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Stories are different with tragic similarities
CHRIS MAZZOLINI
DAILY NEWS STAFF
ATLANTA - February 20,2005 - They came from all over the country to tell their stories. No matter how many miles they drove, how much distance separates them, their stories are the same: They're hurting, or their children are hurting, and they want help.
The afflictions are also the same: cancers, cysts, kidney infections and depression.
Their new hope is a panel of epidemiologists, toxicologists and environmental scientists that met for two days last week at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Century Center in Atlanta to provide recommendations for further study into water contamination at Camp Lejeune that started as far back as the 1960s.
Interwoven with the discussion of scientific feasibility and experimental method were tearful stories of those who say the contamination changed their lives forever. While the stories are different, there are similarities: They are all tragic, and they all have questions that haven't been answered - and in the end, that's all they want.
'We were exposed'
Jeff and Mary Byron are certain their daughters' ailments were caused by water contaminated by TCE or PCE - cleaning chemicals that leaked into the groundwater from ABC One Hour Cleaners along Lejeune Boulevard. Tainted base wells were later capped and pose no threat to current base residents.
Byron, who now lives in Ohio with his family, said he's tired of hearing that his daughters' illnesses may have been caused by contaminated water.
"There's no may about it," Jeff Byron said. We were exposed."
Their first child, Andrea, was born in June 1982 at Onslow Memorial Hospital. The Byrons lived off base for the first two months of her life, moving into the base's Midway Park community in August 1982.
Before the move, Andrea was a healthy child. But in October, Andrea took her first trip to the hospital. Over the next two years, Jeff Byron said, Andrea visited the hospital 57 times for all manner of illnesses.
"Do you now what it's like to sit in a hospital room day after day and have your daughter ask you, 'Mommy, why am I sick?' " Mary Byron said.
The Byrons later moved to Tarawa Terrace. Rachel, their second daughter, was born in 1985. It was immediately evident that something was not right. Rachel lost weight instead of gaining it. She was diagnosed with congenital heart defects and had an umbilical hernia.
Six weeks later, Jeff finished his active duty at New River Air Station, and the family moved to Hamilton, Ohio. There, his daughters took a turn for the worse.
Andrea was diagnosed with a rare bone-marrow disease called aplastic anemia. She was kept in quarantine for 13 days at a children's hospital in Cincinnati.
Rachel developed developmental disabilities, learning disabilities and spina bifida. She also wore leg braces for length discrepancy and suffered speech and hearing impairment.
"Rachel's life will be totally compromised from the time she was born to the time she passes away," Jeff Byron said. "She's 19 years old and has the back of a 90-year-old."
Since leaving Camp Lejeune, the Byrons had twin sons.
"Neither has even had a cavity yet," Jeff Byron said.
And while Andrea's aplastic anemia has gone into remission, the Byrons live every day fearing the future. Both Andrea and Rachel are pregnant, and they worry the problems will pass onto the next generation.
"I pray each and every night that that baby is healthy, that she won't have to go through what her mother went through," Mary Byron said.
'Hard six years'
Denita McCall came to Camp Lejeune when she was 18, right after boot camp. Seventeen years later, she was diagnosed with parathyroid cancer, an extremely rare form of cancer that affects two small glands near the front of the neck.
McCall said her doctors could not understand how she came down with such a rare illness.
"A lot of the doctors thought I was working in a nuclear plant," she said
McCall was forced to have parts of her esophagus removed, along with all the lymph nodes in her neck, and she's had several surgeries to have her voice restored. It's been six years since she was diagnosed with cancer.
"Needless to say, it's been a very hard six years," McCall said. "Aside from the cancer, I have a lot of other health problems, but I'm more focused on the one that would potentially kill me."
Doctors recently discovered tumors on her ovaries. She delayed getting them removed, so she could come to Atlanta and address the panel.
"I don't doubt that water caused my cancer," McCall said. "I don't doubt it one instant.
"I don't really understand why we have to take so many years to find out if this made people sick. I know it made me sick. I think maybe there's a lot more sick people, and I think we need to find them."
Because of her conditions, McCall said she is not eligible for life or health insurance.
"I'm basically at the mercy of public aid and the Veterans Administration," McCall said. "I just didn't think anybody cared."
'How has this happened?'
Lita Hyland emigrated from Peru thinking she had come to the greatest place in the world. She met and married a Marine named Jerry Hyland and had two children, Jennifer and Dominique.
Hyland was pregnant with Jennifer while living in Tarawa Terrace. Jennifer was born in 1979 in Washington, D.C. and immediately had problems: convulsions, high fevers, high blood pressure.
Dominique was born in 1981. Once again, Hyland said, the signs of something wrong were evident.
"She didn't stop crying from the moment she was born," she said.
Hyland learned about the contamination in 2000 when she received a survey phone call asking if her children were OK.
In 2003, Dominique started receiving treatment for intense intestinal inflammation, chronic fatigue and severe weight loss. She was diagnosed with Crohns' disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the intestines and the mouth, joints and liver.
Hyland said Dominique needs 32 pills a day and only gets up only briefly because she is in so much pain.
"She wakes up every day for Oprah Winfrey and that's it," Hyland said. "She's only 23. How has this happened to our kids?"
Hyland, who now resides in Virginia, said she never expected something like this would happen in America.
"(Our children were) unfortunately born with the chemicals and disadvantages that they would get from a third-world county," Hyland said. "This country, we are rich, we have medicine and doctors. We provide the world with everything. And this is going to happen to me?"
On the Web: www.watersurvivors.com
Contact staff writer Chris Mazzolini at cmazzolini@freedomenc.com or 353-1171, Ext. 229.
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