Mohave Daily News 12/02/06

The Daily News

MOHAVE VALLEY - He grew up the only white kid on his block in a black neighborhood with a soaring homicide rate. He was robbed at gunpoint four times and dropped out of high school during his freshman year. There was little discipline at home - where he says he was both beaten and sexually molested - and he rebelled by ditching school and experimenting with drugs. No one could tell him what to do, he thought.

Weekends were spent playing ball and fighting on the streets, roaming the parts of Jamaica, Queens, that he called home. New York City was so big it was its own self-contained universe, and he couldn't imagine what lay outside its limits.

But Ken Eisenberg knew he had to escape the city before something bad happened. He wanted a career and longed for adventure, craving the structure and discipline he never had.

At 21 he enlisted in the U.S. Army, ignoring his mother's warning that his rebellious attitude would get him into trouble.

He was driven to make a new start. This was his chance to get straight and do well. He jumped at any opportunity to shine and the Army rewarded him with leadership awards and rapid promotions. He became a top student and got his GED, rising from private to sergeant in his first three years of service. He'd found something he was good at and he was finally succeeding.

When he choose to re-enlist he took the maximum time offered - 6 years.

He became a nuclear biological chemical specialist and learned to decontaminate and inspect areas in the event of biological warfare. He trained others to survive in a chemical environment. He said it was ironic, looking back, that he trained soldiers to survive something he wouldn't be able to escape himself in Iraq.

He spent two years in the late 1980s guarding the border of a divided Germany, stationed in a small town surrounded by farmlands and wide-open spaces that were ideal for field training. He met his future wife - a shy raven-haired woman who worked at a local toy store - and took in foreign cultures during weekend trips to France and Belgium.

When it was time to leave Germany for his station in Fort Hood, Texas, the couple had been together less than a year. He promised to send for her when he found an apartment.

But before he could return to Texas, Iraq invaded Kuwait and his post was on alert to leave for Saudi Arabia. The couple canceled the plans they made and she promised to wait for him. Even though her family told her not to trust another American soldier, and even though she'd been wronged before.

He left for Saudi Arabia in 1990 and waited for word to invade, training and doing drills in the endless sand.

He saw no man-made objects for months as his unit camped near the border, watching the Iraqi soldiers through binoculars. The Iraqi Army dug their tanks into the sand so only the gun tubes were left exposed, and filled deep trenches with fuel to ignite during attack. They pointed their artillery in his direction.

He watched them prepare and thought about the war, imagining what it would be like until the wait got so long he was tired of not knowing if he'd live or die. He wanted to know now, and would beg to fight and get the inevitable over with.

When his unit was sent into battle, he was a sergeant attached to a tank unit moving toward Baghdad. The tanks formed a V as they advanced and he was in the middle, sitting on top of a toolbox in a bouncing Humvee going 40 miles an hour. There were times he jumped out of the vehicle and collapsed in pain on the sand, working his knees before he could get up again. The terrain was hard and every rock made the Humvee jump, shooting sparks of pain up his spine. He suspects that's how his current knee and back problems began - one of the many health problems he's battled since the war.

When a ceasefire came, he felt disappointed. He'd been pumped-up to fight and his adrenaline was flowing, and now he felt let down. He couldn't stand himself afterwards, thinking he came to Iraq wanting peace but also being disappointed when the fighting was over.

Back in Texas he couldn't sleep. He often felt exhausted, irritable and anxious. The mental issues were harder to deal with than the physical symptoms - flashbacks, not knowing who you are anymore and coming to grips with life outside combat. Bullets weren't the only things that could bring hardships in war, he said.

He told his superiors about his problems and asked for help, but they kept putting him off. He couldn't face war games and felt dread, his heart pounding and his nerves frazzled. He went into the emergency room that night but doctors didn't think he was suicidal and told him to return to his unit.

"The Army is not in the compassion business," he was told. "Your place is with your unit and that's where you'll go."

He couldn't sleep the night before his next field training exercise, trying to pump himself up and telling himself he could do it. But when morning came, he couldn't.

The girlfriend he met in Germany now lived in an apartment near his post and he went to tell her what happened. She wasn't thrilled but understood his condition. In a panic, he packed up and drove from Texas back to his home in New York.

He went absent without leave, but it wasn't an easy decision to make. There's no shame in breaking a leg, he explained, but admitting you're crippled by psychological stress isn't easy, especially after six years in the military.

A few weeks later reality hit him and he knew he had to return to Texas and face what he'd done. His unit was sympathetic and offered to separate him from service. He was stripped down to the lowest rank and granted a discharge under other than honorable conditions.

BATTLING THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

Eisenberg moved to Mohave Valley in the early 1990s and got a job at a Laughlin casino. He felt good about leaving his Army days behind him and moving on with his life.

Then the pain in his hands made it impossible to deal cards, and he got a job in management. Later his anxiety grew and he struggled to leave the house. He had problems with memory and coordination.

He quit his job after more than a decade in the casino business and apologized to his co-workers, saying he'll miss them.

His symptoms grew more persistent. He thought if his body hurt before and his nerves were bad, that at least his brain was still sharp. But now he struggled with short-term memory loss and had problems with keeping balance. He grew clumsy and often bumped into things. He had to write himself notes to remember simple tasks.

In 2001, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 brought back terrifying memories of war and fire. He became withdrawn and lost contact with family and friends, staying indoors and rarely answering the phone. The insomnia was hardest to deal with. He sometimes thought if he banged his head against the wall maybe he'd knock himself out and finally get some peace.

He did some research and found a study published in the American Journal of Public Health that showed soldiers who were near Khamisiyah, Iraq, in March 1991 were twice as likely to get brain cancer than other Desert Storm veterans.

The health risk came from sarin, a highly toxic nerve agent produced for chemical warfare. During the Gulf War, U.S. troops destroyed a large storage complex at Khamisiyah that housed more than 1,500 unmarked rockets loaded with the chemical. The troops that performed the demolition were unaware of the agent's presence and were exposed to low levels of sarin and cyclosarin. It would be another five years before the Pentagon made public that the site had contained nerve gas.

Eisenberg suspected his symptoms came from his time in the Gulf. In 2005, he was one of more than 100,000 Gulf War veterans estimated through Department of Defense exposure modeling to have been exposed to low levels of sarin.

But he says it could have been the antidote shots he received for anthrax and nerve agents that are causing his symptoms. Or it could have been breathing smoke from the burning oil wells. Or the depleted uranium used in tank and machine-gun bullets that produce toxic combustion products when impacting hard targets. Or it could have been a combination of factors.

Unemployed with no medical coverage, Eisenberg had no medical benefits from the Army because of his discharge. He filed a claim over a year ago for medical coverage and disability compensation, and filed to upgrade his discharge to honorable.

He was turned down for medical coverage because of the nature of his discharge, which is still being reviewed. His disability compensation was denied because officials said they could not locate his medical records.

His visit to the emergency room, and everything else he needed to substantiate his claim, was lost. He was told his symptoms couldn't be traced back to his service.

His benefits counselor - who once said there was no way he could loose his claim - was devastated at the news and said the claim had no hope without the medical records.

He went to a local doctor to prove he had the symptoms, but was refused. He suspects the doctor didn't want to get involved or that he lacked experience with Gulf War symptoms.

In the meantime his car is getting repossessed and the strain between his wife is growing. Although she's supportive, he sometimes imagines what she thinks in the back of her mind.

But mostly he's afraid he'll get denied again. He feels rejected and sick, but doesn't want to take painkillers the rest of his life. He wants to get well.

"I went, I fought a war, came back and I had a problem. I did what I was supposed to do (by telling superiors about the symptoms). Now the problems are becoming insurmountable," he said. "They blow you off and blow you off until you screw up or go away. I don't know what I'll do if I get turned down one more time. I'll be done."

Despite his frustrations, Eisenberg hopes something positive can come from his experiences and that going public will raise awareness and help the next generation of soldiers.

He worries what will happen when another wave of soldiers - who are currently in Iraq - return home. And what will happen to those with injuries less obvious than wounds or lost limbs.

"The ones getting psychological problems that are harder to see, those will be the ones," he said. "We have to change the stigma around post traumatic stress disorder. There's no shame in injury, but stress and trauma - why can't it be psychological injury? Injury like anything else?"