VVA FACES OF AGENT ORANGE: DAN GRIFFIN
He said Agent Orange came to mind immediately when Shannon began having health problems.
“I made the Agent Orange connection pretty much as soon as she started having problems,” he said. “One (child) born while I was in Vietnam, and she’s fine; the second, born after Vietnam, and she’s not fine. It wasn’t too hard for me to come up with a connection there.”
“She’s a prisoner of war,” Dan said. “She’s a POW of the Vietnam War.”
His battle now is on behalf of Shannon. She is 38 years old. Her quality of life is poor. She is always tired, always beset with fevers. Her father said she’s been diagnosed with Hansen’s (leprosy); Sjogren's syndrome (an autoimmune disease); Mitral valve prolapse (when the valve between the heart’s left upper chamber and the left lower chamber doesn’t close properly); Raynaud’s disease (discoloration of the extremities caused by blood vessel spasms, resulting in cold and lack of sensation in the fingers and toes); and “saddle nose.”
“She’s gone to just about every specialist there is, and most of them say, ‘Well, we’re just not sure,’” he said. “One disease is disintegrating the cartilage in the hip, ankle, heart, and nose. The nose is gone. Basically, she doesn’t have a nose.
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