agentOrange contact

On Thu Dec 9, *Robt* wrote

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I've had two melanomas frozen off myself. Hard, round, black, looking kinda like a mole. The first one was in a place the sun don't shine. The second on my nose. I've got a third that needs removed below the corner of my left eye, almost pea sized now. There's a forth coming up under the right eye too. It's only about the size of an .07mm pencil lead on the surface. Both the new ones are bigger under the skin.




Best I can figure it came from when I was mixing AO for Army chinooks spraying with RanchHand in Tay Ninh Province. They gave us thick rubber aprons and gloves. Repeatedly lifting 6 gallon cans up to pour the concentrate into a gallon funnel stuck in the top of 55 gallon drums led to the stuff running back up our arms off the gloves, and back down into the gloves when we reached back down for the next can. Once we were soaked the heat and AO underneath made the rubber intolerable.




Every one of us chunked'em. Weren't keeping the stuff off our skin and clothes anyway. The gloves made it hell to manage the plastic cans. I think that they had tear off caps, but we had to take an awl and punch a vent hole in the opposite side. When we punched the holes little geysers would shoot up out of the spout. I guess we were too stupid to punch the holes first. We just did it the way we were shown.




I had to wipe sweat and splatter away from my eyes a lot. Of course I used the back of my forearm but we were pretty much soaked in the crap most of the time. When nature called we just stepped behind the reventments (revampments?) where our helicopters parked. That's why the first growth showed up where it did.




Damn! I wish we'd have taken super 8s. Maybe there's some spysat tape out there. Evidence? Riiiiiiiiight.




Wonder why 'they' keep blowing smoke when I try to wade though the process to qualify for VA benefits? May be it's just more cost effective to stall and let my symptoms take care of themselves and the problem.