By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LONG ISLAND — Ken George was counting on the new 9/11 health law to save his family.
George worked hundreds of hours at Ground Zero, picking body parts from the wreckage. Now, he can barely breathe without coughing, and he can no longer hold a job.
But the new $4.3 billion law, which was supposed to be a panacea for sick recovery workers, bars George from receiving any compensation for his illnesses. That's because George took a paltry $8,000 payout from the federal government shortly after 9/11, back when his most serious health complaint was asthma.
Under the terms of the new law, those who received money from the first compensation fund can't reapply.
Since his payout, George has been diagnosed with reactive airway disease, heart disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. He takes 33 prescription medications every day and often wakes gasping in the middle of the night.
"I'm angry," George, 46, said from his Long Island home recently. "They poisoned us, and now I don't have nothing left. I don't even have any fight left. Nothing but just taking pills."
Despite his illnesses, George traveled to Washington 22 times to fight for the 9/11 health bill. During a final push in December, he appeared on "The Daily Show" to testify about the legislation's importance.
"They used us to get the bill passed, but yet we're not included," George said. "That's it. We're screwed."
The law does provide $1.8 billion for all sick 9/11 survivors and responders to receive free medical care and prescription drugs, which now cost George over $700 a month in copays. But George still worries about how he will provide for his family.
Michael Barasch, George's lawyer, said George's only mistake was getting sick at the wrong time.
Had George fallen ill earlier, he would have received more money from the first federal Victim Compensation Fund, which closed at the end of 2003. Had he gotten sick later, he would still be eligible for the new $2.5 billion fund, which will open this summer.
Barasch said he plans to fight for George, along with the hundreds of other responders who are caught in the same quandary.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, George was working for the city Department of Transportation and was called down to Ground Zero to search for life amid the flaming rubble.
"It was massive, thousands of people chopped up," he said. "I didn't know what I was getting into."
George received a protective mask from the city, but the air was so thick with smoke and pulverized debris that the filter clogged up almost immediately. No one knew where to get more filters, so George and the other workers tunneled through the wreckage without protection.
George started coughing on Sept. 12 but kept working 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for nearly six months.
"Still can't find nobody alive," he wrote Sept. 27 in a small day planner that became his journal. "I am getting sick."
"Don't know what day it is any more," he wrote Oct. 5. "Why did the city send us here it like a fucking war."
Each evening as George headed to work, family members of the victims called out to him from the perimeter, waving pictures of their loved ones and begging him to find them. George was also looking for those he knew who were missing, including many of his high school classmates.
In March 2002, George returned to his job repairing machines for the Department of Transportation, but he felt like he couldn't escape his experiences at Ground Zero.
"It lingered on," he said. "I couldn't get it out of my head."
Loud noises still trigger flashbacks, as do a host of smells, from the smoke of a barbecue pit to the menthol of Vicks VapoRub, which George used to dab beneath his nose to block the stench of corpses at Ground Zero.
The physical symptoms have worsened as well. Doctors prescribed steroids to help George breathe, but they blew him up from 165 pounds to 240 and contributed to a heart attack he had in 2005, he said.
Now, even on good days, George feels like someone is clamping a hand over his mouth, preventing him from breathing. He can't exercise, and he can't leave the house if it's too hot or too cold.
"Without hesitation, his symptoms are 9/11-related," said Dr. Mark Kaufman, a family practitioner who has been seeing George for about nine months. "His pulmonary function tests continue to show a downward spiral. There's a good chance of further disability."
George worries constantly about how he will care for his wife, his mother-in-law, his three children and his granddaughter, all of whom live with him in North Babylon.
The couple used to save money for trips to Disney World and spend weekends making improvements to their house. Now all they talk about is 9/11 and George's illness.
"It just doesn't end," said his wife, Cyndi George. "I feel like I was trapped in those towers for nine years."
She said George often flails in bed during his nightmares, leaving her black and blue.
"It's like a dead body with no soul is next to me," Cyndi, 46, said. "This is not the man I married."
George said he often wished he had died when the towers collapsed. His family would have received support from the federal government, and he wouldn't still be suffering.
"You're just deteriorating all these years," George said. "It would be better to be done."
