Veteran's widow battles killer parasite from Vietnam

Veteran's widow battles killer parasite from Vietnam
Horseheads woman raises alert about cancer-causing disease
January 14, 2010, 5:45 pm
In the cruel way that war sometimes works, Vietnam killed Pete Harrison nearly 36 years after he came home.

Elusive as they were, Pete thought he knew his enemies over there. The Viet Cong. The North Vietnamese. Their sympathizers.

Nobody ever warned him about parasites in the water he drank, but they were there. Nobody ever mentioned the parasites could cause cancer, but they could. Nobody ever told him that cholangiocarcinoma might kill him some day, but it did.

Now his widow, Sheila Harrison of Horseheads, is fighting her own war -- against the disease that took her husband's life.

She does it by alerting other Vietnam veterans, and the health care workers who treat them, to check for this deadly disease. Early and often.

Cholangiocarcinoma is a rare cancer of the bile ducts, which drain bile from the liver to the gallbladder and into the small intestine.

Symptoms don't usually develop in the early stages, so the cancer often is well advanced by the time it's discovered.

"It's a miserable, miserable disease," Sheila said.
read more here
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20100114/NEWS01/1140338