For years, they were told, "It's all in your head.

Even before returning home from the first Gulf War, she started to experience the mysterious symptoms that now leave her so debilitated she spends most of her day in a wheelchair.

She has difficulty swallowing; she sticks to soft foods like applesauce. She can't go anywhere without being tethered to her oxygen cart.

Every six weeks or so, Botox is injected into her arm muscles. "Otherwise, my hands cramp up and I can't use them," she said.

Every day, she asks herself, "What's wrong with me?" Getz, 57, moved to Dayton to take care of her 86-year-old mother, Dorothy. Instead, her mother is taking care of her.

"I went to a psychologist who told me I'm doing this all to myself," said Getz, one of the Dayton Daily News' 2004 Ten Top Women. She was honored for her community volunteer work and her service as an operating nurse on the USNS Mercy, a U.S. Navy hospital ship, during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Study after government study pointed to psychological factors for the mysterious gauntlet of symptoms known as Gulf War Illness: chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivity, loss of muscle control, diarrhea, migraines, dizziness, memory loss, loss of balance.

"Wartime stress" was the official explanation. But Dave Meiring of St. Marys knew that couldn't be true. Visits to a neurologist showed a disturbing trend: His brain was shrinking. "I get frustrated with eating because someone has to move my food dish because my hands were shaking so much, I'm afraid to spill it," he said.

His wife, Deb, has seen a dramatic deterioration in the four years since their marriage. When they got married, he held a factory job; now, he can't hold his dinner plate. "He can't drive because he gets lost and confused where he is," she said. "He was very independent, and I have to do everything now."

Doctors tried to attribute the change to a learning disability, she said: "Excuse me? This is a guy who could rewire a tank. He's 37 years old!"

By government estimates, 80,000 veterans of the 700,000 U.S. military personnel deployed during the 1991 Gulf War have reported symptoms in the years following the war.

Finally, last month, a federal panel of medical experts studying Gulf War Illness rejected past findings. The Research Advisory Committee concluded that many veterans suffer from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic substances, including pesticides, the nerve gas sarin and the anti-nerve gas drug pyridostigmine bromide.

On Nov. 12, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi announced that the VA will set aside $15 million this fiscal year for research into Gulf War Illness. It will no longer fund studies investigating stress as the primary cause.

"I'm ecstatic," said Gulf War veteran Will Thiery of Englewood. "At last, somebody was listening to the veterans."

Thiery's 722-page medical file contains what he believes to be irrefutable symptoms of Gulf War Illness: memory loss, seizures, blackouts, chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivity, unexplained rashes and blisters.

In an interview a week before the announcement, Thiery predicted it would take another 15 to 20 years for the government to acknowledge Gulf War Illness. "It's the Agent Orange of the Gulf War," he said. "It took those gentlemen 30 years to be compensated."

Thiery said veterans aren't looking for big monetary awards or some kind of Gulf War lottery. "We just want this to be acknowledged for what it is," he said. "We don't want to be lied to any more. And we want help in getting better."

Until recently, there was only one place where Getz, Meiring and Thiery met with anything but skepticism: the Gulf War support group they belonged to at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

"When I started the group five years ago, no one would admit there was such a thing as Gulf War Syndrome," said clinical therapist Balla-Rena Jones. "Yet here you have this young man who's 18, lean and mean, and by the time he's 25 and he can't move, his bones and joints ache. And you're telling them it's all in their heads?"

There wasn't one among the support group veterans who didn't take a cocktail of pills, who didn't suffer from illnesses that went far beyond their post-traumatic stress disorder. She won their trust, Jones said, "because I believed them. For the first time, someone validated what they were experiencing."

Jones said the veterans have won an important victory — and not only for themselves. "The '91 guys have pushed and pushed for this," she said. "They've paved the way to get treatment for themselves, and the guys who are coming home now."

That's important to Getz, who is depressed about the limitations in her life. "I'd do anything to get back on a bike, I'd do anything to get back to work," she said." The things I've done my entire life have been cut off."

She's especially concerned about the veterans serving in the Gulf today, who have been over there so much longer. "If they're never going to do something for us, I hope they do something for them," she said.

At the very least, returning soldiers will never be told, "It's all in your head."