Jevon Thomas was one of the first responders that John Feal urged me to get in contact with. 

When I first spoke with Jevon Thomas he told me that his car had just been repossessed and he, his wife and two children were in survival mode.  Due to a variety of complicated health issues that Mr. Thomas began suffering from in mid-2001 he is unable to work and thus unable to pay the bills.

Jevon Thomas delivered and serviced the portable toiled used by rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero.  Jevon Thomas was at Ground Zero, straight from September 12, 2001 into December of 2002, when he felt a very painful lump growing in the palm of his left hand.  Already suffering from the notorious “WTC Cough” and a variety of other respiratory issues, Thomas knew that something was just not right.  After the biopsy of what he thought was a cyst, doctors informed him that he had a case of sarcoma of which there were only 300 other reported cases.  After discussing the biopsy results doctors then found that the sarcoma had spread up his entire forearm to his elbow.  “It was devastating,’ says Thomas, ‘they wanted to take my arm off but I am left-handed.  How would I recover and go back to work?  From there the nightmare began and it hasn’t ended.”  Luckily, doctors were able to leave Jevon Thomas with his arm and he was able to continue to work. 

Three years later in 2005 doctors found a number of troubling particles and nodules in Thomas’ lungs and informed him that he would need to have surgery and follow-up with chemotherapy treatment.  The surgery and its aftermath put him out of work entirely.  In retrospect Jevon Thomas is “a grateful man” to be alive, as he had been told he was a dead man walking.  However, he sees as many flaws as there were salvages in his medical treatment.  “Here is the problem, they never checked what was really in my lungs”, says Mr. Thomas as he regrets not having thorough tests done on the nodules and particles that were in his lungs to answer many questions pertaining to the environmental conditions and the blurry issue of toxicant elements. 

Jevon Thomas urges Congress to pass the “James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act”, which will provide medical assistance to ailing first responders and recovery workers.  

Readers, what are your thoughts on Jevon Thomas’s story and feelings on the passing of the Act?