The PBA Magazine's series of question-and-answer reports with New York City olice oficers suffering from unusual health problems because of their selfless work at Ground Zero and other locations in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attackis continues in this issue in a very sad manner.

The third installment on officers who gave their all and are now being shortchanged — both morally and financially — by the NYPD and the city they helped to heal cannot, unfortunately, include an interview with the officer because he has succumbed to his ailments. Instead, we have interviewed his widow.

Like so many other NYPD officers, Frank Macri answered the emergency call down to lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. Also like so many others, he ended up paying with his life — not on the morning the World Trade Center crumbled in toxic clouds but six years later, after protracted tortures of a body that hadn’t been prepared for the longrange effects of what had passed for air in the wake of the terrorist attacks. At one time or another before his death at the age of 51 on September 3, 2007, Macri was diagnosed with cancer of the sacrum, spine, pelvis, ribs, and brain. Through it all, the Medical Board largely wondered how it all could have happened and passed its wisdom along to the Pension Board.

A Connecticut native, Macri arrived in New York originally with intentions of becoming an actor. He scored modest successes with off-off-Broadway productions and independent films (one with Chazz Palminteri), but also had to take the usual string of temporary jobs for keeping his ambition alive between scripts and studies at the Berghof Institute. One mailroom job for a financial company in 1982 led to meeting his future wife Nilda. Another with Child Services, where he was called on more than once to remove children from abusive parents, went a long way toward persuading him to give up his acting dreams for a steady job in blue. From 1995 to the disabilities provoked by the WTC attacks, he worked in Housing out of PSA2 in Brooklyn North. Along the way he married Nilda, now a ratings analyst for Standard and Poor’s, and moved to Forest Hills.

More than a year after her husband’s death, Nilda Macri still finds it hard to deal with the irony that her husband endured so many torments despite being what she calls “health-obsessed.” As she puts it, “He practically lived at the gym and nothing went on his fork without close inspection. I’m not saying that was supposed to make him invulnerable, but it’s just another part of what has been so hard to deal with.”

PBA: What happened exactly on September 11?

NM: I was working at Citibank in midtown. We had the news on and we thought at first it was some small plane that had just gone off course or something. Frank called me at 9:15. I asked him if he thought he was going to have to answer the call, and he said he didn’t know. He called again at 9:30, and still wasn’t sure. Then, when it became clearer what had happened, I called PSA2. The person who answered said they had all just left. Then we had an order to evacuate our building. To get back home I ended up walking across the Queensboro Bridge.

PBA: And the next time you heard from Frank?

NM: It wasn’t until eight o’clock that night. A sergeant called to say he had been slightly injured when the second tower had come down, but that he was all right and would be home soon. When he walked in the door a little later, he was wearing a hospital gown and had big swabs over his eyes because they’d had to treat his corneas from all the debris they had gotten in there. He looked absolutely sunburned all over and had a big cut on his arm. When I asked him what happened, he said he thought he was dead. He couldn’t see. ‘I thought I would see God when I opened my eyes again,’ he said. But even though he couldn’t see, he insisted on trying to help. Finally, some superior came along and ordered him to a hospital.

PBA: And that first medical check?

NM: They took X-rays, and the only thing internally they found was soot on his lungs. They seemed to consider that normal. It certainly didn’t stop him from working up to 12 hours a day at Ground Zero for months afterward. I suppose both of us started getting — maybe not suspicious, but at least uneasy, when they gave the cops down there masks and told them not to eat outside this tent they had set up. They also told him not to mix his clothes in with mine or my daughter’s when we were doing the laundry. That really worried him. He realized the air wasn’t at all safe.

PBA: When did the problems start?

NM: For about six months there was nothing. He went to work and the gym the way he always did. Then in the spring of 2002 he started having a pain in his leg. He knew his body very well and when the pain didn’t go away, he went for an X-ray. It showed a shadow near his sacrum, the large bone at the base of the spine. When a CT scan confirmed there was an unnatural growth, they started using that dread word biopsy. That took an awful lot of getting used to because Frank had never taken a sick day in his life. And the biopsy said there was definitely a malignancy, but not at all affecting the bone itself. At this point they recommended an oncologist, who found a spot in his lung. I mean, they were suddenly talking about a life expectancy of six months to a year, and Frank was only 46 at the time. His primary doctor refused to believe it. But in November 2002 they went in and removed the upper piece from his lung. Then came the chemo treatments.

It seemed to work because his regular checkups over the next year said that he was cancer-free.

PBA: Until?

NM: December 2003. One of the checkups said the cancer had returned. It broke our hearts. But Frank wasn’t going to let it get him down. He continued working out as though nothing was bothering him. He really never questioned why it was happening to him. When somebody would mention some support group, he’d shake off the idea. As far as he was concerned, prayer was all the support he needed to get through it. When he would meet somebody with a condition like his, he would go on and on about how they had to keep a positive attitude.

PBA: And this went on for five years?

NM: Absolutely. Every time we seemed to have overcome one crisis, another one would erupt. Sometimes it was the spread of the cancer — from the original lung and sacrum to the ribs and spine and, finally, the brain. Other times it was all the corollary things -- infections of one kind or another, his reactions to all the radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Near the end they had to put a port in his head for running the medicines through because his veins were all collapsed, but even the port got clogged.

PBA: And where was the Medical Board during all this?

NM: They refused to attribute it to his work at Ground Zero. Their biggest argument seemed to be that it couldn’t have been caused by the Twin Towers because of the timing of his symptoms. I simply don’t understand that reasoning. Everybody is different. They’re drawing lines because somebody comes down with an illness a couple of months before or after somebody else? What sense does that make? What human sense does it make?

PBA: Have your doctors pointed that out to the Board?

NM: His thoracic surgeon couldn’t be clearer. He wrote a letter for me to give them, but they have just ignored it. When he was still able to do it, Frank filled out all the necessary papers. We’ve done as much as we can do. But nothing at all from the Medical Board. And of course as long as they don’t say anything, the Pension Board won’t move. Frankly, I don’t know what else to do. And I’m far from being the only one. We have all these widows and widowers and children of officers who were exposed at Ground Zero. The bagpipes and the color guard and the helicopters and all that at a funeral are fine. Our husbands deserved that. But speaking for myself, I could hardly wait to get through the funeral. Frank died because of what he was exposed to. Nobody at this stage can honestly believe in the coincidence of all these people getting sick the way they have. I just want the Medical Board and Pension Board to do the right thing. Not just for me, but for all the families afflicted. Compared to what Frank went through, that doesn't seem to be asking them very much.