With the fingers of her right hand, Deborah Clark presses firmly on a gaping surgical hole in her neck. It’s the only way she can speak.

The words that emerge are painful. Clark, 60, has late-stage thyroid cancer, which has stilled her voice, stolen her energy and spread clusters of tumors to her lungs. The former hospital reimbursement specialist hasn’t been able to work since 2004.

A Longview, Wash., resident with two sons in Spokane, Clark was born in Pendleton, Ore., on Dec. 15, 1949, two weeks after a secret military experiment called the “Green Run” dispersed radioactive iodine-131 from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation throughout portions of eastern Oregon and Washington, including Spokane.