Staff writer
The words come out in sputters, the halting, deliberate speech of a woman suffering from brain damage.
“I ... wasn’t ... like ... this ... before.”
It’s Sherrie McGahee’s dismissal of a report released last month saying there is no mystery illness known as Gulf War syndrome.
McGahee’s illness mimics the symptoms of muscular sclerosis. Her body shakes. She can no longer walk. Fatigue causes her to take frequent naps. She suffers from depression.
Before she went to war in the Persian Gulf, Army Sgt. McGahee ran a marathon to show the troops she led that — even though she was in her 30s — she could still compete.
McGahee, who lives in Fayetteville, said she doesn’t know what happened once she got to the war theater. She only knows that her body began to deteriorate during her five-month deployment that began in 1990.
Perhaps, McGahee said, it was the drug many soldiers took to protect against nerve gas. Perhaps it was exposure to nerve agents themselves, or to pesticides or even the coal soldiers lit in their tents at night to keep bugs away.
Whatever it was, McGahee and more than 200,000 other soldiers who fought in the first Gulf War insist, it caused their illnesses.
Yet study after study could not pinpoint those illnesses to a specific cause.
The latest study, by the Institute of Medicine, concluded that although there is no mystery illness known as Gulf War syndrome, veterans who fought in the first war are more likely to be stricken with certain ailments.
The report found that 30 percent of Gulf War veterans developed multiple symptoms compared with 16 percent of soldiers who did not serve in the war.
The report confirmed that Gulf War veterans have a higher prevalence of symptoms such as fatigue, memory loss, muscle and joint pain, and difficulty sleeping. It found that these veterans had higher rates of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Strike Lou Gehrig’s desease and the other symptoms sum up McGahee’s suffering.
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