Another Brave Fight

Bravest battles to beat 9/11 ills
Denis Hamill

A sign on his locker at Engine Co. 234 in Crown Heights reads: "I will be back."
Firefighter John McNamara, 41, posted that promise after he was diagnosed on June 28 with line-of- duty, Ground-Zero-related liver, colon and stomach cancer.

Then he went home to his wife, Jennifer, who is 6-months pregnant with their first child.
"We already know it's a son," he says. "Jack. Can't wait..."

He has been receiving chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since, with surgery scheduled for the fall. But he is not sitting around feeling sorry for himself.
No, this Sept. 11 victim's name is McNamara and he's determined to lead a band of FDNY brothers not yet diagnosed with 9/11 cancer to get early warnings about their illnesses with full-body CAT scans.

"It's great that people who worked down on the Pile are finally getting their lungs checked," says McNamara, who was assigned to Ladder 123 in Crown Heights on Sept. 11. "But that's not enough. The carpenters, iron workers, and detectives unions are all getting their people full-body CAT scans. So should the 6,000 firemen who worked on Ground Zero who are still on the job."

McNamara thinks everyone who worked at Ground Zero should get full-body CAT scans. "Cops, nurses, volunteers, truck drivers, everybody," he says. "I'm out on a line-of-duty injury. The department has been great to me. Dr. Kerry Kelly at the medical office has been great.

"The guys, hell, they drive me for my chemo, they give me money, they even mow my lawn. I only have one complaint. I don't want other guys to go through what I'm going through if a full-body CAT scan can catch a polyp before it becomes a tumor."

McNamara says the FDNY has rejected full-body CAT scans because they claim it risks too much exposure to radiation.

"I just read an article that said you're exposed to more radiation on a cross-country plane ride than a CAT scan," says McNamara. "And if it's a matter of cost, well there's a place called Inner Imaging in Manhattan that does a full-body scan for $600. Which times 6,000 guys is, like, $3,600,000. If it saves one life, it's worth it on a human level. But it'll also save money. It's gonna cost more than $3,600,000 for my chemo, surgery and hospital stays alone."

McNamara also believes that if money is an issue, some wealthy benefactor will step out of the generous heart of the city to pick up the tab.

"On Sept. 11, it was my day off," McNamara says. "I drove to the firehouse and we arrived at the Trade Center around noon. It was already Armageddon. "It reminded me of the end of 'Planet of the Apes' when the arm of the Statue of Liberty sticks up through the rubble. Here were broken pieces of the twin towers, where I'd delivered a thousand packages as a kid as a messenger, rising from the dust. I stood in a snowstorm of dust. No one knew what the hell to do..."

So they started to dig. And dig. And dig. They dug for months in that deadly dust until it started to kill them.

McNamara clocked over 500 hours in alternating 12-hour shifts. Breathing in, breathing out. Planting the seeds of cancer.

"A day on, a day off," he says. "Most of us worked a lot of our days off, too."
In that patriotic time, their government lied to them, told them that the air they were sucking into their lungs - filled with poisons that went into the circulatory system, penetrating the lymph nodes, and bouncing around until they found nice juicy places to grow tumors - was perfectly safe.

The air is always safe in the well-ventilated, wood-paneled rooms of power where the lies are told. Christie Whitman, who ran the federal EPA, resigned, gagging on these blatant lies. As penance, she should be up in Sloan-Kettering emptying bedpans until they put pennies on her eyes.

Tails.

"I grew up in Bensonhurst delivering the Daily News when Son of Sam was out shooting people," says McNamara. "I was terrified at 5:30 a.m. that he was gonna come out of the bushes shooting. I've been in fires that were scary. Sept. 11 was scary.

"The day they told me I had cancer with a baby on the way was scary. What scares me most is that there might be hundreds, maybe thousands more people out there like me who worked on the Pile with time bombs ticking inside of them that could be discovered with a simple full-body CAT scan.

"So, before I get back to work at Engine 234 after my chemo and surgery, I'm gonna do everything I can to get the word out. Please, get checked out. Do it today."

Originally published on August 31, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/dhamill/story/448232p-376983c.html