Jake’s experience with neuropathy is nearly identical to my own. My problems originated as painful feet during my last year and one half of military service, which at the time was a laugh, since, who has ever heard of an active duty, U.S. Navy Fleet Marine who didn’t complain of sore feet? Although both feet were painful, military orthopedists felt that a screw in my ankle, planted after a previous fracture, now healed, might be contributing to the situation. He attempted to remove the screw, was unable to do so and placed me on pain killers for the remainder of my enlistment and upon honorable discharge after four years active service, was awarded a 20 percent VA disability rating, approximately $120/month. During the year after discharge, the pain started to leave my feet but seemed to travel upward, more of a pinching type pain in my thighs and lower abdomen. I also started to experience constipation, some bladder leakage and intermittent ED. I attributed a lot of this with stress associated with re-acquainting myself with “normal’ civilian life. At this point, I’m around twenty-one years old and married (we’re currently at fifty plus years!), whom has noticed the changes in me that even I have not seen. Before service, I was an expert horseman, skier, long distance bicyclist, etc., but have mostly abandoned these. I came to realize that I unknowingly avoided these because of balance issues I was experiencing, but had learned to accommodate for by avoiding the sports I previously loved. After another six months, I was left almost entirely pain free, but numb from the bottoms of my feet to my knees, numb inner thighs, numbness in fingers and palms of hands, both buttocks, numbness in both shoulders and left side of my face. There was now also a ringing in both of my ears and have developed a severe limp, along with a tendency to trip over my own feet.

Of course, I visited neurologists, through all of this, who insisted on pain medications, even though in reality, I wasn’t in any real pain, and have mostly . They performed nerve conduction studies, several surgical exploratory explorations including carpal tunnel releases to both hands, numerous physical therapy visits and massage therapy all to no avail.

So what was happening and for what reason? I was not, and to this day, do not smoke, no alcohol, no drugs or wacky weed, no diabetes, no hypertension, all of my hematologies and blood chemistries were, and to this day, normal. At that point, I grew philosophical and settled into living my life. My focus was on the fact that I’m alive and will make this work, so I stopped looking for causes and focused on accommodating my shortcomings; until a day in 2015 that I ran across an obscure, previously unknown to me situation regarding the extremely critical circumstances regarding efforts to clean up the toxic water situation on the U.S Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, a duty station in which I served during my enlistment 55 years earlier. It seems that between the years of 1953-1987, heavy leakage of toxic chemical solvents and volatile organic compounds had contaminated Camp Lejeune’s drinking and bath in water, in amounts as much as 400 times permitted by the FDA! Among the conditions listed as a result of such exposures to anyone exposed 30 days or longer, were numerous cancers, as well as neurological conditions, including neuropathies, Parkinson’s Disease and ALS! To tell you the truth, even though the PACT Act, signed into law during 2022, admitted to a service connection to approximately 13 conditions, at this point, for many of those affected by those exposures, either through death or decline, had mostly stopped caring about causes long ago…

We’re Blessed,
Ken Hassen; July, 2024