I have finished all of my treatments and am in the recovery phase. I put in for compensation with the VA. Although BOT is not "presumed" for vets with "boots on the ground" I have seen a few folks fight denials and get compensation. Just wondering if there are any of you out there??

Not sure I understand your question. Are you trying to imply that somehow BOT SCC is related to the Vietnam war?

Were you a tobacco user?

Have you been tested for HPV?

There is a 70+% chance that your BOT SCC was caused by HPV and you may or may not have acquired that during the Vietnam war.

Smoked for about two years. Ages 18 and 19. Have not smoked for over 40 years. Very light user of alcohol. HPV testing was negative. My radiation doctor and my oncologist both wrote letters stating that, although they could not say where my cancer came from, they could not rule out that it was not related to a herbicide. Also, the tissue in the larynx and esophagus, are not dissimilar to the BOT tissue.

I was heavily exposed to Agent Orange in 1967 and 1968 and always felt that one day I would develop cancer. Again, I realize that no one can equivocally state that Agent Orange was the cause but then neither can they state that it was not...

Thanks for asking Dave and I always find your responses to others helpful and informative.

Thank you for your service to our country! I was stationed at Camp LeJuene in the early 70s and they are involved in a drinking water study invoving 1000s of us who used and drank contaminated water from the base dry cleaning company, so far they have admitted to causing numerous tpyes of child hood cancers and are studing whether my cancer was caused by these same contaminates. I lost a good freind last to agent orange caused cancers, he was there in 68-69, I lost my Dad to liver cancer though he never drank and he was there in 68! So keep fighting the Va and good luck. Semper-Fi Bob

Just so you know, units/ individuals that were exposed are well documented. Operation Ranch Hand and others that sprayed agent orange, agent white etc. have had all their flights, date of mission, terrain covered etc. and most importantly units in the area at the time, and in the area post spraying, well documented decades ago when this all came up and went public. The cancer that it is most associated with is lymphoma, and ironically Admiral Zumwalts (the man who OK'ed and ordered the operations), son was a brown water sailor and died from lymphoma as a result of his exposure when in country.

Settlements that I have seen since I started following this decades ago have been very specific to people that DOD records document were in the right areas at the right time, and also developed specific cancers known to be associated with dioxin. Base of tongue cancers I have not seen covered, but I am not the expert on all this. Dioxin is heavily associated with birth defects and besides in the Vietnamese population post war, there have been settlements related to that here in the US in families of Nam vets.

So if you are going to (now well past the major settlement effort time) go into this, be sure that you can document your units and dates, (they already know who was where and when) because that's what they are looking at. You should read "An army waiting to die" when you get time.

You don't say your branch of service or unit, I have some records that might help you from when I explored this, that I might be able to dig up for you, though most of what I have is related to units that I was with in the First Marine Division as a field medical corpsman. Don't know about your tour of duty, but in my 2, I served with several different units, and short time TAD to others, as well as in many different geographic areas in the I Corps near the DMZ.

Good luck John. I may not be the best one to give you this little piece of advice but I wouldn't concentrate to much effort (right now anyway) in trying to find out what caused your SCC. Lets get it cured and then we'll tear up the internet and the government, if we have to to try to find out!!

I second Davids advice.
While there are many agents contributing to cancer, it is only possible to avoid some of them.
There is a chance that there is no smoking gun (chemicals, viruses etc) but just bad luck and/or the genetic makeup.


M

Thanks Bob ... I keep hearing that bird going "bob white, bob white, bob white"...I read about the Camp LeJeune problem and wondered how that was going. Thanks also for your military service. Good luck with your situation. I was in the Army my late brother was a jar-head and my other brother a squid!!!

Thanks for your comments and interest, Brian. I was in the Army. My problem was that I was NCOIC of a Short Range Radio Direction team. I spent my first six months with the 11th Armored Cavalry and my last 12 months with the 1st Infantry Division. My job entailed constant shifting of positions all over III Corp. We usually set up operations with Fire Support Basis, ARVN camps or Special forces camps. Other times, just out in the bush where we could get some coverage from combat troops. I could not tell you (or the VA) where we were operating from at any particular time/date, nor do I think that it would be a matter of record anywhere. We just followed the path of the VC and NVA to get close enough to copy their transmitters and DF them for target practice!! We never operated "inside the wire" because it affected the sensitivity of the loop antenna. We operated mostly around Nui Ba Dhin (sp:) (the Black Virgin Mountain). I spent Tet in Loc Ninh, a fun place to be during Tet. I not only recall times when we were oversprayed but also when the tracks of my APC churned up gas settled in the ground (mostly tear gas though) and God knows what else.....

I certainly know of what you speak about being in areas where you are completely your own and off the farm. The reason I mention it was the attorney that I worked with back in the day of dealing with this, was up against government legal beagles that had data about our unit's position, detailed with reference coordinates, time and dates, and so much more. I kept a journal that was updated daily as I processed and tried to cope and understand what I was in the middle of. But my notes from that journal were not "legal tender" in the argument. When TAD to a ROK marine unit that was short medical staff, we crossed the line into places that our government (who sent us there) was saying we never were. THey denied we were in another non-combatant involved nation for decades after the war. There turned out to be so mush BS and grey area, that I just dropped it after awhile, since I was not actively ill at the time, but only wanted to get on the list in case I developed some crap in the future.

In my own case HPV16 was positively identified in the tissue sample, so for me OC was not part of my military history.... just the nightmares.

When I came back to the world, I was in San Francisco with a writer who had spent some time with our unit while I was really short. We were walking down in Haight-Ashbury (the world was way different in those days), and there was a blind guy selling stuff to get by, on one of the street corners. He had a sign around his neck which read "My days are darker than your nights" After dropping a couple of bucks in is jar, I bent over and said softly to him, buddy, you have no f*&^ing clue how dark my nights are..... The writer laughed and said that was such a good line that he would use it in the future.

There are times when Nam seems the full 40 years ago, and others when it seems like yesterday.

Yes, Brian, I know how you feel. In my job, we pretty much knew, from day to day, where the VC or RVN were, thus we knew where our troops were targeting and inserting.

I was fortunate enough to put the war as behind me as I could. My brother, not so lucky. He spent his life on the street. I spend mine with DoD and USCBP. I sometimes wonder what my legacy will be, if any. Yours is right here in these forums. Thanks for founding this group of folks who, in my book, are the salt of the earth. One could be cynical about the purity of the human race until they share in this forum and see the goodness in the folks who come together here in a sad brotherhood and sisterhood.

I'm cannot honestly say I believe in heaven and hell but if there is a heaven, you will get your reward there.....

My husband was in Nam in 1966-67 and was in the areas heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. He bathed in it and drank it and no pill to make your drinking water safe would probably makes it safe. He was contacted by the Marine Corp years ago and is listed on the Agent Orange registry. His oncologist seems certain that AO is the cause of his BOT cancer since my husband never smoked and barely drank. I don't know if they checked for HPV when they did the biopsy but since I just tested negative for HPV I would doubt that this is the problem. And no he doesn't mess around. So I believe AO could definitely be the cause, look at the onset dates of cancer for all of you. Coincidence?

I was in Viet Nam (Marine Corps) 1966-67 but my primary cancer was on my tonsil with mets to lymphs. I have a list from the VA of 11 medical conditions associated with agent orange including all forms of leukemia, soft tissue sarcoma other than osteosarcoma chondrosarcoma Kaposi's sarcoma or mesothelioma, Hodgkin's diseasem, multiple myeloma, respiratory cancers inc. lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea, non Hodgkin's lymphoma and prostate cancer. Trying to make a claim for any other cancer would be a tough battle.
Best of luck in your battle with cancer and with the VA if you pursue that.

With a 70% chance that HPV is the cause for SCC of the BOT or Tonsils, I would recommend one get tested for HPV before I searched for other unproven causes.

My husband had bot and one of my first thoughts was about the possible contribution of agent orange. Like many of you, I did some research on it but didn't find much. My husband also started smoking when he was in Vietnam so this seemed the more likely culprit. This weekend the Chicago Tribune published a special feature entitled "Agent Orange a Lethal Legacy" on the effects of agent orange. They have an interactive map which shows the spraying missions by year, month and location. It was quite disturbing to see that my husband was there in 1969 in a location where the spraying occurred. I was curious if others on this site had seen any association between oral cancer and agent orange and found this thread. I thought I would post this info for those who are still interested.