 It was very, very hot and the air was accurate, like the very first thing I write about is my throat and my eyes stinging from just this rotten smell. I believe that the next day my journal entry said, this place is toxic. DOD documented what was there and they documented what possibly could happen to people and there had been some people that had gotten mildly ill while they were at K2, all that was documented. Very quickly classified, they put a handful of places off limits and the mission continued. You know, there was things that just, that weren't right. We knew something was up, there was certainly a lot of rumours, but there were also warning signs and I'm sure you've seen the pictures of the warning signs saying, don't go there. You know, radiation hazard and I, you know, clearly did have some concern about it. We weren't getting shot at, you know, or our aircraft were departing and returning relatively safely and I think we saw it as an okay trade-off at the time. My husband, Clayton White, was a tech sergeant in the United States Air Force. He was active duty Air Force for four years. He got out and went to school, was an active reservist and when 9-11 hit, he was activated and recalled. He worked in a haze, the hardened aircraft shelter, part of his, you know, his career field, his work was there and he was removed. They were removed by people in hazmat suits because there was an active leak of a Russian weapon beneath the sand, but they were readily assured that there was nothing wrong despite everybody having respirators, full suits on and then being told to evacuate immediately. They exercised on a dedicated exercise track that had radioactive signs next to it, you know, and so they not only were working in this environment, they were living there, they were exercising, they were eating. I know that the waters were contaminated. They would dig about three feet down, those holes would fill with black fluid, black goo that had a very distinct smell, it was definitely a petroleum smell, but then something else, but that was the soil under our feet. Those toxins were in the ground and most importantly, they were in the air because when we got there, this was an open grassy site for the most part, so they bulldozed, combat engineers came in, they moved all that earth away, they moved all those things that had been in the ground. The pond that formed from this earth movement was called Skittle's Ponds by the time I got there in 2003 because it changed colors during the time of day, depending on how much it rained, depending on which way the wind was blowing. We never got a clear answer, we had one flight surgeon who just was like, it's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing to see here. And then another flight surgeon who's like, didn't really want to say anything, but we all kind of had, we called it the Karsi Kred. We all had a cough and were a little short breath, fatigue, headaches. The big joke when I was there amongst the people that I knew was that I hope you're done having kids, so we knew, we knew just from being there that it was hazardous. When he got off the plane from the first deployment, he, like his watch was spinning on his wrist. He was a fraction of the weight he was when he left. He looked like a shell of a person. You could tell that he came back a totally different person. And you know, hindsight, of course, that was the beginning of the end, health-wise. Started with the headaches, the migraines, the concentration issues, and then started having seizures subsequent to that. It's just a cascading thing, one thing led to another. He was so happy, he had sense of humor, he was so kind, and I watched that light burn out of his eyes for so many years. Every other month I was suffering from, because it was primarily just on my right side, suffering from discomfort for three or four days that would end in pain. There are a lot of small studies, nothing super definitive, that environmental exposures, toxic exposure, can lead to hormonal imbalances that not only lead to the types of painful experiences I experienced basically chronically since late 2004. But those same imbalances and tissue growths and that sort of thing can potentially lead to PCOS and order cancer, ovarian cancer, which is obviously pretty scary. I was 26 when I was at K2, 25 and 26, and I'm healthy, right? I'm marathoner, ultramarathoner, cyclist, surfer, yoga, try to eat right. My BMI is perfect, and my thyroid died when I was 27, and I was diagnosed with IBS when I was 30, and I was diagnosed with osteoporosis when I was 43. I take about 18 pills a day is where I'm at, to stave off the apocalypse. There's so many things that it devastated for so many years, and when we found out we were pregnant, the twinkle that had burned out in his eye for so many years started to come back. And so that's one reason I thought it was so unfathomable that he was actually gone that morning. Anything that I know he would enjoy so much while I'm happy to be there and so excited to be with my daughter, I'm sad at the same time. So there's really no joy, you know, you're robbed of joy, you're robbed of the happiness. There's a complete vacancy. The real human toll here is that you have children being raised without mothers or fathers. You're having people that cannot have children. You have people that have chronic disorders that have no obvious cause but also have no cure. Senior VA scientists testified to Congress that these toxic exposure claims couldn't be proven because the necessary data wasn't available. Well, no kidding. There's going to be major gaps in this information. We can't go back in time and undo that. But I expect them to do at least as well as I was expected to do as a captain in advising my senior leadership about, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly and what risks we were putting our personnel at and what I thought they should do about it. Sometimes we just have to make the call and I think the call here is pretty clear. They're not going to do it unless they have to, unless you codify that, unless you make it a presumptive. So do the study. In the meantime, err on the side of the veteran that's otherwise you're going to have people that are going to be like me in the loophole. At 45 years old, there's no reason for me to have the diseases that I have, none. Can I prove it? No. And I shouldn't have to. That toxic exposures and diseases like these don't allow for is time. You know, he's not one of the listed as one of the ones who died as a result of their service. And to me, that's a travesty. We'll never forget him. I mean, just the other day, I told my daughter that she was eating her cereal the way her dad did, like satsangi. She wanted me to be sure in our prayers, tell God to tell her dad that she eats her cereal the same way. You know, he would have just been so proud of her. She is so much like him, and it's just such a loss. She won't, she doesn't know the loss to the degree at this point in time, but it will be in the long run. And I just want all of those who've lost their lives for K2 to be acknowledged and recognized. The basic terms of service when you sign up is that you're going to give all the way up to and including your life, but they're going to take care of you and your family, and they're not honoring their end of the bargain. And I'll be damned if I be quiet.