Kingsport veteran closer to proving he has Gulf War Syndrome

Kingsport veteran closer to proving he has Gulf War Syndrome
Published 11/30/2008 By Rick Wagner


KINGSPORT — Gulf War veteran Todd Sanders and his family are looking forward to less uncertainty this holiday season than last year.

His blackouts, as recounted in a Kingsport Times-News article in August 2007, have grown worse, and he still has issues with short-term memory and getting too hot.

However, he qualified in September for Social Security disability almost two years after applying and 16 years after his military service, from 1987 to 1992, ended.

Sanders, age 42, believes he may be close to proving he has Gulf War Syndrome, something he’s believed for more than two years.

“We’re looking a lot better than we were the last time (the newspaper interviewed them),” said his wife, Paula Sanders.

And the disabled automobile mechanic said the biggest victory to date for him and others who served in the Gulf War in the early 1990s is that the federal government a few weeks ago acknowledged the existence of Gulf War Syndrome. Sanders hopes to prove next month he has the syndrome from his military service so he can receive military disability and Veterans Administration medical care for himself and his wife.

He likened the delay to the 20 years it took for the federal government to acknowledge the ill health effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam War veterans.

“They’ve (federal officials) finally acknowledged it,” Todd Sanders said during a recent interview. “Even though they’ve owned up to it ... you still have to prove your case.”

The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans Illness compared the foot-dragging and denials to the treatment of earlier troops who claimed that they had been dangerously exposed to Agent Orange and other toxic herbicides in Vietnam and to radiation during World War II.

In both cases, the claims turned out to be true.
go here for more
http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9009258