Our Survivor's Story Chapter 1: Safe!

Safe?

They said it like gospel.“It’s safe for human use.” Every time I asked, that’s what came back. Even when I was injured and made ill.  “It’s safe for human use.” From cadre. From instructors. From command. My peers. All the same phrase, like they’d been coached on how to say it. Or all of them? Hypnotized.

The fabric was stiff. It didn’t breathe very well, and for summer weight uniforms, that’s saying something. It smelled, a mix of bitter with sweet – plastic and scent of insecticide – these were said to be safe but something about it clung to the nose, to the lungs and it burned. I wore that prototype ACU for 52 days straight.

Day after day. On average 14 hours or more. Sweating in the heat, in physically demanding settings. Even so, with salt lining them dried from our sweat, they were rarely washed unless muddied or filled with grease, or soot.  I received three pair of treated L-R top and L-R bottoms and cover, my notes record that two of three sets were laundered just 3 times and the third set – just twice in that entire 52 day period.

My skin started reacting first. No more than 30 minutes had passed after I first began a rolling sweat in them. Itching, then burning. Rash at the contact points. Spreading, worsening.

Behind the knees. My pelvis, my groin and buttocks. My thighs. Flaring red and angry.

Then came the pins and needles—paresthesia.

A tingling that crept across my skin like goosebumps on poorly covered flesh as if I d walked outside with nothing but my birthday suite on a frost covered morning.

From my neck to my chest, my back to my groin, down my legs to my feet and back again – up and down my arms. Random muscle groups began twitching buzzing like a cell phone set to vibrate laid on a desk.  Then cramping.  Cramps like never before.  Electric bolts traveling my legs and arms – my heart racing.  My sinuses raging. Nauseated, with some difficulty walking without looking a bit drunk, a head ache that came and never left.

I asked for sick call. They said, “You’ll be fine.” Then never took me to an official sick call.

I asked the medics again and again for sick call. They said, “It’s normal.  They’re safe for human use. Take this Benadryl and Tylenol and rack out early. Drink water.”

They checked the progression or lack of thereof – for my symptoms and allergic dermatitis, logging these each time they did.   Check-ins fell off quickly, until I would fall out again, and then again. 

Each time the same false promises followed, the same treatment regimen. 

They said it wouldn't last, but it did.   They told me to push through it, so I did. I was a soldier. I knew the mission came first.

But something else was happening—something deeper than dehydration or overtraining, something different than heat exhaustion, and far more complex than dermatitis.

I was losing coordination. Balance. Clarity. And when no one was looking, I started writing it all down.

Every symptom. Every change. I logged it all, not because anyone asked me to—but because I knew no one else would.

From the moment I saw the spider die.  All of it.  Names, rank, unique physical identifiers, scars, bald spots, birth marks etc.   Then I captured the watchers in my toss away camera – in candid photos I took of myself and my peers.  I duplicated the prints, digitized them and my notes and secured them in bank deposit boxes, with confidants no one would know of, sealed and dated via usps sent from the postal desk to myself.  The digitals to thumb drives. 

Then, when the cloud came around – to accounts in offshore data storage centers.

But?

They said it was safe for human use.

And yet my body was already telling a different story—one of systemic stress, immune disruption, and something no one wanted to name: neurotoxicity, carcinogenesis.

They called it training.But my skin, my nerves, my injuries, illness and my instinct said something else entirely:

This was the start of a war within my flesh and this fabric? It was a weapon. An untested, unregulated one too. It was exposure. Full stop.