My name is Michelle and I'm a survivor, so far, of military service at the place 60 Minutes called the most toxic place on the planet, Fort McClellan, Alabama. Currently legislation is pending in congress which would force the VA to provide care and compensation to thousands of people like me who, in the line of military duty, were exposed to PCBs, Agent Orange, Heavy Metals, Nerve Gases, Dioxin, Mustard Gas and an exhaustive list of Experimental and Bio-chemical Agents and Radiation. As things stand today that legislation has a 1-3% chance of passing our lovely obstructionist House of Reprehensibles--I mean Represntatives (of lobbyists).
THREE members of the majority party are co-sponsors of our legislation, HR 411 The Fort McClellan Health Registry Act.
It's all kind of surreal too, because I imagine just about anyone reading this grew up either during the last gasps of the cold war, doing air raid drills with fellow students or with the nightmare images of Chernobyl floating in their imagination. Hiroshima and Nagasaki scarred the collective psyche of all humans on the planet. No one can see an image of a mushroom cloud without thinking of the horrible cost and lasting legacy of genetic damage done to the people of Japan. My personal childhood haunt is Vietnam and the carnage on the nightly news that we somehow accepted as normal. Images of defoliated jungles, mangled young soldiers and Marines, napalmed children trying to outrun the unquenchable flames consuming their tiny, tortured bodies, and the atrocity filled personal photo collections of the most psychologically damaged vets chased me throughout my "innocent" years.
More current disasters, like the nuclear power plant damaged by the 2010 tsunami, which led to its having to be paved over to prevent further escape of radioactive waste, have something in common with Fort McClellan. Much of it had to be paved over too. That's sad because McClellan was built in a gorgeous setting. Our long march was hell in a way, but it was so pretty it was almost worth it.Even though it was rainy season when I was there and we kept sliding down hill through the mud and at night little critters kept burrowing into our shelter-half's (and anywhere else warm they could find). We were too dog tired to care--even bug-o-phobe me. The forest had a tropical jungle kind of quality, and it's a true shame it was destroyed by chemicals, bio-toxins and radiation
The government tried to reclaim the area and make it a national preserve, but the numbers were SO FAR off the charts as far as the variety of toxins (and those were just the ones they could identify) and the levels of each in the ground, air AND water that they just gave up and posted it as a the most strict of NO TRESPASSING zones short of posting armed guards 24/7 in hazard suits, which is actually what they should do because some IDIOTS think it's funny to defy the warnings even though there's God alone knows what aside from the KNOWN oxidized uranium buried near the rifle range, so we all got a good dose of that--especially those who qualified expert and won the prize of firing the M60 and then got to stay all weekend and clean them with the "real" soldiers in their protective gear with what I now realize were RADIATION INDICATORS.
People who must go there are told not to scuff their shoes on the ground or to chew gum or touch the leaves on trees or folliage. Some fools brag that they "go there all the time with their dogs" but what they don't understand is that these toxins can take years, even decades to express themselves, and in some cases, as I suspect was the case with me, something catastrophic like a massive drug overdose delivered by a careless anesthesiologist so stresses all the body's compensatory mechanisms, which are already in a state of dysfunction, that a kind of cascading series of system failures begins and that is what sets off end stage McClellan Syndrome. What I am basically saying is that anyone who has spent any time at Fort McClellan, even if they feel well now, is a ticking time bomb. I'll get into some other theories about hows and whys in future posts too, and if I suddenly disappear you'll know I was on to something. Sorry, dark humor is my favorite coping mechanism. I really haven't seen any black helicopters over my house...yet...
What is so ironic is that I felt such great pity for all the victims of all these wars and disasters, along with all other disasters and wars, and went on about a life so full of unlikely happenstance that if I tried to sell it as an autobiography no one would believe it. Little did I know that what I should have been feeling was empathy, because I had a major disaster going on not only in my own body, but had already passed it on to at least one of my sons, and it had already cost me past pregnancies and any futures ones by forcing me to have a hysterectomy at an exceedingly young age for adenomyosis, something caused by PCB exposure. I've written much about most of this, and more, under a pseudonym, but things get a bit more real when one writes under one's own name for all the world to see.
A bit about me. Aside from being an Army vet, first child and typically eager to please over-achiever, I am an RN, BSN and divorced mom of two sons I raised on my own with no help at all, which was fine because I got to do things my way and they turned out quite well if I do say so myself. Whether that is because of or despite me I cannot say, but we get along better than most parents and grown children, and for that I am truly grateful. My parents were what my late brother called "benignly neglectful" toward me and my children and I agree with half of that statement...all because I married someone who did not meet their lofty standards. WHAT A JOKE given how things turned out. At least he didn't kill me! I accepted the full cost of raising my sons with zero help from anyone aside from the kindness of co-workers who twice took up a collection for me for groceries when I had surgery. I never played "ex games" with my former husband because I have seen the harm that does to children and to the "adults" involved in that kind of asinine "you disappointed me so I'm going to make your life a living hell and use your children to do so" behavior. It's why my brother is dead. Both my parents are gone too, and I am not allowed to see my brother's children and so when I say I did it alone I mean I did it alone alone. Now my older son is helping care for me and we share expenses, but that is temporary. I won't watch him give up his life for me. That is a parent's job, not a child's.
I decided to call this blog Nurse McToxic. Yeah, I know, no points for originality, but since I hope to be a source of information for fellow McClellan vets I want to be fairly easy to find, and since I'm not willing to pay the google gods oodles of money on my noodle budget, Nurse McToxic it is.
Warning: I am a political animal, and not of the party most people inaccurately associate with the best interests of those who have served. I am a Democrat--by learning, not birth. Prior to my enlightenment I listened to the same BS as every other person in rural areas or small to mid-sized communities in fly over country. "Republicans are pro-farmer, republicans are pro-military, republicans want small government, republicans are pro-small business (BULL CRAP they are!)." Then along came the Internet, and with it the light of TRUTH! News without bias! What a wondrous thing! News not tailored to please sponsors or corporate owners; news that can be checked against documents like bill sponsorship and co-sponsorship and voting records at the Library of Congress!
I was delighted, but I also had to have the courage to face up to the fact that I had been wrong. For years I had been wrong, and I had based my voting on inaccurate myths and legends rather than facts. People have no excuse to do that now. If you want to know which party is pro-veteran, take a look at how many republicans are cosponsoring OUR legislation (3 of 17) vs how many republicans are supporting mandatory invasive transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking reproductive health care. Then recall that it was Democrat Tom Daschle who won, after many long years of battling, VA care and compensation for Vietnam Veterans and their families. That said, I don't have to agree with someone politically to like or respect them.
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One party is all talk and one party is all action. The Democrats are all action when it comes to members of the military and veterans. Republicans are all smoke and mirrors (and let us not forget obstruction) unless you're talking about no bid contracts for their profiteering buds in the military-industrial complex, but that's not pro-military, that's pro corporation, as usual. Trust me, I was as shocked as anyone upon learning all this. I grew up thinking some people who were decidedly NON-heroic were huge heroes. Then of course there is the fact that republicans are not the humanitarians they used to be. THEY used to be the pro-common man party, and that was the tradition passed down in the rural communities of Wisconsin. Then Ronald Reagan came along with his "Welfare Queen" myth, which people still believe; only the gender and/or ethnicity of the recipients of assistance changes. I think the GOP is currently hating on the elderly and poor children--they only care about the UNBORN you see--once they're born babies and children become an expensive burden and can jolly well fend for themselves or go back where they came from! Well really, their reasoning on "that ONE issue" is so flipping flawed. On one hand they piss and moan about how poor people breed like bunnies (I refuse to say rats which is what they actually say) but on the other hand they DENY birth control and access to early term intervention to block or terminate a suspected pregnancy. I'm not even talking about abortion here, which is NO ONE's business but that if the person whose uterus is directly involved, as much as it hurts to say that as the mother of sons. It's just the truth. It's common effing sense. Only the woman knows if she's done a bunch of drugs, exposed herself to dirty needles, or has diseases that may affect a developing fetus. There is a reason so many adopted kids have psychological and developmental/behavioral issues. They are born to little girls not ready or able to take care of themselves whose families bully them into "doing the right thing" and bringing a damaged fetus to term so a baby can be born into poverty or.. well, I could go on for hours on this issue alone and I've already gone on too long. To sum up, in my years on this planet I have seen things FAR worse than a blocked pregnancy and people need to start educating themselves on real issues and voting with their minds not their emotions or this nation is doomed. The Tea Party has become the Teahadist movement against the U.S. just because their guy lost...again... and they're going scorched earth this time if they don't get their way, which they won't because even Obama won't throw children, veterans and the elderly under the bus just so the GOP can keep us in perpetual war and hand out MORE no bid contracts to corporation-people who bank offshore and have all their goods made in CHINA for pennies on the dollar while they screw over soldiers and veterans and grossly overpay Dick Cheney's personal mercenaries at Blackwater/Xe/Blackwater/Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater (the name keeps changing).
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I know I have offended some people (if anyone's been able to find me despite my refusal to pay off the gods of goog for a spot in the search results) but I hope some of the information I have provided via the links has been helpful and has helped balance that a bit. In closing I've included the text of a letter to my congressman which you may use any parts of you may wish to, or point at and laugh if you so wish. I'm not touchy about these things.
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| This is even more obscene than it looks, given the kind of bio-chemical and nuclear waste that's been stored in leaking drums, sprayed on flora, fauna and soldiers alike (and injected into us too for all we know--we do become military property once we take that oath after all) buried, lost and eventually found at good old Fort McClellan, ...along with the medical and military records of the men and women who served there. I predict images such as these will soon start disappearing from the Internet, as the mainstream media blackout spreads to the Internet and a full-on attempt to "normalize" Fort McClellan begins. There's already one patently contrived vid on YouTube, get this, purportedly mourning the loss of the nice buildings there. I only wish I were kidding! It's not that I don't understand sentimentality and nostalgia--I'm practically the expert! But seriously, who goes back to a military base to mourn "nice buildings going to waste" then puts almost ten minutes of the crap up on YouTube with the background sound of a handful of "soldiers" running PT to unimaginative cadence. I mean the guy had an okay voice but his repertoire was clearly too limited to be that of a real Drill Sergeant. The main thing he knew how to sing out about was Airborne Rangers. Pure movie all the way. They may as well have had Tom Cruise do it, but then I suppose he's a bit pricey. Ari Fleischer's PR team will be on this one like snot on a Rhino, no doubt! |
Congressman ( ---------), Sir, if you want to put some effort into a bill that truly deserves action, please look into HR 411. I was disappointed that you failed to co-sponsor it last year as you told me you would (when it was HR 2052). It seemed a reasonable action, given how pro-veteran you and all republicans always claim to be. Don't you find it kind of sad that literally hundreds of republicans co-sponsored legislation requiring invasive, expensive and completely unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds for pregnant women seeking reproductive health care services but only THREE far have co-sponsored HR 411 which would start the process of providing information and care for thousands of veterans poisoned in the line of duty, veterans a COURT ORDERED the Army and VA to provide care and compensation for, by the way, at Fort McClellan, AL?
Why, as with Tom Daschle and the original Agent Orange legislation, must it always be the Democrats, who are allegedly so anti-military, who always have to step up and fight the good fight for our veterans? Why are republicans always OBSTRUCTING, OBSTRUCTING, OBSTRUCTING?
The last good republican we had serving our area was Toby Roth. He was a HERO to me and I voted proudly for him every time I was old enough to. He helped me become a Registered Nurse in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at St.Vincent Hospital for over fifteen years, after I served my time in the military. Congressman Roth was a great help to me in obtaining my DD 214 when, as part of the McClellan cover-up, my military records were "lost" (as is the case with so many McClellan vets).
Congressman Roth threatened a Congressional Inquiry if the VA didn't award me my full military benefits as an honorably discharged soldier who served her required time on duty and provide me my discharge papers, which somehow magically appeared after he sent them that ultimatum. Yet even his threat didn't get them to cough up my medical records which they said were irretrievable. That order must have come from awfully high up the chain of command.
My records were never lost at all! They are being kept aside, with the rest of the records of people the VA KNOWS were exposed to toxins IF NOT OUTRIGHT EXPERIMENTED UPON at Fort McClellan! What has happened to Fort McClellan vets is REAL, it's an epic scandal, and while we veterans from 1935-1999 are eventually going to die, which I am sure is what the VA can't wait for, our children WILL fight on after us because genetic damage from nuclear and experimental bio-chemical weapons is the "gift that keeps on giving." This is NOT going to disappear! I strongly encourage you and your colleagues to get on the right side of this before it blows up. This press black-out cannot possibly continue to work, not can concerted efforts to scrub the Internet and encourage discord among support and informational groups on social networking sites. People are just not as naive as they used to be and we have come to realize that when so many easily obtained documents, personal stories of respectable professional people and long-time soldiers and documented medical histories of people whose records the military cannot control are involved, it's WILL NOT be explained away as a "conspiracy theory".
I strongly encourage you to join Congressman Tonko and the rest and do the right thing by us. You may just find that it feels good!
With Due Respect,
YaddaYadda
And I couldn't resist a final piece of irony. This is a still shot from the Fort McClellan PR video. If only all that honor and integrity went both ways, hm? I earned my two early promotions (within an 18 month period, no less) that each required a special waiver for Outstanding Service. Despite near crippling headaches and a series of early miscarriages I didn't miss a day of duty, not ONE! I also earned my HONORABLE discharge under some pretty difficult, to put it mildly, circumstances, which led to eventual PTSD, which I may or may not address here at a future date. That is unrelated to Fort McClellan. Either way, this image is just the epitome of hypocrisy, given they (meaning Monsanto and the high ranking officers in Washington) knew at the time those buildings were put up that they were poisoning/dooming to a premature death every single person who would ever be housed there.
Hopefully I'll have more positive news soon.
Peace and be well. May any and all Higher Beings you believe in be with you and may the Universe hold only good things in store for you and yours.
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