LEJEUNE IN 1973
T he efforts of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to contact parents brought a grim awakening for some, and the hope of answers for many.
Mike Gros had joined the Navy for one reasonâhe needed help paying for medical school. Little did he know when he made the decision in the early 1970s that it would doom him to a lifetime of medical trauma. 1
Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s, Gros knew he wanted to become a doctor, possibly a psychiatrist, but he was good with his hands so he ultimately decided he should do something involving surgery. His family was not wealthy, so he worked his way through Trinity University in his hometown, living with his parents to save on room and board. He then signed up for a health professions scholarship in which the Navy would payfor medical school on a one-for-one basisâfor each year of school, the student would owe a year of active duty.
While earning his MD at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Gros met his future wife, Janie, then a part-time secretary in the psychiatry department at Methodist Hospital. They were married the week after he graduated from Baylor and spent their honeymoon driving through Virginia to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, where he would do his internship and residency in the obstetrics and gynecology department.
When it came time to pick a duty station in 1980, Gros, who had a one-year-old son by that time, decided to ask for a family-friendly location on the mainland, thinking this preferable to one of the overseas bases, where security and safety issues always lurked in the background. He also knew some of the Ob/Gyn staff at the Camp Lejeune hospital from his time in Portsmouth, so he put the North Carolina base at the top of his Navy âdream sheet.â His request was granted, and he and his wife and son, Andy, moved to the base in July 1980.
Life seemed good in the comfortable officersâ quarters on Hospital Point, overlooking a marina in the New River. At no time, Gros said, did he or his wife suspect that anything was wrong with the water provided by the Hadnot Point treatment plant, even though tests conducted the year they arrived showed a heavy presence of solvents in wells serving that water system. âThere were no taste or smell abnormalities,â he said later. âThatâs the sinister side to thisâa million people would never know they were drinking contaminated water.â Gros had an especially high exposure level. As a hospital physician, he was scrubbing his hands in hot water from Hadnot Point many times each day. Studies show that solvents like TCE evaporate rapidly in hot water, and those who breathe the steam get a dose of chemicals five times more potent than if they drank it, Gros said.
In July 1983, after three years at Lejeune, the Gros familyânow with two young boysâmoved off the base to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Mike started a hospital fellowship at the invitation of a doctor there who had trained some of the residents at Camp Lejeune. But it wasnât long before he and Janie were headed back to Texas, where they always knew they would settle down. Mike set up his own Ob/Gyn practice in the Cy-Fair area of Houston, with Janie as his office manager, and eventually he joined with three other obstetricians in a partnership that lasted twenty years, he said. âIt made life enjoyable not to be on call all the time,â he said.
In 1997, Gros decided he was overdue for a checkup. âI felt fine but hadnât done one in a long time, so I went in for full blood work and a urine test.â The results were startling. His white blood cell count showed a deficiency of the granular lymphocytes that gobble up bacteria and too many of the kind of lymphocytes that arenât needed as much. âI was flipped,â Gros said. âI repeated the test in a month and found the same thing.â Gros took
T he efforts of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to contact parents brought a grim awakening for some, and the hope of answers for many.
Mike Gros had joined the Navy for one reasonâhe needed help paying for medical school. Little did he know when he made the decision in the early 1970s that it would doom him to a lifetime of medical trauma. 1
Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s, Gros knew he wanted to become a doctor, possibly a psychiatrist, but he was good with his hands so he ultimately decided he should do something involving surgery. His family was not wealthy, so he worked his way through Trinity University in his hometown, living with his parents to save on room and board. He then signed up for a health professions scholarship in which the Navy would payfor medical school on a one-for-one basisâfor each year of school, the student would owe a year of active duty.
While earning his MD at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Gros met his future wife, Janie, then a part-time secretary in the psychiatry department at Methodist Hospital. They were married the week after he graduated from Baylor and spent their honeymoon driving through Virginia to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, where he would do his internship and residency in the obstetrics and gynecology department.
When it came time to pick a duty station in 1980, Gros, who had a one-year-old son by that time, decided to ask for a family-friendly location on the mainland, thinking this preferable to one of the overseas bases, where security and safety issues always lurked in the background. He also knew some of the Ob/Gyn staff at the Camp Lejeune hospital from his time in Portsmouth, so he put the North Carolina base at the top of his Navy âdream sheet.â His request was granted, and he and his wife and son, Andy, moved to the base in July 1980.
Life seemed good in the comfortable officersâ quarters on Hospital Point, overlooking a marina in the New River. At no time, Gros said, did he or his wife suspect that anything was wrong with the water provided by the Hadnot Point treatment plant, even though tests conducted the year they arrived showed a heavy presence of solvents in wells serving that water system. âThere were no taste or smell abnormalities,â he said later. âThatâs the sinister side to thisâa million people would never know they were drinking contaminated water.â Gros had an especially high exposure level. As a hospital physician, he was scrubbing his hands in hot water from Hadnot Point many times each day. Studies show that solvents like TCE evaporate rapidly in hot water, and those who breathe the steam get a dose of chemicals five times more potent than if they drank it, Gros said.
In July 1983, after three years at Lejeune, the Gros familyânow with two young boysâmoved off the base to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Mike started a hospital fellowship at the invitation of a doctor there who had trained some of the residents at Camp Lejeune. But it wasnât long before he and Janie were headed back to Texas, where they always knew they would settle down. Mike set up his own Ob/Gyn practice in the Cy-Fair area of Houston, with Janie as his office manager, and eventually he joined with three other obstetricians in a partnership that lasted twenty years, he said. âIt made life enjoyable not to be on call all the time,â he said.
In 1997, Gros decided he was overdue for a checkup. âI felt fine but hadnât done one in a long time, so I went in for full blood work and a urine test.â The results were startling. His white blood cell count showed a deficiency of the granular lymphocytes that gobble up bacteria and too many of the kind of lymphocytes that arenât needed as much. âI was flipped,â Gros said. âI repeated the test in a month and found the same thing.â Gros took
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