Well, this isn’t exactly a  “remove before flight” checklist with the red ribbons of old so much as a “Rule Out” medical checklist. At our age, some of these disabilities can be attributed to other extraneous causes besides AO-but not many. Deciding whether service connection for exposure to the Rainbow herbicides is deserved has become a decades-long work in progress. Witness the unwillingness by VASEC Wilkie to include the newest batch of diseases like Parkinson’s-like disease which I have. Or hypertension, hypothyroidism, bladder cancer and a slew of others which the NIH have already signed off on. You don’t need a PhD to grasp what the problem is – it’s money. VA higher-ups have to be paid and especially those folks at the top who would go elsewhere for even higher salaries if they could. What I question is if these SES types are such hot properties, how did James Byrne from the OGC,  McDonald, Shulkin and all the others end up on the ash heap of history? Perhaps there s a no deposit/no return philosophy afoot here. 

Anyway, here’s the checklist. I advise you to perform all these tests outdoors to avoid any fractious interchanges with the better half. Mind you, these are informally validated test protocols…

AO Test #:

1. Go outside and pee in the garden. If ants (colonial hymenopterous insects) gather rapidly, file for Diabetes Mellitus Type II pronto. DC 7913.

2. If you pee and it never makes it past your shoes horizontally, file for prostate cancer muy pronto. DC 7528

3. If the pee smells like a barbecue, file for Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD or CAD) rapidement- DC 7005. Your LDL cholesterol numbers are probably waaaaay off the map due to all that AO exposure doing those Zippo/village sweeps up in the central highlands of  I Corps back in ’68. Well, that or all those McDonald’s sweeps the last 20 years or so but I’d keep that one to myself.

4. If  your wrist (wrists plural if you’re ambidextrous) feel numb while aiming and relieving yourself (indoors or out), file for both late onset peripheral neuropathy (PN) or PN secondary to the Diabetes (follow instructions for ant test above in #`1 first). Dépêchez vous! Immédiatement! DC 7114 or DC 8513. Check DC 8520 for lower extremities, too.

5. If you return inside after the above tests and the wife or significant other addresses the fact that Winky is still walking point, file for cognitive dysfunction secondary to Parkinson’s Disease (Paralysis Agitans) at your soonest. DC 8004