"LOVE, FROM IRAQ"

In 2003, my Sister Soldier left for Iraq with the rest of the FSB 526 from Ft. Campbell, KY. The unchartered desert would not only hold uncertainty, but if she survived during her one year deployment, she would return to the U. S. forever changed. But the changes that would occur two years to the day from her return home...would be something she would have never fathomed.

Not only had the desert sand, gun blasts and heat penetrated the armor of her psyche...but a carcinogen did too. As it made a home in her body, mixed between the Anthrax Vaccine, depleted Uranium and contaminated water Kellogg, Brown & Root dished up with every meal. It would in two years become part of her, wrapping around her inner organs like an Octopus, gathering its fuel from her central abdomen. The volleyball size tumor would become the pregnancy she never had. And the birth of Cancer she'd never forget.

### --RBS