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Steve Zardis in VA hospital ogist, I looked at the World Health Organization’s report from the International Agency of Research for Cancer and the list of symptoms reported by civilian workers exposed to dioxin. I went over it word for word, and I found I had every one of the symptoms. But the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. Now, I’ve seen too much. I’ve had calls from too many veterans and too many widows. There’s too much coincidence to have it just coincidence.” planes. I remember daily spraying. My unit was called the Lepers because we were on sick call all the time. We were throwing up, we had high fevers, and once my throat became paralyzed for a week. But I was 20 then, and I didn’t pay much attention. In 1978, when the numbness had gone from my right thumb through my right hand and up my arm, then to both arms, knees and legs, and I had shuffled from clinic to clinic, psychologist to psychologist, neurologist to neurol TEXAS13SERVER September 25, 1981 A Journal of Free Voices 75 Photo by Wendy Watriss By Wendy Watriss He is 33. He has been hospitalized 21 times since returning from Vietnam in 1969. For six years, he was a social worker and then worked as a bouncer to put himself through school to get a teaching certificate. From 1969 to 1977, he lived with a recurrent rash, kidney and urinary infections, and severe weight loss. But it is the numbness, which began in his fingers six years ago, that is slowly consuming him. First numbness and then excruciating pain. When I saw him in the hospital a few months ago, he had just had the nerves severed from his spinal cord to his legs. “I was in Vietnam from April 1968-69. I was in a forward air control unit, and we used to clear the flight pattern for spray