LITTLE ROCK — A50-year-old veteran Springdale firefighter, with terminal cancer that he’s certain was caused by his work, seems to me to be getting a raw deal from the agency that administers the retirement program for our state’s police and firemen.
That group with the cartoonish sounding acronym-LOPFI, which stands for Local Police and Fire Retirement System-since 1983 has been the final word on matters of retirement and work-related disability for firefighters and police. Its executive director, David Clark, routinely makes decisions on whether a disability claim is work-related.
Bud Planchon applied for line of-duty disability retirement in 2011 based on stage-four colon cancer that had spread to his liver. After a year of keeping Planchon in limbo with no decision, Clark and his agency finally ruled the other day that, while Planchon is eligible for general disability, he’s ineligible for retirement for a disability caused in the line of duty, a classification which could provide greater benefits for his family.
At least after 15 months of waiting, the poor guy finally can appeal some kind of decision to the board instead of languishing in uncertainty.
Bud is most often described by those who know him as congenial with a remarkably uplifting approach to life despite his circumstances (75 percent of his liver removed in a life threatening surgery, chemotherapy-you name it-in an effort to prolong his life).
His nightmarish condition began in March of 2009 when he was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer that (exactly like my late father’s) predictably had metastasized to his liver. Still, he kept smiling and remained remarkably upbeat.
The Rev. Lowell Grisham, rector of Fayetteville’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, recently wrote in his weekly newspaper column that Planchon has become his role model if he should face similar circumstances. “I’d like to have his strength of character,” Grisham said. “Realistic. Positive. Faithful.”
Fact is, this man has spent his adult life serving others. From two tours of duty with the Marines during Desert Storm as a naval corpsman to 24 years as a firefighter, he’s devoted himself to helping his fellow man. And now this.
Planchon and his wife, Fayetteville attorney Jane Sexton, say that in more than 40 states the retirement-system policies for firemen agree that such disease justifies a line-of-duty disability claim since medical research showing colon cancer is a legitimate work-related disability because of the extremely carcinogenic nature of the smoke, soot and diesel fumes they invariably inhale and absorb on the job.
Planchon said the Springdale fire station where he worked was without ventilation during his years of duty there, which meant he and his colleagues lived with diesel fumes and its byproducts. He said his complaint after he’d departed helped prompt the ventilation of the station, finally, a year ago.
A simple Google check is enough to call up medical accounts that strongly connect such cancer hazards with firemen because of the hazardous chemicals they inhale and absorb over long periods as part of their daily jobs.
One such 2006 story from Medical News Today cites epidemiological studies that find the connection between forms of cancer (including colon) and firefighting to be significant.
Moreover, the Planchons say that over the past year they’ve located and supplied boxes of medical papers verifying Bud’s health condition from treatment centers in Fayetteville, as well as from MD Anderson Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
In fact, they’ve jumped or crawled through every medically documentable hoop that LOPFI has put them through to satisfy the agency’s seemingly endless requests.
Jane said she once tried contacting board members to let them know how badly her husband’s case was being stalled at the staff level. She said the attorney for LOPFI then warned her against contacting the board, while the governor’s office referred her back to the board. Circular, politicized nonsense.
So now, after a year of forcing the family to produce loads of paperwork and reports intended to prove their case, Clark has denied Planchon’s request for classification of his condition as a disability caused in the line of duty. Yet another bolt in my platform against the stonewalling, often heartless bureaucracies that govern our lives today.
From where I sit watching this debacle, it seems clear that Arkansas just doesn’t want to join the vast majority of other states in conceding that part of the proven health risks to firefighter is indeed the potential for developing several types of cancer.
That’s just gotta be about the money.
At least with Clark’s rejection finally in hand, this family now can appeal to the LOPFI board that will listen, read and learn, then hopefully do the right thing for Bud. Whatever lies in store for Planchon, he says he wants the system’s policies changed to benefit others who inevitably will wind up in similar circumstances.
Sure sounds to me just like the Bud Planchon so many have described.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 84 on 09/30/2012