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Airman with leukemia recruits help from senator

The Air Force has decided to deny long-term health benefits and administratively separate an airman who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia just days after beginning basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

But Airman Basic Joseph Weston is appealing the decision by the medical board that his disease was a pre-existing condition, and he has enlisted a powerful ally in his cause.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter recently to Maj. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, the Air Force’s legislative liaison, asking him to look into the issue, according to Weston’s father, Jim Weston of Cadillac, Mich.

Levin’s office did not immediately provide comment on the situation.

Weston’s case was first reported in the San Antonio Express-News.

Weston began basic military training at Lackland on May 27, and on June 10 he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a pediatric form of the disease that is rare — and often deadly — in adults.

He is undergoing chemotherapy at Lackland’s Wilford Hall Medical Center, his father said, and his treatment is progressing as expected.

A medical board ruled that the disease was pre-existing and denied Weston a medical/honorable discharge, which would provide him government-covered chemotherapy for the next three years and a 100 percent disability rating, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

“The [board] did not follow the law on the books,” Jim Weston told Air Force Times.

Defense Department Instruction 1332.38, which governs disability evaluations, states that “signs or symptoms of chronic disease identified so soon after the date of entry on military service ... that the disease could not have originated in that short a period will be accepted as proof that the disease manifested prior to entrance into active military service.”

But Weston’s doctor at Wilford Hall, Della Howell, told the San Antonio Express-News that there is no way for the Air Force to prove the condition was pre-existing.

Since an article appeared Nov. 23 on the front page of the San Antonio Express-News, Weston has been moved from the 319th Training Squadron, a holdover squadron for airmen removed from basic training, to the Fisher House at Lackland.

“He was moved to Fisher House based on his ongoing treatment schedule and his current condition,” said Lackland spokesman Kirk Frady. “The chain of command thought it would be better for him in that situation.”

Weston also has been assigned a mentor, Chief Master Sgt. Robert Rubio, to help him get to his medical appointments and to facilitate communication with his family.