For RN Debbie health problems from Gulf War Illness have been with her for 12 years

[pickledpepperRN]

http://www.revolutionmag.com/newrev14/rnbattles.html

For RN Debbie Judd, Operation Desert

Storm lasted six months. But her health

problems from Gulf War Illness have been

with her for 12 years.

by Erin Fitzgerald

News coverage of the war in Iraq may have bellowed out of TV sets

throughout the United States on a 24-hour basis during March, but not in

Debbie Judd's house.

Judd, an RN and veteran of the Persian Gulf conflict, doesn't need a

televised reminder of life during wartime in the Middle Eastern desert. Judd

carries with her an ever-present keepsake of Desert Storm.

Serving as an aeromedical nurse in the Air Force Reserve, Judd started

feeling bad soon after her arrival at a hospital and "tented compound" near

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1991. Other personnel who arrived with her also

fell ill, but all their symptoms were dismissed as "Saudi flu."

After her six-month tour of duty, the symptoms did not disappear. In fact,

Judd has not been herself since she returned from the Gulf. "In every way,

in mind, body and spirit, I am a different person," she says.

Debbie Judd suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, now known as Gulf War

Illness, an array of illnesses reported by Judd and many other Gulf War

veterans after returning from the Persian Gulf in 1991. Soon after the war,

many veterans reported unexplained symptoms: rashes, aching joints,

abdominal cramps, diarrhea, respiratory difficulties, debilitating fatigue and

loss of memory.

"I have deep muscle aches, deep joint pain," Judd says. "I have ongoing

sinus problems. Since my return, I've had three sinus operations." She has

developed a strange anemia the doctors can't figure out: There is no iron in

her bone marrow. She has to have IV iron treatments every month. "I've

probably had more tests than any other vet in the Gulf War," she says.

Much of her former strength is gone, she says. Judd moves slowly about her

modest house surrounded by the verdant hills northeast of San Francisco,

the polar opposite of the Saudi desert. She stops to look out the window at

the contagious spring growth of grass.

"It keeps me going," she says of the three-acre spread she calls home. "I

can't keep up with it, though. Not now. I just got a sheep yesterday to keep

the grass cut."

She has difficulty retaining warmth, so she rubs her hands together as she

retrieves a piece of wood from the woodpile her son has cut for her. "If I had

to heat with gas I would go broke, so I heat with wood." She refuses an offer

of help. "It's better for me to move, even if it's difficult. If I stay still for too

long, I freeze up."

Judd is 100 percent service-connected disabled due to her service in the

Persian Gulf War. Her masters degree in Public Health Administration and

Health Services Administration, in addition to degrees in nursing and

organizational behavior, lie dormant. So does her 20 years as an RN, 13 of

them working neo-natal ICU in Sacramento-area hospitals.

What she went through, along with thousands of servicemen and women, to

gain acceptance as a sufferer of Gulf War Illness strengthened her resolve

to see justice done, even if it meant traversing a mountain of bureaucracy

and stone walls. What she went through in the Saudi desert makes her

question just how prepared and equipped the troops were who served 12

years ago in what many referred to as the "Easy War."

Evasive Actions

Nearly 30 percent of the 695,000 troops who went to the Gulf returned with

health problems that have been certified as service-related illnesses - more

than double that of vets from World War II, Korea or Vietnam. Despite all

the studies confirming this, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initially

denied claims or made it difficult for veterans to receive an effective

diagnosis. Many vets were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

"They led us to believe the symptoms were all in our heads," says Judd.

Although the VA now admits to the possible exposure of 145,000 veterans

when U.S. forces bombed the Khamisiyah weapons depot in Iraq, research

by veterans advocacy groups indicate more than 200,000 vets were

exposed to a variety of toxins in the Gulf.

And while the U.S. Congress has passed significant laws related to Gulf War

veterans, the promise of these laws has not always been fulfilled. Law

105-85, enacted in 1997, for example, requires the Department of Defense

to examine troops before and after operational deployments in order to

accurately record any changes in their medical conditions. A vivid example

of the DOD's continued failure to follow through is exemplified by

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's call March 6 for a GAO investigation

because reports indicate that Iraqi-bound troops have not received the

promised health screenings.

Although the VA has sponsored a number of research studies, it wasn't until

2002, under pressure from the National Gulf War Resource Center, that a

committee was finally convened to discuss the entire body of evidence on

toxic exposure.

Back in 1995, four years after the war, treatment for Gulf War Syndrome was

still a topic for debate. Judd formed the Northern California Association of

Persian Gulf Veterans that year to work through the long-term issues of the

short-term war. Her group and other Gulf War vet organizations joined

forces and created the aforementioned National Gulf War Resource Center.

She learned that there was, indeed, strength in numbers.

Judd saw the VA evade accurate diagnosis of veterans during her work in

an advisory capacity as an RN for the Resource Center. She helped write a

Gulf War Vets Self-Help Guide. Since many vets did not understand the VA

coding system, Judd categorized the proper codes sick vets could use to get

help from Veterans Affairs. "Many vets were being denied benefits simply

because they were unable to describe their symptoms to fit the VA's

criteria," she says.

But Judd's assistance to servicemen and women did not sit well with top

brass. The VA contacted Judd's service officer. (All returning vets are

assigned a "service officer" to help them file for benefits and negotiate the

system. Judd's was a person from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.) A VA

official told her service officer that Judd must "stop and desist" from such

activity or the VA would revoke his rights to work as a service officer.

Judd did not stop and desist. (The VA did not make good on its threat,

either.) Instead, she redoubled her efforts. She served as a board member

for the Resource Center for three years, helped compile data from a

sampling of 10,000 Gulf War veterans and participated in numerous

independent research studies. Few people know better than she how

important it is for veterans to look out for their own.

False Readings

What frustrates her, she says, is that the U.S. government didn't take care of

her or her troops back in 1991 and didn't even provide materials to allow

medical personnel to do their jobs. She describes the government's lack of

preparation from the very beginning of her tour, when she held the rank of

lieutenant in a tented aeromedical hospital where casualties were brought

directly to be triaged. The stretchers used to transport patients were "old"

she says. "The first patients fell through ... they just broke."

Judd saw a lot of chemical burns. "The alarms were going off every couple

of hours to indicate chemical exposure. We didn't know what it was and,

afterwards, we were told by the higher-ups that it wasn't enough to hurt us,"

she says, shaking her head. "Unfortunately, we believed them."

From the beginning, too, she never had a pharmacy, not even cough syrup.

She relates how the British Army, on the other hand, was well equipped

and just across the hall. She remembers trading one of the patches from

her uniform to a British doctor for medicine one day. "That's the way it went

through the rest of my duty. They kept telling us the supplies were coming,

but they never arrived." By the end of the war, she says, there was not a

single patch on her uniform.

The British troops had state-of-the-art gas masks, too. U.S. troops did not.

"You have to understand, the sky was black a lot of the time - from burning

oil fields. And there were air sirens going off every two hours." A Condition

Red meant it was possible that chemicals were present. A Condition Black

meant the missiles had already hit and chemicals were definitely present.

"We would put on our chemical suits and gas masks," she says. In just 45

minutes, the administrators sounded an "all-clear."

"We'd take the suits off," she says. "That's what we were told to do."

The second night in the tented compound, they had a Condition Black. "A

Patriot missile took out a scud right above our heads. The shrapnel came

down all around us. We didn't even have a decontamination center in our

compound," she says.

Though they wore chemical suits, she believes her level of protection was

far from effective. Suits had a tape that would indicate the amount of

exposure and when the suit was to be changed. Judd was told that the suits

could be worn for a limited amount of time, but she wasn't told why.

Although personnel were sent over with six suits each, she wore the same

chemical suit throughout her six-month tour.

"They told us that [the suits] would be replaced. But the first day we were

there, there was a shortage of suits in-country. They collected all but one of

our suits to give to troops elsewhere." This, she says, "put us all at risk."

Judd recalls seeing young soldiers collect souvenir shrapnel from a downed

Iraqi scud. After the bombs landed, military authorities often told troops that

the chemical warnings were "false readings," or that the scuds that landed

near them were not chemically or biologically armed. Although the DOD's

position continues to be that scuds were not armed in this manner, alarms

to detect deadly chemicals routinely went off when scuds were present.

As proof that the detection devices were not mechanically fallible, as the

DOD claims, veterans cite the fact that the same devices are being used in

Iraq today. "If they were reading incorrectly," one veteran said, "why would

they keep them and use them again?"

Chemical Cocktail

When asked if there is a specific cause, such as airborne chemicals, of Gulf

War Illness, Judd is direct: "There is no smoking gun." Instead, she believes

symptoms are caused by what Gulf War Illness researcher and physician

Robert Haley calls the "chemical cocktail," which includes exposure to

chemical gas, biologicals, pesticides, burning petroleum, depleted uranium

(used in the construction of U.S. tanks and tank weaponry), experimental

pills and inoculations.

Judd knows the inoculations weakened her from the beginning. "I didn't go

in with a healthy immune system because they gave us 10 inoculations in

one day, including the anthrax vaccine. It was especially disturbing to see

this happen as a nurse." She was aware it is ill advised to mix a live culture

vaccine with another live culture vaccine.

In fact, she became extremely ill from the anthrax vaccine. When she

received the botulinum toxoid vaccine, she got even sicker. Later she found

the vaccine had not been tested or approved by the FDA. According to the

National Gulf War Resource Center, the FDA agreed to issue a waiver to the

DOD that allowed the military to issue experimental drugs and vaccines to

U.S. personnel in the Gulf without first obtaining informed consent.

"I felt bad right away," she says. "We all did. But our symptoms were

dismissed as 'Saudi flu.' We were told to go back to duty."

Judd says she suffered from these flu-like symptoms for the rest of the war.

"All of us were in excellent health when we went over there. We couldn't

have gone if we hadn't been. I mean you're humpin' and dumpin' litters

with 200-pound patients on them, hauling supplies and packs," she says.

"I was strong," she continues. "But now it's hard to imagine myself before all

this happened."

Even the DOD began to look into the drugs given U.S. personnel deployed

in the Gulf. In October 1999, the DOD released a Rand Corp. report on

pyridostigmine bromide (PB), used during the Gulf War as a pretreatment to

protect military personnel from death in the event of an attack with the

nerve agent soman. Rand's review, performed under a DOD contract,

concluded that PB cannot be "ruled out" as a possible contributor to the

development of undiagnosed illness in some Gulf War vets. It also

concluded that the effectiveness of PB in protecting humans against nerve

agents is uncertain.

At long last, the DOD is sponsoring a landmark study on brain stem injury in

Gulf War veterans based on Dr. Haley's research on the "chemical cocktail,"

which was dismissed by the VA for many years. The Gulf War Health Study

of 400 veterans over a five-year period is being done at Fort Miley, the San

Francisco Veterans Medical Center in California. The study, which began in

February 2002, focuses on MRIs and spectroscopy, which helps determine

the health of neurons in the brain.

After dismissals and denials by the authorities, Judd is pleased to see the

promise of something definitive. "You can't argue with a brain scan, or an

MRI," she says, "The evidence is there."

For Judd, proof is everything. She has, after all, devoted the past 10 years

of her life to securing recognition for Gulf War veterans. Dredging up these

memories, discussing the evidence, talking about the barriers to justice

shakes her calm demeanor.

"Understand that I don't give many interviews anymore," she tells

Revolution, drilling the subject home with her piercing blue eyes. "I'm too

sick. But you're writing for nurses, and that's important to me. Because if just

one nurse out there, in the course of her duties, is able to recognize one

Gulf War vet, and not dismiss his symptoms, if even one nurse can give a

vet loving care, then the effort is worth it to me."

Terrified for Troops

In spite of everything, Judd is passionate, too, about her country and the

men and women serving it in the newest Gulf War.

"I'm terrified for troops going over there," she says. "Because this time I

believe Iraq and the U.S. will pull out all the stops. It will be far worse than

it was in 1991."

The current war has triggered physical reactions in Judd; she is having

nightmares and cold sweats.

"I cannot sit in front of the TV and watch it all day long," she says. "Seeing

the troops under fire makes me want to be there, makes me want to help.

The media goes on and on about the 'new technology' we have, but it's

much rougher out there than it looks on TV."

Judd is skeptical about DOD promises of improved safety precautions. "I'd

have to see it to believe it," she says. "We're talking about the total

environment over there. We don't know what combination of factors caused

these illnesses."

She clarifies what she means when she says she supports the troops: "I know

what they're going through, I want them to be safe. I know they are only

doing what they have been trained to do. They're only following orders. I

only hope that by following orders they don't get let down by their

government. I hope they can get the help they need when they return."

While Judd acknowledges that protesting is "not her way," she wishes that

President Bush had listened to the protestors before the war began. "I still

wish [the war] would have been handled diplomatically. It breaks my heart,

because a lot of civilian women and children will suffer in this war."

She's unhappy with Bush's budget, which cuts billions from VA benefits. "It's

terrible because it won't just affect us. It will affect even veterans of WWII. It

will affect the vets coming from the Gulf now. And there have already been

cuts."

Judd suddenly lets drop another bomb of information: She has recently

been diagnosed with colon cancer, likely related to her Gulf War exposure.

It's a rare form; only 2,500 people in the country have her same type of

carcinoma. She says she knows other vets who have been diagnosed with

cancer. Nearly 10,000 vets have died from Gulf War-related illnesses since

1991. Her own prognosis is good, though she can't receive chemotherapy

because the doctors don't think her body can take it.

"We can't be fixed," Judd says, shaking her head, referring to the thousands

of sick veterans like herself, "but we can prevent this from ever happening

again."

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

Brave lady.

[SmilingBluEyes]

she is brave but has an uphill battle ---the government has a LONG history of ignoring, and outright abusing her most decorated and giving of vets. I hope she can see some satisfaction, not just for us vets but for her own peace of mind for working so hard and giving so much for our freedom.

[mattsmom81]

WOW. Puts things in perspective doesn't it.....look at what this brave lady is going through.

Makes me feel guilty for whining about my puny little problems.

From what I saw the troops this time through had what they needed....but maybe we aren't getting the whole story either...makes me worry for our brave troops. :stone

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

So far my hubby (vietnam era vet) has done pretty well in the VA system, but then he has typical 60 yr old medical problems except his hearing (helicopters, computers etc).

I can't imagine the horror and the pain this lady has just trying to get what is right and deserved.

[ceecel.dee, MSN, RN]

In this day and age, it's hard to imagine that the consent thing is still being brushed aside by "The Higher Ups" that "certainly know better than the huddled masses".

This woman, who hasn't the health or strength to do her life's work anymore, but will make an exception for her fellow nurses, is heroism personified.

Cheers!

[sanakruz, ADN]

Why is there no mention of plutonium 238 in that article? That's the main ingredient in "dirty" bombs, the kind we dropped on Iraq in '91 and then again in GWII.

ASPARTAME did not cause these vets symptoms....

[pickledpepperRN]

Gosh I don't know. Tell us what you know. I can post links about DU if anyone is interested.

Don't know about plutonium 238.

She probably doesn't either. Sounds bad.