[ambient music] [water lapping] [children chattering] [people chattering] [people chattering] [water splashing] [people chattering] [children laughing] - I can remember we would have a big tray of fish piled up on the table that we had cooked and cleaned.

The only reason we stopped was because I got tired of cleaning the fish, and I'm the one that usually ended up doing it.

[laughs] [children chattering] [water lapping] We thought it was safe.

Nobody had ever said it wasn't.

[people chattering] [people chattering] [water whooshing] [birds chirping] We moved here in '86, and the house we bought is right on the river.

[bird chirping] That was a weekend thing.

We would all go fishing, us and the kids.

We would have big fish fries when we came home.

That went on for years.

[bird chirping] The work in the kitchen was actually done by a friend of ours that lived down the road who unfortunately did die of cancer.

And then this room, my husband and the kids built.

Let's go outside and look at the view from there.

You wanna go out, too, my Lou, hmm?

You wanna go out, too?

[birds chirping] We got established here and didn't wanna move.

Even though there are problems here now, we couldn't move now.

We moved here in '85, and we've been here ever since.

You know, we'll probably be here till we aren't here anymore.

[laughs] - [Interviewer] This is your home.

- That's right, it is our home, and we love it here.

You know, I just wish there weren't as many complications with living here.

About 15 years ago, I started getting sick, feeling tired all the time, and I noticed I had started getting a little, like a knot on my throat.

They actually had removed my entire thyroid because I had gotten five goiters on my throat.

And come to find out, there's so many people that have had these same issues.

[birds chirping] Taking the medication every day just gets irritating because you think about it, every time you take that medication, what most likely caused it.

[ominous music] [birds chirping] Sometimes you can see like a yellow stain, and it looks like a stain in the air.

Think about sitting out on my front porch and listening to the river, you know, am I breathing it in as I'm sitting out there?

And I don't know, and that's scary.

[ominous music continues] [solemn music] [solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] - [Alyssa] I have not driven down this road in a very long time [laughs].

Whew, it's so weird.

[car engine rumbling] And I'm driving by like every single one of these houses, and I'm like, "Do these neighbors know?

Do these people know?"

- I know.

Don't you feel compelled to get out?

I do it all the time.

Like, it's like, go knock on the door, go knock on the door.

- [Alyssa] Right, and like, you see these gardens and these sunflowers that they're growing and all these, you know.

[gentle music] [gentle music continues] I remember swimming in the river and kind of feeling a little nervous about it but feeling like, "Oh, it should be okay," right?

[gentle music continues] I think back to those moments now, and it's a lot to grapple with.

[gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] I grew up on Bent Mountain, which is an unincorporated community of Roanoke County.

It's up the mountain, and it's a very rural area.

[gentle music continues] Growing up in the midst of a forest has always stayed with me to my core.

I feel so connected to the changing of seasons.

I was able to understand how some things, some bad things happen for some other good things to happen.

Sometimes flowers grow in the spring and they're very beautiful, but then halfway past the year, they're going to look completely different, and it might be sad that they've died, but there's hope because they will begin again in the spring.

[bird chirps] [gentle music] Amazing, I'm gonna situate it in between these so it doesn't fly away.

[gasps] This one needs a cover.

- [Interviewer] Nice, a tent, a little tent?

- Awesome, well, thank you guys, everyone, for coming.

I'm really excited that these have been able to keep happening, and I'm excited 'cause we're gonna keep doing them, so.

[laughs] I've got some rotisserie chicken and like salad stuff and then Trisha's awesome salad, and then there's all kinds of other food.

So bone apple teeth.

[laughs] As I like to say.

[group chattering softly] My whole life, my goal was to be able to help people the way that I was helped when I was younger, and I was very excited to start my career in youth services, working in the same library that I grew up in.

- [Participant] And one of the staff picks with these- - [Alyssa] I started to feel very fatigued, and I just lost my energy, and I started feeling unwell a good portion of the time.

I chalked it up to, "This is just the way that life is.

This is just what happens when you start a full-time job and you really put your heart and soul into it.

It's, you know, maybe this is just the way that it goes."

I was connected to a primary care physician after not having one for a while.

My thyroid was so diseased and so swollen, the only thing to do would be to have the thyroid removed because at this point, there's no way to really save it.

It just needs to come out.

The longer you leave it, the more likely it is to turn cancerous.

[eerie music] No matter what, I will never have a thyroid again.

I will never have another thyroid.

Once you lose it, it's gone.

And I will be dependent on this synthetic medication for the rest of my life.

I think one of the most difficult things is that having something like this impact you makes you lose sight of yourself.

It feels like you are lost in the worst fog that you have ever seen.

[calm music] People always look at me and they say, "You're only 28!

You're too young for this."

It's the truth, and it's my reality.

[calm music] We scheduled my thyroid surgery, and within a month, I was in the operating room.

I remember the oxygen mask being placed on my nose and my mouth.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room.

[calm music] [calm music continues] [Bill breathing heavily] - [Interviewer] Can we talk a little bit about this past month?

Last time I saw you, we were in a hotel in Durham, and that was maybe a month ago?

Can you give me kind of a timeline of what's happened since then?

- I believe I was getting around without the walker at that point, and so things were still, you know, pretty good.

Things changed quicker this time than they have at any time in the past.

It really went downhill fast.

In '17, I had the parotid gland taken out.

It had already metastasized in my spine about 2018.

It's in my hips, upper leg bones, ribs, shoulders, and probably neck a little bit now.

- [Interviewer] Is that because you can feel it?

- Yeah, yeah, trying to come up into my back, so.

We had just gotten married not long before, so we just decided to give the arsenal a try.

But 2005 to 2019, I was involved with the incinerator and open-burning ground.

It was one of the better-paying jobs in the area.

My family was just exposed to a little better standard of life because of the pay scale at the arsenal.

- [Interviewer] Do you feel like that's common around here?

- I think that's a common idea.

I don't know how accurate an idea it is.

I don't know how much we're giving up for the cash that we're getting.

[gentle music] [fire crackling] - [Interviewer] Can you explain the environment of the burn pits?

[calm music] [fire crackling] - We would make up a burn, and the burn was made according to the constituents that we didn't want to... [calm music] [fire crackling] We were controlled on the amount of 'em that we could put in the government, into the air every day by the government.

[calm music] [fire crackling] - [Interviewer] Do you remember the constituents that you were burning?

- I remember some of 'em, lead, maybe chromium, mercury.

[Bill breathing loudly] And that's about all of 'em I can remember right off the top of my head.

Seems like there was 14 of 'em that were really, you know, watched closely.

[Bill breathing loudly] [Bill breathing loudly] But, yeah.

It's been a long road, but it's been a, there's been...

I don't know if it's a good road, but I've enjoyed it.

- [Interviewer] May I ask what timeline the doctors gave you?

- [Bill] About six months, and I've already used it, probably close to a month of that.

It goes pretty fast.

[Bill breathing loudly] [Bill breathing loudly] [Bill breathing loudly] [birds chirping] [solemn music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] Support for "Reel South" is provided by the ETV Endowment and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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