- "Doctors believe he has the classic form of [CJD],
which develops spontaneously... Alford's parents believe he has the "variant"
form of CJD, caused by eating brains or nervous system tissue from an infected
cow. They worry he may have got it from eating sheep brains locals served
to soldiers as an honor in Oman two years ago."
-
- (Note - 'Classic' CJD usually strikes only those over
55 years of age! -ed)
-
-
- Misdiagnosed Green Beret Demoted Before Illness
Revealed
-
- by Lisa Falkenberg
Associated Press
1-3-4
-
- KARNACK, Texas -- By the
time he shipped out for the war in Iraq in January, Special Forces Sgt.
James Alford was a wreck of a soldier.
-
- For five months, he had been doing odd things. He disappeared
from Fort Campbell, Ky., for several days last year. He lost equipment
and lied to superiors. In December, he was demoted from staff sergeant
to sergeant.
-
- In the Kuwaiti desert, he came apart. The hotshot Green
Beret who a year earlier ran circles around his team members and was recommended
for a Bronze Star in Afghanistan was ordered to carry a notepad to remember
orders. By March, he was being cited for dereliction of duty, larceny and
lying to superiors. He couldn't even keep track of his gas mask.
-
- Finally, in April, his commanders had had enough. They
ordered him to return to Fort Campbell to be court-martialed and kicked
out of the Special Forces.
-
- "Your conduct is inconsistent with the integrity
and professionalism required by a Special Forces soldier," Lt. Col.
Christopher E. Conner of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters
in Kuwait, wrote April 10.
-
- Confused and disgraced, the soldier moved back into his
off-base home where he ate canned meat and anchovies, unaware of the day,
the month or the year.
-
- Sensing something was wrong, a neighbor called Alford's
parents. They drove 600 miles from East Texas to find a son who'd lost
30 pounds and could no longer drink from a glass, use a telephone, button
his shirt or say Amber, the name of his soldier wife who was still stationed
in the Middle East.
-
- They rushed him to an emergency room. A month and several
hospitals later, Alford's family learned he was dying of a disease eating
away his brain. He had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an extremely rare and
fatal degenerative brain disorder akin to mad cow disease that causes rapid,
progressive dementia.
-
- Now, as the 25-year-old soldier wastes away in his boyhood
home, his parents and his wife are struggling to understand how the military
could have misdiagnosed Alford's erratic, forgetful behavior as nothing
more than the symptoms of a sloppy, incompetent soldier.
-
- "He had to hold his hands to keep them from shaking,
but they saw nothing wrong with my child," his mother Gail Alford,
a nine-year Army veteran, said recently from her home in a rural community
near Marshall, Texas.
-
- Alford's parents say Special Forces staff told them that
a doctor in Kuwait found nothing wrong with him and that a psychiatrist
there had said Alford was "faking it."
-
- Army officials have acknowledged that the 5th Special
Forces Group erred and, more than eight months after Alford's demotion,
they reinstated his staff sergeant rank.
-
- But the dying soldier's family wants more. They want
a public apology for the ridicule and disgrace that they say filled Alford's
final days of service.
-
- "They called him stupid, told him he was lazy, he
was a liar, that he wasn't any good, that he was a faker," his mother
said, recalling what little her son could tell her about his time in Kuwait.
"I want them shamed the way they shamed my son."
-
- And they want his pay restored and his medical benefits
maintained. The Army declared Alford medically incompetent, placed him
on retirement status and froze his pay earlier this month until his parents
can prove in court they are his legal guardians. His mother said she was
given power of attorney long ago.
-
- Army officials say they're just following procedures
intended to protect soldiers.
-
- Alford's father, retired Army Command Sgt. Maj. John
Alford, who served 34 years, said Army doctors have been caring and professional,
and commanders stationed his son's wife, Army Spc. Amber Alford, in Texas
near her husband.
-
- He mainly faults the Special Forces.
-
- "I think they did everything they could to break
him, mentally and physically," he said.
-
- Maj. Robert Gowan, a spokesman for Army Special Forces
Command, said 5th Group is saddened by the soldier's disease and regretful
that it wasn't diagnosed sooner, but that a public apology may not be appropriate.
-
- "This disease was not caused by 5th Group and the
regret they express is in regards to the tragedy," Gowan said Wednesday,
adding that the unit "acted on the information they had available
at the time. If everyone would have known that Sgt. Alford was sick, things
might have been handled differently."
-
- Alford himself may have tried to conceal his symptoms,
said Dr. Steve J. Williams, a clinical fellow in the Division of Infectious
Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.
-
- "He was capable of masking the symptoms because
he was resourceful and he was a smart guy," said Williams, who diagnosed
Alford with CJD. "I'd ask him what floor he was on and I could catch
him looking outside and counting the number of windows."
-
- Doctors believe he has the classic form of the disease,
which develops spontaneously. It affects just one in 100 million people
under 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
- Col. David Dooley, an infectious disease doctor at Brooke
Army Medical Center in San Antonio, said Special Forces staff shouldn't
take the blame for missing Alford's illness. A delayed diagnosis is "typical
and classic;" the average lag time for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is
five to seven months, he said.
-
- "If I'm going to hold anything against them, they
might have come around a little faster when a medical problem was recognized,"
Dooley said. "The Special Forces group was fairly inert to the face
of data that we medics were showing them."
-
- Alford's parents believe he has the "variant"
form of CJD, caused by eating brains or nervous system tissue from an infected
cow. They worry he may have got it from eating sheep brains locals served
to soldiers as an honor in Oman two years ago.
-
- But there is no evidence people can get the disease from
sheep.
-
- Doctors also note Alford didn't have the outbursts of
anger and depression usually associated with the variant form of the disease,
and his illness has progressed at the faster rate resembling the classic
form.
-
- ---
-
- Alford was the youngest man in 5th Group and his wife
says some of his team members resented his promotion. At least one team
member said Alford seemed a bit immature and made a few bad decisions when
he first joined, but he earned decorations, military records show.
-
- His parents said he was awarded the Bronze Star in May
2002 for "gallant conduct" in leading reconnaissance patrols
in Kandahar and helping capture suspected Iranian terrorists.
-
- But in yet another painful point of contention, Gowan
said the Bronze Star recommendation was downgraded to an Army Commendation
Medal. Gowan was unable to explain the Bronze Star on Alford's uniform.
-
- Staff Sgt. Miguel Fabbiani, a friend of Alford's and
a member of the same team based at Fort Campbell, said Alford's symptoms
escalated during wartime when he was working with a new group that didn't
know him as well. And people remembered past youthful errors.
-
- Alford's parents said they didn't see him enough to detect
a problem. His wife was stationed near him for a while in Kuwait, but she
chalked up his odd behavior to stress.
-
- Alford's father said the actions of his son's superiors
broke the spirit of a young man who had wanted to become a soldier since
he was 4.
-
- He now lies in pastel sheets next to a wall painting
of John Wayne. Wearing a Houston Texans T-shirt that hangs like a hospital
gown, he stares absently into a TV that glows 24 hours, his hands gripping
stuffed animals to keep them from clenching shut.
-
- "He knows his name, sometimes," says his wife,
a tiny woman in sneakers who helps tend to her husband as she ponders a
life alone. "Sometimes I'll go up to him, wink at him and make kissy
faces and he laughs."
-
- Her eyes well up as she remembers the handsome, arrogant
boy she met as a teenager at a barrel racing contest in Texas.
-
- As his brain deteriorates, his organs will fail.
-
- "He will go blind, he will go deaf, he will lose
everything," his father says.
-
- He stopped walking more than a month ago, mumbles when
he tries to speak, is fed intravenously and takes medicine for insomnia,
pain and tremors. Doctors have told the family he probably won't live to
see Christmas.
-
- The Army told the family the issues over Alford's pay
could be resolved within weeks, but the family is skeptical. They aren't
sure how they will pay his bills and maintain his 24-hour care without
his salary.
-
- "It's very sad when the people who are putting their
life on the line for this country should be treated like this," Alford's
father said. "This has been a bureaucratic nightmare. We've got enough
to deal with on a daily basis, caring after our son and dealing with our
pain and weariness and our suffering to have to fight the U.S. Army."
-
- The Army may be coming around, though. The Alfords got
their first call from 5th Group Command this week. The soldier's father
said the deputy commander apologized for what the family had been through,
assigned a lawyer to work with them on pay and benefits issues and said
he would personally handle any future problems.
-
- "It would seem to me that they are now finally accepting
responsibility and that's what I wanted in the first place," the father
said.
-
- The family had fought for four months before the soldier's
rank was reinstated in September.
-
- John Alford knew his son might not live long enough to
get the good news, so he had already told him a "white lie" that
he had been vindicated.
-
- "It was very important to him because he kept saying,
'I didn't do anything wrong, Daddy.'"
-
- © 2003 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights
Reserved.
-
- http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/7323975.htm
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