Ailing 9/11 Survivors Put Human Face On Importance of Extending ‘Zadroga’

Sept. 11 responder Ray Pfeifer last week managed to keep the mood as light as could be expected, even when discussing the Stage IV kidney cancer that has dogged him since 2009.

Doctors discovered his disease—which had already spread—after a long firefighting tour, when he left the firehouse in inexplicable pain, expecting little more than a cortisone shot for a minor injury. But rather than dwell on the years of chemotherapy that followed, the many surgeries for the tumors that spread to his hip and his femur, or last year’s heart attack that was triggered by the chemo, he remained positive.