The Veterans Administration recently notified me that I have a medical exam in December for the Agent Orange Registry, at their clinic up the road in Temple. Anyone who served in Vietnam during the American war is eligible for the exam. I applied for VA health care a few months ago, though I have private insurance, because I wanted to cover all the bases, plus get the AO exam, just in case. In case of what? Well, prostate cancer for one. It is one of the most common cancers in men, generally, but is considered service-connected in Vietnam veterans because we have a higher-incidence of it than the general male population. The connection is attributed to exposure to the dioxin in the defoliant Agent Orange. A few days after my VA notice, a classmate from OC 504-68 announced on the email list that he’d been diagnosed with it. Then the surprise "I have it, too" emails started coming in. So I’m getting a private physical, a.s.a.p., just in case. Nothing like hearing about the plight of men your age, in your own peer group, to focus on your own health.
UPDATE: I passed. The private doc said my physical inspection and PSA blood test showed prostate cancer was "not an issue," for this year, anyhow.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 