Heat-Intolerant Fallbrook Man Wins Disability : Health: Ex-Marine who cannot go outside on a warm day without a special cooling suit will receive Navy benefits after four-year fight.

After four years of denying that an ex-Marine’s inability to tolerate even moderate heat constituted a disability, the Navy has agreed to pay benefits to the man who cannot go outside on a warm day without a special cooling suit.

Jeffrey Ward of Fallbrook, who served seven years in the Marine Corps, was discharged without benefits in 1986 after suffering several episodes of heat exposure during his service. After those episodes, he was found to be incapable of tolerating heat of any kind, even that generated by his own body during exercise.

The Navy originally ruled that Ward had entered the Marine Corps with heat intolerance and gave him an honorable discharge with no benefits, even though military and civilian doctors both believed that his injuries were sustained while he served in the corps and even though he had not suffered any heat injuries before his service. Even if his rare medical problem was caused by his service, the Navy said, it did not represent a disability.

Ward had been appealing the military’s decision ever since his discharge, and, on Tuesday, he received written notice that his fight was over and that the military was declaring him 30% disabled.

“Hopefully they will now start accepting disruption of thermo regulation as a disability, something that’s very important to our guys in Saudi Arabia right now,” Ward said.

Despite the Navy’s earlier ruling, the Veteran’s Administration awarded Ward 30% disability payment last year.

Ward, after having served in the Marines for three years, was injured in 1983 at the end of a 5-mile run with his platoon in Okinawa. He collapsed, began convulsing and was taken to sick bay, where they draped him with cold towels until his temperature returned to normal.

Three years later, he collapsed and suffered convulsions during a 20-mile run at Camp Pendleton.

After that incident, the episodes became more frequent, and now doctors, both military and civilian, have determined that Ward cannot tolerate temperatures above 80 degrees. Doctors have said his body apparently does not dispel through perspiration the heat that it builds up through exercise or exposure to warmth, and that his condition is likely to worsen if he is exposed to more episodes.

Ward now wears a special suit designed to keep his body cool in relatively warm temperatures.

“I’m as happy as a lark,” Ward said. “The benefits from the Navy should give me access to the Navy hospital, and it will give me access to (the military medical insurance).”

With the new source of income, about $400 a month, Ward said he hopes to take care of some of the $10,000 in debts incurred because of his injuries, including the $3,500 he borrowed for his suit.

Ward and his wife, Marcy, also hope to move to the cooler Pacific Northwest, where he is already looking for a job.

“I’ve been looking in the Portland and Seattle areas for a little more than a year now,” said Ward, a computer programmer for a San Diego savings and loan.

Although Ward only received a Navy disability rating of 30%, he is not complaining.

“It would have been nice to receive more than 30%, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, because I didn’t think I’d make it this far,” Ward said. “Until now, I felt like I had been swimming upstream.”