When Reggie Hillaire graduated from the Academy in May 2001, he was assigned to the PSA 5 command on East 123rd Street in Manhattan. The record would show that he has been there ever since, but that would merely be a paper account of years filled with grave illnesses in the aftermath of pulling security details at Ground Zero. Today, the 36-year-old Crown Heights native and Queens Village resident is on restricted duty at PSA 5 — just the latest twist in the medical and bureaucratic nightmare that has haunted him and his family for the last several years. The PBA Magazine recently talked to Hilaire about his struggles, not the least of which has been to get city and federal authorities to acknowledge that not all the victims of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center joined casualty lists that same day.

PBA: How many hours did you log at the WTC or the Staten Island landfill?
RH: I worked 62 days at the landfill and was assigned to six-to-six security tours at the WTC itself. My first impression was that it was like a Hollywood movie. Part of the South Tower was still up, and that made it even eerier. I was there a couple of hours, I suppose, when I hear this shouting. It was a woman from about what would be half a block away. She was wearing a gas mask and had an ID on her chest like all the cops had, but I couldn’t make out more than that from where I was standing. She yells that I should be wearing a gas mask like she has on, didn’t anybody tell me that? No one had, and I couldn’t leave my post to talk any more about it. She just went away again. The ID told me she was a cop, but I never found out her name.

PBA: So you stayed at your post from six to six?
RH: Longer than that, actually. The supervisors didn’t get there until around seven, and with one thing and another, it was closer to nine by the time I left. I can’t tell you the headache I had. For a couple of hours it was painful to talk, even just to breathe.

PBA: Did you take anything for the headache?
RH: No. I figured it would go away as soon as I got away from the WTC, and it did eventually.

PBA: No other medical problems during this period?
RH: Personally, nothing out of the ordinary. But then I read an article in the News about how many firemen and cops and others who had been at Ground Zero for a long time were coming up with breathing problems. I called the Medical Monitoring Program at Mount Sinai that was keeping an eye on this, answered a few questions, and then they sent me a questionnaire. I filled that out, then went around for a physical in 2003. They said I had some readings that weren’t all that great, but nothing to get excited about, come back again in eight months.

PBA: So when did signs of something serious begin showing up?
RH: I remember only too well because I was lying in bed with my wife in March 2004 talking about our son, who was about to be born. Suddenly, she reaches up, starts fingering this lump around my throat, and asks me what it is. I didn’t know, had hardly noticed it. What with the baby being born and everything over the next few weeks, there were other things to concentrate on. But then in May I got this nagging fever and started sweating a lot. I didn’t want my son catching anything, so I went to my primary physician. He checks me out, then I mention the lump. As soon as he feels it, he orders a CT scan. When that comes back, he tells me I have to see a specialist. The specialist says it’s papillary thyroid cancer.

PBA: Did the doctors see any link between the cancer and your policing down at Ground Zero?
RH: My primary doctor was absolutely convinced there was a connection. A couple of other people I met during my surgery and treatment for the thyroid were kind of in the middle. The thing that sent up red flags for a lot of them was the fact that I had no history of cancer in my family whatsoever.

PBA: But the thyroid cancer wasn’t the end of your problems.
RH: No, although it was more than enough for a long time. Recovering from thyroid surgery can be very wearying since they have to take out the whole thyroid and without it your metabolism just sags. One second you’re feeling great, the next you have no energy. I had to stay away from people, including my wife and son, while I was undergoing radiation treatment and before they gave me thyroid replacement pills. Those were three very long months. (laughs) But all that said, if you have to have a cancer, have thyroid cancer. The recovery rate is as close to a hundred percent as any cancer can be. I wouldn’t have minded ending things right there.

PBA: But instead?
RH: At the end of 2005, one of my blood tests comes back showing anemia. My primary sends me to a hematologist, who orders a bone marrow biopsy just to cover all the bases. It comes back saying I have multiple myeloma. The hematologist doesn’t believe it. He says it’s a mistake and sends me back in February 2006 for another biopsy. It says the same thing as the first one. The hematologist still can’t believe it because I’m the wrong age and I don’t have any of the common symptoms like kidney failure. I send all my files to Sloan-Kettering, and they agree it’s multiple myeloma. But they can’t do anything because the only treatment that exists is for the symptoms and I don’t have any of the symptoms. The most they’ve been able to do since then is give me this thing called pamidronate. It’s no picnic. Within hours of taking it you feel sick to your stomach and that first day is hell. You really don’t get over the nausea for a week.

PBA: How often do you have to take it?
RH: They’re gradually stretching it out. First every month, then every two months, three months, like that. There’s really no alternative. Because I have what they call light chain myeloma, I’m not even eligible for clinical trials.

PBA: During all this, you undoubtedly read about other cops and firemen affected by their exposure to the WTC.
RH: Quite a lot. In particular, I remember an article in the Post in June 2006 talking about all the cancers. I called the reporter and through that got to the attorneys who were handling the class action suit against the city. I think there are about 8,000 people in that now. Frankly, just the fact that I didn’t feel alone anymore in why what was happening to me was happening, that in itself was a relief.

PBA: But even for the media there was sort of an unwritten taboo on what could and could not be discussed, right?
RH: That came as a shock to me. In the summer of 2006, the CBS show “60 Minutes” did one of those fifth-anniversary things with people who got sick after exposure. Katie Couric and the producers were very friendly and cordial, and they asked all sorts of questions about my cancers. But when the show went on the air, there was absolutely no mention of cancer. The only thing they wanted to talk about was respiratory ailments. And they weren’t the only ones. The closer you read all the newspaper stories about the possible medical problems caused by the WTC attacks, the more you realized they were sticking to the respiratory infections. Nobody seemed to want to mention the cancers.

PBA: Do you have any reason to believe it is being covered up?
RH: The one person who was warning everybody from the beginning about leukemia, myeloma, and other blood cancers was Robin Herbert, the co-director of the Mount Sinai Monitoring Program. She had seen too many cases of it to consider it a coincidence. Among the other places she talked about it was in an article in The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2007. That didn’t go over too well with a lot of people in authority, but then a couple of months later the city’s own Department of Health held a public forum in which, for the first time, it admitted the possibility of blood cancers resulting from exposure to the WTC.

PBA: What about claims from people like the Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch that Police Officer James Godbee could not be listed as a homicide victim from September 11 because he didn’t suffer his fatal heart attack until three years later?
RH: What can I say to that? It’s been established that Godbee’s lungs were affected by his exposure. I’m no doctor, but that somebody claims there was no cause-and-effect relationship, that the length of time rules out including this case among the homicide victims, what else can I think than it’s just politics? Or if you want to be kind, you can say people like Hirsch are just looking at outdated material. What do they think — that we’ve all set up this huge conspiracy to cheat them out of money? If that’s what they think, we must be more brilliant than all those conspirators who were supposed to have assassinated JFK.

PBA: But why do you think all this resistance? Just because the city doesn’t want to be held responsible for paying the families of the victims?
RH: How can that not be one of their interests? But in my view any claims like that should be coming from the federal government anyway. Whatever happened to all that recovery money that was promised? The mere fact that we have to be fighting tooth-and-nail for an acknowledgement of what happened to us is an insult. Somehow none of that ever gets into the patriotic speeches delivered on anniversary days.

PBA: Where are you now?
RH: Physically, I’m still asymptomatic with the myeloma. Most experts say that for somebody in my situation it’s 50-60 percent probable that I’ll begin showing symptoms within two years. So far that hasn’t happened. My last readings for my thyroid weren’t so great. They’ll be looking at that again over the next couple of months to make sure there’s no recurrence. The latest problem is an enzyme reading for my muscles. Now I’m involved with a third specialist who’s checking into that.

PBA: And as a member of the NYPD?
RH: To be honest, I haven’t felt like a cop in a long time. I may wear the badge and uniform, but I’m on restricted clerical duty and that just isn’t a great feeling. It’s ironic, actually. One of the reasons I wanted to take the test was to get away from a nine-to-five job. I’m now doing the closest thing to that possible.

PBA: Haven’t you ever considered disability?
RH: Have I! And that’s been another black comedy. My oncologist wrote a letter saying that he couldn’t guarantee my safety if I did anything but stay at a desk. The Article-2 board comes back and says it doesn’t understand the letter so I can’t be ruled disabled and eligible for a 3/4 pension. I ask them what’s wrong with the letter, and the closest to a clear answer I get is that it was “too terse.” I think we know what that means. They want every sentence spelled out in case somebody down the road holds them responsible for a decision that might contradict what has so far been the official city policy. So my oncologist is writing another letter, breaking everything down word by word so anybody can understand it.

PBA: How much contact have you had with the other people ill since their exposure to the WTC?
RH: A lot more lately. Sergeant Ryan, who died, was a wonderful man, and we had several long conversations. All we’re really asking for is to be recognized for what’s gone wrong with us. You’re always tempted to feel sorry for yourself, and you have to fight that every day. I mean, who wants to be in a situation where, as far as my myeloma is concerned, the best scenario is the worstcase scenario since only symptoms will get me more aggressive treatment? On the other hand, I like remembering that if not for my wife and son, I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor. In that sense you could say that I’ve had two cancers, but I’m still pretty lucky.