave this glass alone, don't drink our of my glass. No don't -- you know, this is something that I half ate, I'm not sharing my sandwich with you that way. I mean we've got to break it up and hand it to them, we don't --

Q: You weren't telling them though that -- what you thought?

A: Correct. I mean, I did not want to scare my children. I did not want to create a hysteria, but I wanted to be careful.

Q: What do you specifically believe is the cause of your illness?

A: I believe I got into some sort of nerve agent. Whether it was something that we blew up -- I really don't believe it was in any of the SCUDS because the SCUDS that hit, there was too high of a -- too loud of an explosion. Chemicals that are delivered through missiles and so on have a lower level of explosion, otherwise it just destroys whatever organisms or whatever they're trying -- they have in there. I believe it was stuff, things that Hussein had --...And he used in various points. I believe it was on the equipment that came in. This is just the only explanation I can have. Why I have stronger symptoms than some of my soldiers is because I was around the stuff more. We had what was called a sanitary area where they took all this -- all the equipment came in, once it was processed it went in there. I was one of the few people that was allowed in there, and then of course they had to bring in all the war souvenirs, which is another sore point with me. This junk that the Iraqi army had, and everybody had to have their little souvenirs. All these Patten wannabes had to bring their souvenirs down there and so I had to be constantly be going in around that. And that stuff was filthy.

W: Most of the equipment he dealt with was brought in from Kuwait. You know, had been in the war itself and then it was brought to the port for them to sanitize to send back to the United States --

A: Or Germany or wherever.

W: Or wherever. And so it didn't have anything to do with whether they exploded ammunition stuff. That very possibly is one of the ways that these soldiers have been made sick. But in -- it's not in -- the military and the government and the United States people are all looking for a pat answer, that this is the one thing, this is the one thing that is the same for all these soldiers that made them all sick. There is no one answer.

A: Yes. They still use DDT over there. We don't use it here.

W: But we grew up around DDT.

A: Yes. I mean, we used DDT when we were younger, and we didn't have those kind of problems. But, there's also the different types of things --bacteria life that's over there. The oil fires, being around the paint, the silly medications that they threw us on. No, I was not one that got the shots. I was ordered to load my troops up and send them down to get their anthrax shots. We were running a mission, we were running around the clock getting this mission done. We didn't have time to load everybody up and go down there. How I didn't get in trouble for that I don't know. But, we didn't, and my soldiers did not get sent down there. We did have the bromide tablets, some of us took them, some of us don't, I -- at first I was telling everybody, no I didn't take them, then I remember when we turned them in stating, Wow, I've got a lot of these left over. So that meant, yes, I did take some of them. But I believe, and I can't put my finger on it, some word got out somewhere to stop taking them and not take them anymore. And I have talked with other units where some of the soldiers, once they started taking those tablets, were suddenly, they were hitting them really hard. They would get deathly ill immediately. Where others, they just kind of felt like they were floating around.

Q: What kind of a job did you hold before the Gulf.

A: I was a survey crew chief for a surveying engineering firm. We did land surveys. It could be a 700 acre farm. It could be just a market survey in a subdivision. We'd lay out work for subdivisions, septic systems, wire systems. The job entailed a lot of math. Quite a bit of physical effort. You know, you're humping around a lot of heavy equipment. You have to keep very tight notes on everything you do. It has to be turned in. You can't make mistakes. You can stick a building across a property line and then the company's got to buy it. I enjoyed it. I did not consider it a high stress job. I enjoyed it because it got me outdoors. Getting to tramp through the woods and tramp through all these farms. And before that I was in retail security...I have an associate degree in criminology....

W: And he always stayed calm and cool.

A: Yes. And there the only -- the problem was trying to hide the scratches and the bumps and bings from the kids when I came home, because they didn't appreciate seeing -- and that kind of shook them up. But I had seen a whole lot worse than I saw when I was in the Gulf. So that was the reason why I did not put stress to it. And to this day I still get angry when somebody tries to throw PTSD at me. I'm sorry, I've been through a lot worse than I what I went through over there. Over there was a challenge. It was a job. I did my best. I enjoyed it. It was one of the big events in my life. I would do it again. I would have no problem doing it again. I wish I could. But physically I can't do anything like that. And that's frustrating.

But, as far as the stress goes, and this is another time where the anger pops out, when I get in, when I get to talking to a doctor or, even talking with some of the therapists, or nurses, and then they start bringing up, Well, there's this post traumatic stress disorder, it's like, you're going to lose your teeth. Let's drop it. It's already been proven there's something physically wrong, or, my belief is we got into some kind of a nerve agent. I believe it was on the equipment that came in from Kuwait that I handled loading onto the ships. It's just one theory I have. There are so many things that we were subjected to over there it could -- it all ties in -- it could all tie together, and the fact that each soldier -- that no two soldiers had the exact same symptoms either. We had some guys had some really bad rashes. Me, I just had a few. But, I was a land surveyor, I'm out around poison sumac, poison oak, poison ivy. No, I was not allergic to those things before, but once in a while I might get a little bit of a rash, before the Gulf, from something I ran into in the woods. And I had a few small rashes for a week or two. Then I didn't think anything of it because I'm used to -- you know, I probably picked it up in the woods someplace. It went away. It wasn't like what the other guys were having. But, the fatigue, that was the one I could not understand, where it was coming from. I could not sleep well at night. I'd go to sleep, within an hour, 45 minutes, two hours, I was awake again. My legs would ache and it would wake me up. Anything would wake me up. I'd constantly have to get up and go to the restroom, which was one thing I noticed when we were in the Gulf. ...

Q: Tell me about the job you've taken on.

A: Yes. Well, to back up a little bit to get just how we got there. I had known, a friend of mine that owns a filling station. I'd known him before the Gulf. I was a regular customer there and had minor repairs work, repaired, minor repairs done on the vehicle done there. He knew about my job; knew about my being in the reserves, and we got to the point where I was just having too much trouble doing my civilian job. And one day, while on the civilian job I had to shut things down. Had to have them bring me home. I thought I was having a heart attack. I could not focus. I was having trouble breathing. I mean, you're talking about a $35,000.00 piece of equipment here and you can't focus it. Now my eyes were so blurry. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't think. It was a nice day. It wasn't even windy. I didn't have the wind whistling through my eyes, which gets on my nerves, you know. But, and I had these horrific chest pains and I got him to bring me home and Linda took me down to the VA where they tests and they found nothing. Then I got back and that was the time when the employers decided they're going to put me on medical leave because, they knew what I was doing. I mean, I let them know, yes, I am sick. I have to take medication, keep an eye out, you know, this changing things. But I would do the job. The boss would send me out on two jobs and say "Do this one first, and then if you've got time do the second one." Well, I'd go out and do the second one. I'd get things turned around. I had to triple check everything I did. Any kind of computations I did, I did them three times to make sure I didn't -- It was taking me longer to do jobs. When I'd get off work I'd spend an hour, an hour and a half at the office past quitting time, just catching up on my paper work and getting myself geared up to being able to drive home, because I could not drive at this time, I was so fatigued. Well they finally decided, We're sorry but, you need to take some time off. They thought if I would just take two weeks off, three weeks, a month, whatever, and get the proper medical treatment, that I could get back on my feet and come back to work. And said, No. I'm sorry, it's not that way. Right now there is no cure for this. They don't know what to do with -- So after being off for a period of time, Ken just kind of cornered me and say "Why don't you just come work for me a couple of hours each week. Just basically doing some clean up, fill in on the register --"

W: He was trying to keep us from killing each other.

A: Get me out of the house, basically.

W: Because he was now considered disabled by his employer. He was not employable. And the military didn't know what to do with him, and because he could not work, they said they would put him on incapacitation status, which meant that we would get an income, but it also meant that he couldn't do his reserve job any more. Because, by the way the laws and the standards are for the military, if you are on incapacitation you cannot do your reserve job. That means you're totally incapacitated as far as their standards go. Even though the military had never at that point decided he was too sick to do his military job. I mean, he had still been going to drill. He had still been doing the job he'd always been expected to do for the military. But the double standard way, Well, we can put you on incapacitation status and give you a pay check so we can check out what's on, but you can't work as a military soldier in your reserve status any more while we're doing this. So, he didn't only his normal and regular job and employment, bit they took away his part-time job too. So they stripped him of any kind of meaningful way of supporting his family. And then they left him to sit at home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And when you're 40 years old, or 39 years old, that's not natural. And my business and my job was here in the house, so we were together 24 hours a day. And that's not healthy.

A: I couldn't -- when it came to mowing the yard, I'd mow the front yard and that's about as far as we got. And then next day we might mow the middle part, and then the next day we might mow the very back. Then the next day we might weed eat the whole thing, you know.

Q: You were so fatigued that you couldn't eat?

A: Yes.

W: Literally, he gets so fatigued that he cannot eat. And if he has to make, like a sandwich because it's lunchtime or whatever, and I had to cook a meal for lunch. He will literally have to sit here and think about it and save up the energy and strength to where he might remember that he's hungry and needed to eat, and then he'll get up and make a sandwich, which could turn into a major event, because probably his hands aren't functioning at the time and his brain's not working with it, so it can be quite a challenge watching him make a peanut butter and honey sandwich. But he literally lives on things that he can make simply. Anything that is complicated -- he was always a good cook and always did part of the cooking in the house because of my working and going to school and one thing and another, and it got to the point where the kids were begging him, please don't cook.

W: I had my business here and my children were in middle school and high school and they had activities, and we were in the time of our life where we were busy, but he couldn't keep up, and he was in the way. Honestly, he was in the way. He was either taking a nap when we needed to be doing something, or he was sitting here like a vegetable, trying to wake up, drinking coffee at the table when we're trying to do other things, or cook, or function, or he would be wandering through the house aimlessly, or fall down on the floor because his legs gave out, and I would have clients in the other room doing hair, and they would hear this horrible crash, and the kids would come through and they'd get upset because dad's laying on the floor, and they want me to stop and they want me to go take care of it. They want me to go pick him up, and it's like, he'll be alright, and when his legs start working again he'll get up. And if he doesn't then I'll help him. But I couldn't run. I could not be everything for him. I could not do everything for him. If we take that away from him, then he's got nothing.

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