Dear Dr. Albaz,
My name is Alula Wright (you can call me “Lu”) and I was referred to you by Rennie Mulcahy because of our shared concern with radiation dangers.
Several years ago, my body swelled up like a balloon. Being half-Chamorro, I tend to be large, but this was ridiculous. After several doctors told me “Diet and Exercise!”, I was at last diagnosed with lymphoma and after debilitating treatments (including a bone marrow transplant that almost killed me) I was pronounced cured. (Of course they didn’t use that word.)
Dr. Albaz, I don’t think it makes me a loose thread on the lunatic fringe that I believe my illness is connected to the chunk of uranium ore that sat on the coffee table in our New Mexico living room the whole time I was growing up. (In New Mexico my mother was usually mistaken for Navajo and in time she decided at last to “pass.” I tell you this only because if you google my name you may find some inaccurate accounts of a controversy and how I applied for a minority scholarship and was exposed for not actually being Navajo. I was/AM a minority. Chamorro! Or Pacific Islander, per the census. I identified myself as a colonized person of color not as a Native American! I was accused without just cause and I don’t want you to come across slurs on my character and reach the unjust conclusion that I am untrustworthy and mendacious.)
It is a fact that throughout my childhood I handled the uranium ore, I played with it. A Geiger counter was my toy.
I hope you’ll agree it was not an extreme reaction that after my near-death experience I purchased a cabin in the Siuslaw National Forest in an area that has been off-limits to toxic spray for decades and which is also 100% cell-tower-free. I eat produce from my own organic garden. I feel my system is already compromised and see no point in unnecessary exposures.
If you don’t mind my taking up so much of your valuable time, a little more background might be helpful to your understanding. My father witnessed atomic tests. He was part of the advance US team on Christmas Island and he’s the one who ordered the drop of hundreds of cotton blouses to cover up the Native women before the arrival of the Brits. He himself had a hankering for Native women or, one of them, as he later married my mother after they met on Guam. He became a mining engineer. Hence, New Mexico and the chunk of ore.
Dr. Albaz, my mother died of hypertension in 1990 and I miss her still. Dad couldn’t bear to stay in the home they’d shared and retired then to Bend here in Oregon. In fact it was his bone marrow I received and I stay at his place during treatment because the commute to my isolated homestead would be impossible. As you can imagine, I can’t really discuss any of my concerns with him. He’s in fine health for a 90-year-old man. But you are a scientist and can tell me if I’m right in assuming radioactivity will surely have more of a deleterious effect on a child still growing than on a grown man. Dad still says, “How can radiation be harmful? Radiation kills tumors, it doesn’t cause them” and indeed this is where I now find myself.
Earlier this month a brain tumor was diagnosed and surgically excised on December 14. Unlike the weeks when I was symptomatic (headaches, seizures, falling, trouble finding words, which I at first put down to anxiety over the election results), I now find myself entirely lucid (unlike, one might suggest without being considered aberrant, the Supreme Court) but my doctors who do not this time even suggest or imply the word “cure” are rather insistent that I undergo Whole Brain Radiotherapy. With WBRT, I probably have another 2-3 years. I understand you are a scientist, not a medical doctor, so I am not asking your advice. Rather, my desire is that with the time remaining me I can make some small contribution to science. The Whole Brain Radiation, so they tell me, may interfere with my ability to use words and communicate so I write you on the eve of this event thinking I might be worth studying. While I can still communicate clearly, this is to say I am soon at your disposal. That sounds rather harsh! What I mean is, I must remain here in Bend with Dad during the two weeks of treatment after which you are more than welcome to visit me at my Five Rivers cabin where a bed awaits you and I do have a delightful woodstove and indoor plumbing. (I hope you are dog-friendly. I could not live without Monty! Also, meals will be vegetarian. I am still large: much pasta and bread. Hope you are not on gluten-free.)
Please respond to the Five Rivers address below as I do not want my father to know of this!
Sincerely,
Alula Wright
P.S. Kind regards to Ms. Mulcahy.
