"Oranges" Ain't Always Good For Ya

I'd driven down to Sacaton, the Pima Indian Reservation, to visit the Ira Hayes Memorial. Ira Hayes was one of the six men (five Marines and a Navy Corpsman), who raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi when Joe Rosenthal took that famous photo on Iwo Jima.

I hadn't been feeling well lately, and as soon as I got back to Apache Junction, I laid down to take a nap but was having some severe stomach cramps. When I passed some blood the next morning, I got in to see a doctor immediately. An MRI showed that a small cyst on a kidney had burst away, but it was no big deal, and I DID start feeling better again. But the MRI also showed some enlarged growths around the intestines, and the NEXT thing I knew, I was being referred to an oncologist......the ONE doctor in life you never want to have to see.

In short order, HE put me in the hospital and they ended up having to do a huge incision to be able to reach far enough in to get the biopsy. They had to make a 7" slice and the stitches looked like I've had a "C" section! Anyway, they finally let me go home a couple of days later, and on Dec 2, 2002, I got called in to see my doctor.

It was cancer. Non-Hodgekins lymphoma. Early stages. Good.....let's cut it out. Can't cut it out, it's INOPERABLE. You need your lymphatic system to fight off colds and a other infections. If they cut it out, you'd be like that "boy in a bubble." So what DO I do?........"Well, we can hit it with radiation and try to slow it down when the time comes." Well Doc, one last question........he was already ahead of me......."4 years, maybe 5." This was in December of 2002.

Well, you walk around numb for a few days trying to figure out how THIS could have happened. I don't drink or smoke, cancer doesn't run ANYWHERE in my family on either side. I'm down there by myself and the only family I DO have is a son in Texas and a daughter in Kentucky.

"Well" I thought, "I guess I'd better drive into Phoenix to get the V.A. in on this, because I'm not independently wealthy, and care, when it comes to it, is really gonna be expensive, unless I just wanna go off someplace, "hole up" somewhere and die. Nobody down HERE would care. I was really depressed. Why me? What had I done to bring THIS on? I couldn't put ANYTHING together that made any sense. led a clean life, never worked around asbestos or anything like that. Genetics certainly wasn't a factor here.......I couldn't figure it out.

Well.........the V.A. ran me through a battery of tests, but it was the bloodwork that provided the answer. They called me to come in around the middle of February, and showed me a chart that only a doctor could read. It was from my bloodwork, and they asked me when I was in 'Nam. I told them, and asked what THAT had to do with anything? The doctor pointed at a word on that chart I can't even pronounce, followed by a couple of numbers..........

"Here's the problem, Mr. Bradbury", as he pointed to it on my chart.......It might as well have been in code----I couldn't decipher it.........and he calmly said, "YOU would know it as Agent Orange."

"Crap" (which isn't what I actually said, but for blog politeness, it's the EXACT substitute for what I DID say. And I remembered immediately, the airdrops down in the valleys just below our hills at Khe Sanh, to defoliate all the areas the NVA had been using to hide in.

But......that was over 30 years ago......why is it happening NOW? The doctor explained that they were still discovering things about Agent Orange. Depending on your metabolism, it could affect you within the first five years, or lay doormant in your system for decades, and THEN get triggered by some "normal" infection we all get from time to time. Who knows.......but the bloodwork was conclusive, it was herbicide, specific chemical number "blah-blah-blah".........Agent Orange (I'd always thought oranges were GOOD for ya!)

Ok.......but knowing what caused it, still didn't make me feel any better about HAVING it. The very next day, I got a call from the "Agent Orange Board" of the V.A., and they told me to come in and file paperwork for compensation. "Yeah" I thought.......I might as well get a few bucks to make up for the next 40 years I'm NOT gonna have!" I was bitter.

Agent Orange Compensation can take years through all the red tape. Sometimes I think they're hoping you'll give up on it, and just DIE before they have to pay you anything. But I had an "ace in the hole" that even I didn't realize I had at the time.

I'd carried an old Kodak instamatic camera in my pack (you remember the ones that used the old "drop-in" 126 cartridges). I'd taken several shots on Hill 861, while we were up there, INCLUDING an Agent Orange drop......as it spewed out of the airplane, as it passed right in front of us......(you can SEE the SANDBAGS of our trench in the corner of the photo, as PROOF of how close that drop was!

Wow.........talk about a "picture being worth a thousand words!" MY claim was approved inside of a month! It's not ALL that much, but between IT and my military retirement, I at least wouldn't have to keep working out in that 115-degree HEAT down there!

So I "officially retired" for good. I was 54, not expected to see 60. Didn't have to worry about the money, but what do I do with the "time I have left?"

One thing was for sure........I didn't want to die DOWN THERE in that hot desert. I would start making plans to come back to Idaho.......most likely Mountain Home, where I had old friends, surrounding mountains of pine trees and rivers, and a place to play music.

But there would be a strange twist of events, and in 2011, I'm still here........I just turned 63, and the cancer's been in remission for the last 4 years, and I'm going to post a "Part II" of this story that you might find most interesting.