Mar. 28, 2010 (Sun.)

The first week that David was in the hospital back in January of 2010 and the doctors first diagnosis was lymphoma I was curious why does a healthy 25 year old come down with Lymphoma? I was concerned about David's time spent overseas during his deployment and started googling around for the search words "Iraq military lymphoma" and found quite a few links regarding veterans that have been coming down with many kinds of health issues regarding exposure to dangerous chemicals that where improperly disposed of on or near some of the the military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. I asked David if he had been in Balad, Iraq (he's never admitted before where he was stationed), David was very surprised that I had guessed the location where he had served overseas. Many soldiers have come up with leukemia and different kinds of lymphomas and more. In more than one of the articles a lawyers name (Elizabeth M. Burke, Esq. of Burke O'Neil LLC) was mentioned who has brought a class action lawsuit against the contractor KBR.

David was deployed to Iraq in approximately October 2004 and returned home around March of 2005

I emailed the lawyer, Elizabeth Burke and her response follows:

We have brought suit on behalf of over 200 soldiers and contractors against KBR for their operations of dangerous open air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The emissions from the pits are implicated in many serious diseases, including cancers.  If your son is interested in joining the ongoing suits, I can send you further information and a retainer agreement.  It is so unfortunate that so many soldiers have been injured in this manner.  Please feel free to call me if you have any questions or would like to discuss.  Don Winslow, our team paralegal, can send you further information.  Thank you for contacting us.  We will keep you in our thoughts.

Since that date we have been notified by the lawyer that there are now more than 270 injured military personnel and contractors that have joined the battle against KBR.

Before David had read any of the articles,  we asked him to estimate how many water plastic bottles a day where disposed of, David's guess was "about 80,000". One of the articles estimated that David was exposed to the harmful chemicals of the burning of up to 90,000 plastic bottles (plus other dangerous hazardous waste) every day for 5 months.

David has now signed the retainer agreement and has been sent a huge stack of papers that must be completed for the lawyers. Pray that he finds the energy to complete them also pray that justice may be found if David came down with this awful illness due to someones gross neglect.

Below you can click on some of  the links to articles I have found:

CNN News
Army Times
Los Angeles Times

"Is any one of you sick?  He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and annoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well;    James 5:14-15a