Tony Munro was a healthy 27-year-old Air Force veteran enjoying civilian life in Arizona’s copper country when the event that would shape the rest of his life unfolded. 

He was not long out of the service, having been discharged in 1973 after a four-year stint as an airplane-propeller mechanic. Like many young men of that era, he’d spent a year in Vietnam at the U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay, repairing C-7 Caribou transport planes and, on occasion, others.

One November morning in 1977, Munro was at breakfast with co-workers from the Globe branch of the Valley National Bank when he suddenly felt “woozy.” A wave of heat flashed over him. Then, a severe, overwhelming pain developed in his abdomen. He collapsed.

He woke up two days later: “I was at the hospital, laying in bed, tubes all around me, pumps all around me, and my brother was sitting at the foot of the bed, and I said to him, ‘What a lousy breakfast I had this morning.’” 

It was worse than he thought. Doctors had discovered a large tumor on the left side of Munro’s liver. It had ruptured, and two-thirds of the blood in Munro’s body had pooled in his stomach, medical records show. Surgeons cut out the tumor, removed a portion of the left lobe of Munro’s liver and drained the blood from his stomach. 

“It was very, very overwhelming,” Munro said. “I remember to this day, the noise, the beeping that was going on, all the machines. It was very hard.” 

Liver cancer was extremely rare in the U.S. at that time, so much so that Munro’s discharge paperwork simply listed “malignant hepatoma,” or cancer of a liver cell, as the reason for emergency surgery. 

“They couldn’t figure out what was wrong,” Munro said.

A year later, Munro experienced severe pain again, like a belt pulled tight across his stomach.

The cancer was back — this time on the right side of his liver. Doctors said there wasn’t much they could do for him. He’d already had a large portion of his liver removed. Cutting more wasn’t an option.

They told him, “The only thing we can do for you is to give you medication to ease the pain, and eventually in five or six months you’ll pass away,” Munro recalled.

MORE: The faces of Arizona’s Vietnam fallen: All present and accounted for

Living on borrowed time

That was nearly 40 years ago. Today, Munro is alive and living in Sun City.

But he has since endured an endless string of battles to try to prove to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs that his ongoing health problems are directly linked to his exposure in the Air Force to Agent Orange.

The U.S. military sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange over the jungles of Vietnam to thin out the dense foliage. Dioxin, a component of the chemical mixture, is now known to be carcinogenic.

Munro can’t pinpoint a specific incident where he came into contact with the defoliant, but he is sure he was exposed to it during his time in Vietnam. Everyone who served there was exposed one way or another, he said.

“You don’t have to just touch it to be exposed,” Munro said. “You just had to be in the environment and in the area.”

Munro recalls repairing C-123 Providers, which sprayed Agent Orange over the jungles. But “whether I can confirm 100 percent that that plane I worked carried the Agent Orange, no I couldn’t say that.” 

Regardless of when or where it happened, there is no doubt in Munro’s mind that exposure to Agent Orange caused his hepatocellular carcinoma and decades of related medical problems.

He had no history of serious medical problems or precursor diseases to liver cancer, such as hepatitis or cirrhosis damage, prior to the malignant tumor developing, medical records show.

Veterans who have experienced health problems linked to Agent Orange exposure are eligible to receive service-connected disability payments from the federal government. 

Munrofirst filed to receive compensation for his cancer in 1980, but the VA denied his claim because the government doesn’t officially recognize liver cancer as a condition linked to Agent Orange exposure.

He has tried to reopen his claim six times since 1980. Each time, he has been denied, despite decades of medical records and written statements from doctors who believe Agent Orange caused his cancer.

New problems arise

Munro refused to accept the death sentence doctors handed him in 1979. 

He sought a second opinion from two doctors whowere able to officially diagnose Munro with hepatocellular carcinoma, a form of liver cancer that commonly develops in people with chronic hepatitis.

Dr. Arthur Beaufils and Dr. Bernard Kabakow recognized a pattern among other young men who inexplicably developed this type of cancer without a prior history of hepatitis or cirrhosis. All of them had served in Vietnam or Southeast Asia at some point and likely had been exposed to Agent Orange. 

Before that diagnosis, Munro hadn’t connected any dots between his service and his medical problems. 

“Then, I knew what was going on,” Munro said. “I realized what had happened.”

Munro successfully received an experimental chemotherapy and his cancer was declared in remission.

But he continued to have health issues, and they all related to his cancer.  

“Everything goes back to my liver cancer,” Munro said. “Every time there is a problem, that’s the first thing doctors think about.”

In 1985, Munro had emergency surgery to reroute the blood flow from his kidney to his spleen after vessels in his esophagus ruptured and caused internal bleeding, medical records show. Increased blood pressure, which caused the blood vessels to burst, likely was a complication of the 1977 surgery that removed a portion of his liver. 

Then, Munro was diagnosed with hepatitis B in 1989. Doctors suspected he contracted the disease from a blood transfusion during his 1985 emergency surgery, since the disease did not appear in any test results prior to then, medical records show. 

In 2007, lesions were discovered on Munro’s liver for the third time. He is now being monitored, with annual imaging of his liver to watch the growth of the lesions to determine if he’ll need a liver transplant. 

Four years ago, Munro was diagnosed with hypertension, believed to be caused by the numerous operations on his liver that altered his blood flow.

Claim, denial, repeat

Through it all, the VA has refused to rule that the precipitating factor — his liver cancer — was service related.

After Munro’s initial application for compensation was denied in 1980, he unsuccessfully tried to reopen his case again in June 1994, April 1997, April 2002, June 2005 and August 2007.

The VA rejected Munro’s initial claim on grounds that there was not enough evidence linking Agent Orange exposure to his condition, nor proofthat he was even exposed to the defoliant during his service, agency records show. 

Since then, the law surrounding Agent Orange compensation has changed.

The federal government acknowledges the widespread likelihood of exposure, so much so that “veterans who served anywhere in Vietnam between January 9, 1962, and May 7, 1975, are presumed to have been exposed to herbicides,” the Agent Orange Act of 1991 states.

Following that ruling, the VA started to provide compensation for a list of conditions that had a demonstrated tie to Agent Orange exposure, including respiratory cancers, prostate cancer, soft tissue sarcomas, lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease. 

Liver cancer is not on that list. So Munro has been continuously denied compensation. 

As his health continued to deteriorate over the years, Munro applied for compensation for his kidney-spleen shunt, hepatitis B and hypertension as secondary conditions caused by his cancer treatment. These claims were outright denied because the VA never recognized his primary claim of cancer as a service-connection disability, records show.

MORE: VA expands Agent Orange disability benefits

Even if a claim is denied, veterans can argue their case before the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and present evidence to demonstrate a tie between their condition and Agent Orange. 

Although a few veterans have recently won compensation for Agent Orange-related liver cancer, the VA has not updated the list of recognized conditions to include hepatocellular carcinoma, forcing each veteran to argue his or her claim on a case-by-case basis.

In 2009, the appellate board granted a veteran from Arkansas compensation after ruling his liver cancer developed in relationship to Agent Orange exposure during his service. Doctors stated that his cancer, like Munro’s, had developed without a history of hepatitis or cirrhosis, records show.

In 2012 and 2014, the appeals board granted the spouses of deceased veterans accrued compensation after determining their cause of death was liver cancer that had developed in relationship to Agent Orange exposure, according to board records.

MORE:  WWII vet scammed out of $43,000

The last appeal

Nonetheless, Munro noted, “They’re denying my case, which I don’t understand.” 

In 2009, Munro sought to reopen his last rejected claim. Seven years later, the Board of Veterans Appeals ruled to hear his case again.

Munro sent all of his records and researchto Dr. Joseph Galati, medical director of the Houston Methodist Hospital’s Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation. Galati concluded Munro’s claim had substance. He wrote a letter that was sent to the appellate board.

“Considering there was exposure to Agent Orange, that raises the high probability that Agent Orange, and its component, dioxin, is the likely culprit for this highly aggressive and yet unusual tumor that developed within several years of your exposure to it,” Galati wrote. “Considering there is no other outstanding plausible reason for this to have developed, I am rather confident that your exposure to this herbicide was a major contributing factor.”

The appeals board is now reviewing Munro’s case, but there isn’t a deadline of when they will rule on it. 

This will likely be the last time he makes his case, he Munro said.

“After the last filing I’ve done, if nothing happens, that’s it. That’s the end of it because I don’t have any more options,” Munro said.

An altered life

Munro’s health problems have exacted a toll.

Though he was married in 1985, he and his wife, Cynthia, realized having children wasn’t possible for them. 

“The doctors mentioned to me that, because of my exposure, because of what had happened with people having children with abnormalities, it was not a good idea for me to have children,” Munro said.

As his medical issues stacked up, Munro also was forced to leave his job with Valley National Bank in 1990.

“I just couldn’t function at work anymore,” Munro said. “So I just decided I was going to quit and take care of myself.”

He has since relied on financial assistance from his family, income from his wife’s job, and since 2012, the Social Security income he began to draw. 

“I did not want to believe the fact that because I was in the military, and they made the decision to use Agent Orange, it’s affected my life to the point that my life would never be what it could’ve been,” Munro said. “Every decision that I make, I have to make it based off of what happened to me so it doesn’t come back again — because I am living on borrowed time.” 

CLOSE

Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini and reporter Richard Ruelas discuss a group of Vietnam Vet pilots seeking compensation for health issues that may be related to their exposure to Agent Orange.
The Republic | azcentral.com

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