CHAPTER 14

With a steady intake of food owing to my systematic dilations I began to feel a little better, and started to get that “All-American boy” urge. Then I was treated to a sudden surprise; my innards came up and tried to leave me. I’m hardened to nausea, but when I started to hurt in every place where I could or could not feel I began to worry. I didn’t have to fret too long as soon all the medicine men were at my bedside. It took the doctor about two minutes to examine me, and then reveal the score. My right kidney was under attack by those two stones that I had been told about the year before. The Chief of The Genito-Urethral Service came down, took one look at me, and insisted that I consent to an immediate nephrectomy. Still being medically naïve I signed the consent slip without questioning, whereupon I was immediately transferred to the Urology Ward.
That evening all my pains disappeared, and I felt as good as ever. Knowing that there was a movie in the Recreation Hall I dressed, and asked my sister to rush me up the corridor. Just as we reached the ward exit the evening nurse caught sight of me, and let out an agonizing yell, “Silver! Go back to bed!” She then ran up the hall to us, and as she pulled the chair away from my sister said, “Silver, what are you doing out of bed? You are very sick; you are going to have an operation tomorrow.” I admitted to the operation, but insisted that I was not sick. She then added that the doctors had ordered me to take a sleeper, and to spend a restful night, so that I would not worry. “Nuts” I replied. “I’m going to the show; where’s there a better place for one to forget his troubles?” To tell the truth the movie stunk, but we had a good time just the same. That poor nurse was a nervous wreck by the time that we returned.
It took a week to recover from that damned operation, but the shock of what the doctor told me after the surgery was worse than the operation itself. He came into my room and said, “Everything is going to be all right, son; we saved your kidney,” and walked out. It was then that I found out the difference between the suffixes “ectomy and “otomy” when tagged onto the end of a surgical term when it is written on a consent slip. I had signed for a nephrectomy, which meant kidney removal; no wonder the doctor had ordered the sleeping pill.
A few days later I told my sister that she should stop chasing away my friends and visitors as I felt up to talking with company. A few days of riotous visiting, and the doctor decided that I could no longer be considered critically ill. So back to the Paraplegic Service I went. It was pleasant to be back with the noise of the ward, and to hear the latest bitching and gossip.
During my short absence from my regular ward, one of the boys had gotten himself into enough trouble to be sentenced to six month confinement on the punishment ward (we called it “prison ward”, for its rules were rigidly and vigorously applied). It was a ward consisting mostly of private rooms with a four-cubic1e section at its far end. The (convicts), as we called them, were given private rooms, but by the time our boy had arrived there, so much punishment had been dealt out to others for misconduct that he had become an overflow, and was placed in one of the cubicles. This he didn’t mind, for he was one of those fortunate low injuries who retained a good portion of his control.
Life in prison was almost completely dull with the visiting hours, unlike ours, restricted. To keep busy and to leave the ward as much as possible, the boys attended each and every therapy religiously. Even the barber did an extra contra-seasonal business, for the convicts were positive they needed good grooming. The aides who worked ward Seven A were well-known by all the paraplegics, and if any were seen away from it the cry “Jail break” went up, for it usually meant he was out looking for a renegade wheelchair with a paralyzed desperado who had just escaped from prison.
The jail breaks and trips to the barber were all part of the daily routine until my friend discovered that his weak legs were strong enough to surmount the obstacle that the staircase at the back end of the ward had presented to his freedom. The jail breaks ceased, and the fun began. Every night every convict was stinking drunk. Cards were brought in, and the back cubicles with their smoke-filled air began to look like speakeasies. In the morning as the doctors made their rounds each patient was soundly asleep in his bunk. The doctors were heard to comment to each other that none of the boys ever had any complaints, or asked to have his punishment commuted. One doctor said that they couldn’t be too happy with their confinement, for they had been smoking a great deal. His erroneous clue was the cigarette butt-littered floor.
My walking friend won a few thousand dollars at these illicit card games, and took a discharge; leaving the men in the back room with nothing to do but to go to the barber shop and therapy. The barber wouldn’t let them drink his witch hazel, so life just wasn’t the same. The paradox to this story was in the tale of the troubles the doctors were having with some of the patients from the ambulatory wards. These men refused discharges, giving as their reason the fact that they had no swimming pools at home. The swimming was no longer necessary for their health, but they grew to enjoy their daily dips that they tried every excuse not to have them taken away.
The healthy inmates found their amusement at the hospital pool, but we stiffs had to go off post for ours. Two of the boys pooled their checks until they had saved enough money to purchase an Ercoupe airplane, which can be flown by hand alone. Every day that the sun shone, that plane could be seen in the sky over the city. When not in flight, they were at the field doctoring their baby as if it were human. They made me curious as hell, and I promised myself that someday I, too, would do the same thing.
They say tritely that you never win in the Veterans’ Administration, and to prove its point the Veterans Administration decided that it no longer had need of Doctor Freeman’s services at Kennedy. The news of our hero’s resignation was a major bombshell, and everyone connected to the paraplegic service blew his proverbial top. The letters and telegrams poured into Washington, but to no avail. When I asked my buddy to check out Doctor Freeman’s case for me, his telegram read, “Doctor Freeman is a genius, and the Veterans Administration doesn’t want any geniuses in its hospitals.” His plans for spinal cord regeneration research were transferred to Yale University, but not before he was given a testimonial dinner as a token of our appreciation for his devotion to paraplegia. Naturally, not all the patients or personnel were able to attend the affair in person, but amends were made, and the hospital secretly rocked and rolled in his honor that night. They might have taken his body away, but he never forgot his boys as he is still on the job at the University of Indiana trying to solve man’s toughest problem — spinal cord regeneration.
Changes start all types of rumors including one that if a paraplegic were ever healthy enough to take a discharge and go to work, his compensation would be taken away from him. The thought of this injustice went romping through the minds of those few boys who were healthy enough to consider discharge when someone had the presence of mind to search out the truth. He found in the files a bulletin signed by General Bradley that stated just the opposite.
With the exception of Doctor Freeman, the Second World War has created a ghoulish nightmare for the medical profession: A group of disabled that doesn’t have to beg or go to charity for its care. A group that doesn’t have to be polite to people it doesn’t like. For the first time in the history of the world a country has given the war-wounded more than words as a symbol for what they did to save a nation’s life. Those in this group who have had the courage and intelligence to sneak up can never rot. Remember the horse. If you want to talk to him, go to his head, but when you wish him to move; you kick him in the arse.
After the bulletin had been posted and the rumor squelched a further study was made which brought out exact copies of the law, which stated that only Congress could affect the compensation system. Nothing but a complete return to health could cut our checks, but ironically and sadly no one could worry about that.
With Doctor Freeman’s leaving and the closing of the prison ward it was decided that my ward would be made into a sterile one for postoperative plastic surgery. We the so-called healthy patients were to take over ward Seven A and the beds from which the convicts had been evicted. That was where I had my first argument with a Civil Service employee. He was filling out my New York State bonus application when I noticed that he was using script where it plainly said “Please Print”. I questioned him; he curtly told me that it was unimportant. My reply was abrupt; “If you had to process and read several hundred thousand of these things you wouldn’t consider it unimportant”. Never mind going on with this. I will finish it myself. I should have known better than to ask someone with an elementary school education to aid me. “Beat it! You sawed-off bastard,” And sawed-off he was. The next day the kind little old lady who always brought me a jar of potato salad inquired if I happened to know that same person who has been my assistant the day before. It seemed that he lived in her neighborhood, and was always telling her friends of the wonderful work he was doing for the boys at the hospital.
With the coming of the new manager, Doctor Spruit, also came a new and wonderful experience. He made it a practice to visit the patients at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes he took the chief nurse with him on his friendly rounds. The braggarts stopped bragging and started working. Even those employees with ten-point preferences because of service-connected disabilities decided that the fun was over. His visits were always of a cordial nature though he subtly was inspecting the premises. It wasn’t unusual for him to drop in during an evening when he would go to a paraplegic ward, and ask the patients if they wished to go fishing with him the next day that he was off. On many of those evenings he also found time to usher quadriplegic patients to and from the movies in the recreation hall.
Those were the good old days when the Government was still sincerely interested in preserving the health and well-being of the nation, for as proof it had the cadet nursing program still in effect. Where there are boys there are girls, and soon it became common practice for the cadets to spend their evenings riding with the paraplegics in their “merry Oldsmobiles with the hand controls on the wheels”. Life seemed quite pleasant for all concerned save me, as I had to satisfy myself with riding in an old wooden wheelchair. One morning though I learned that one of the lovers was not doing as well as I had expected. He came in mad as hell, and kept mumbling over and over “That damned bitch had the nerve to sneak a bathing suit underneath her dress.”
He shouldn’t have complained about being tricked as it also could happen to others. A week later I was slightly tricked when I was given an intelligence test along with everyone else in the ward. There was nothing unusual about that except that I had just received a narcotic injection in preparation for a dilation. I was higher than a kite, but still managed to receive a good mark; it must have been the juice.
Speaking of brain tests it was about than that I noticed an article in one of the national magazines. It was about my old buddy Doctor Ryder, who had been my third psychiatrist at Halloran. He was campaigning for uniform laws for the treatment of the fathers of illegitimate children. He claimed that when a man found himself in such a predicament the tension caused by the shame and not knowing what his legal responsibility was soon caused a nervous breakdown. A lot of things can lead to the nut house, but that one really takes the cake. Doctor Ryder was determined that this country should establish laws similar to those that are on the statutes in Sweden. That was all I ever heard of his efforts.
I went to town on a shopping trip, and sat in my car in front of the department store just long enough to see a man of about forty roll past me on a wheeled platform. His legs had been amputated to his hips, and he was locomoting himself by pushing two padded mitts against the sidewalk. There was another paradox. He didn’t know it, but he was healthier than I though with my legs still mine; I gave the appearance of just the opposite.
I was spending the evening on Seven A East recovering from a dilation when three colored boys whom I had known at Percy Jones and Walter Reed arrived from Percy Jones. Seven A East was also a receiving ward, and while they lay there on the floor in their litters we brought each other up-to-date on our misfortunes. One of the boys couldn’t see it our way, for he had received some miraculous return, and was showing it off by waving his leg in the air. It was in the middle of this exhibition that one of the others asked, “Joe, do you know a guy named Sealskin?” “Naturally,” I replied, “But how did you know?” He answered, “He’s up at Percy Jones. When he arrived Effie told him without looking at his chart that he was from Halloran. When he asked who had told her, she replied, “Nobody, you are acting just like a patient called Joe Silver.” He was insulted and replied, “I can raise more hell than that pipsqueak any day!” I nodded my assent and added, “It’s true, fellows; I could never pull the dirty stuff that he does.” With that they were carried off to the colored ward.
It wasn’t too long a time before I heard of one of them again. He had managed to secure his automobile early, but started off on a bad foot. He loaned it to one of the non-service connected patients who took his girl friend on joy rides. It was on the last of such jaunts that they sped past a motorcycle policeman who promptly took after them. The sounds of his siren frightened them, and they tried to outrace him. Taking no chances, the officer fired at their gasoline tank, and his aim was perfect. It wasn’t long before they were all up before a judge who asked why they had not slowed down when they had heard the siren. Thinking that he was making up a foolproof excuse, the driver replied to the judge, “The controls were frozen.” The judge replied, “That’s too bad you should have turned off the ignition key.” He promptly slapped down a fine, which hurt their empty pockets. The lad from Percy Jones doesn’t loan his car to anyone anymore; it’s too expensive.
They weren’t the only ones to get into trouble, and our manager, having the big heart that he did, soon found himself going to bat defending “his boys” in their scrapes. He was just wonderful; in the daytime he was giving the boys a hand, and in the evening he was with us as a guest at the Ridgeway Country Club’s monthly parties for paraplegics. The doctor who had replaced the head of the paraplegic service also managed to receive invitations.
With a new regime came a new penal code. The prison ward had been abolished, and from then on, whenever one of the boys was up for punishment, he was sent over to the neuro-psychiatric service. There was a catch to this, for that mental patient service claimed that it couldn’t nurse our patient properly, and insisted that one of our aides be sent to tend to his daily needs. The net result of this argument was a paraplegic with his personal footman to push him about the grounds. When they returned to the ward, the employee reverted to being an aide instead of a gentleman’s gentleman. Both the aide and patient were never again to be too happy.
I was still on the same old gory routine, but managed to find a slight diversion during one of my trips to X-ray, which was next door to the operating room. The aide had parked my litter in front of the operating room door, which happened to have one of its shades up slightly. Inside, Doctor Hughes was in command of what I imagine was a thoracic operation, and I had a bird’s eye view of most of the proceedings. I stared at the show for about fifteen minutes before I was discovered, and then all faces turned toward me. Though I couldn’t see his mouth move for it was covered with a surgical mask, I was positive that the doctor was cursing out the aide who had left the shade up, and was running towards the door to slam it in my face. From then on I had to resort to “Life Magazine” to complete my residency in surgery.
I couldn’t put my mind to my studies for too long, for the following day I was invited to a nearby estate to attend a party. You might call it a party except that I really wasn’t in it. My job was to lie on the grass and try to consume a hot dog. Occasionally I stopped chewing and gagging long enough to snap a picture of a passing friend. I was doing quite well until the manager of the hospital came by, and I offered to take his photograph. He retorted that his picture would neither amuse nor edify anyone. He then asked if I knew where there was some cold cream, as he wanted to lubricate the lining of his swimming trunks, which were too tight. He knew damn well that I didn’t, and kept on walking. True to his good old self he didn’t forget me, for as I was about to leave, and the owner of the estate was telling a couple of her boys, “put Mr. Joe into his car,” the doctor made a mad dash from the swimming pool to see that they did me no harm.
Basketball had been introduced as a wheelchair sport at Kennedy, and it wasn’t long before the Paralyzed Veterans Association had formed a nation-wide league. Some teams naturally were better than others, and others just plain richer. The Californians flew to Memphis in their own passenger plane provided by Howard Hughes just for the purpose of playing such games. Wheelchair games are rough and many a player has fallen from his chair to hit the floor. Naturally, when this happens time is called until he can be picked up and returned to his chair. It was while watching such a game that I first noticed the need for more public education on disabilities such as mine. The well-meaning but ignorant person who comes to our aid in such a situation will, without thinking, grab our arms, which naturally we can use, and pull us towards our chairs with the inert parts of our bodies dragging behind. Many a “behind” has been erased in that sorry manner. If he had picked up the dead parts, as a team he with the patient assisting him could have returned the paraplegic to his chair without incident.
Since the paraplegic is not exempt from earthly troubles; another one of those three colored boys found himself in a difficulty, but not of his own making. He had been at Kennedy close to a year, and was yet to receive his first compensation check. He couldn’t do his own writing as he was a quadriplegic, but there was always a gray lady around who was kind enough to send inquiries to Washington to ask why the Government was holding back his money. He repeated his letters only to be answered each time that his checks were being forwarded to him on schedule, and that they were being received back at the treasury office with his endorsement on them. Nevertheless he kept complaining until unbeknown to anyone, the Federal Bureau of Investigation dropped in at the hospital to question him personally. Under its interrogation, he stood firmly to his story. The G-Men wandered around the hospital until it was observed that one of the aides drove to and from work in a shining new Cadillac. The Bureau, being the inquisitive organization that it is, carried its inquiries to the local Cadillac agency, and asked about the cost of the driver’s monthly payments. The dealer laughed and said, “the suspect didn’t buy that car on time; he paid cash.” I never did find out exactly how many years the judge gave that imitation of a gangster, but one thing was certain, and that was that the civil service laws had no proviso protecting a Government worker who committed a combination of mail robbery and forgery.
To say the least, Uncle Sam was a little upset about the matter, even going out of his way to recoup his losses. He even went so far as to sell the car in order to make up as much as possible of the total price, which eventually had to be repaid to the patient.
It was about then that I saw General Bradley’s reorganization plan bearing fruit, for unlike the aide who had robbed the mail, our doctors were not entitled to civil service hearings. Doctor Freeman’s replacement under the rules of the newly formed Department of Surgery and Medicine soon found himself being replaced, but without any red tape.
The news of the great mail robbery was yet to grow stale when another second-rate thief found himself trapped by overconfidence. Dressed as a GI he apparently had cased the hospital, but not as completely as he had thought. One evening, he decided to loot a linen closet, and took only enough towels to fill his duffel bag. He then calmly and brimming with confidence sauntered to the nearest exit, which happened to be at my ward. The guards, to his surprise, proceeded to pounce on him from out of nowhere, or so he thought. I could see the stupefied look on his face as they dragged him toward an exit, which he did not wish to use. The poor fool had failed to notice that the hospital had gone through a transition, and been handed over to civilian control. He hadn’t cased the joint as completely as he had thought, or else he would have noticed that the only uniformed personnel were the guards. His GI disguise backfired and became a dead giveaway.
Watching with me that day were a man and woman whom I was later to call the Bears, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Mama was a gal who in her youth had learned to swing a hip or two, and as a result knew a thing or three. Baby, being depressed by his condition, became a friend of the bottle, and since Baby was Mama’s boy, she didn’t care. As a matter of fact, she helped a little. Baby was a quadriplegic, so naturally he had to depend on the good will of his friends and neighbors for all his feedings. Mama being the best of all friends was the finest of his feeders. She was always under suspicion; being suspected as the one who was transporting the spirits to him taped to her leg under her dress. There is an old saying that since God cannot be everywhere he made mothers. And that was the story of the “Two Little Bears.”
A young lad was admitted a few days later who from the very first minute had us all baffled. It was obvious that he was a new recruit, but he unlike the rest of us couldn’t seem to overcome being withdrawn from the world. Once we found ourselves amidst a crowd of paraplegics who had accepted the bitter truth we came out of ourselves and started to try and live again, but this kid with the movie star features just wouldn’t give an inch. It was hard for those of us who tried to help him to draw him into a conversation, so we didn’t even know what had put him into his chair. His sullenness continued, and grew worse until even the doctor became aware of it.
Unlike most of the doctors whom I’ve met ours were willing to give the patient the benefit of the doubt, and hesitated about sending in a consult sheet for a psychiatrist. I think that the real reason they held back on making the call was that they themselves had a suppressed desire to play amateur psychiatrist. They hadn’t been toying with the idea for too long when he took the decision from them by attempting suicide.
The doctors didn’t bother to call the psychiatrist, but they did ship the patient promptly to him at his service. Once the patient had left us the wagging tongues broke the professional code, and we learned what had caused it all. Our quiet friend had prided himself at being a lover and specialized in breaking up happy homes. He was doing quite well in the bedroom of the second floor apartment of a young bride when much to his surprise and dismay her husband came home. Our hero being a man of wisdom and quick decision decided that the window was the best place by which to leave. Without bothering to open it he made his move, and then he discovered what Sir Isaac Newton meant by his law of gravity. The Veterans Administration knowing of this law, and a few of its own said that his indiscretion was in reality misconduct. The law provides no pension for this type of case, and so he lost his money, health, and lover. He may have cherished them in a different order, but nevertheless they were gone.
Despite the occurrence of that unhappy incident those were still the days when the Veterans Administration had money as being a veteran had yet to become the not too pleasant thing that it is today. Kennedy received a handsome sum, which it employed well. Memphis is as hot as hell in the summer, so it was decided to install air conditioning on the entire paraplegic service. This brought the white wards up to par with the colored wards, which despite their segregated status were prior to that time among the few air-conditioned wards in the hospital.
The effects of the money were also being felt in other ways, for even I was beginning to live it up a little. I finally gave in to the constant nagging of the photography instructor to join his club. It was next to impossible to refuse as he was passing out two hundred dollar cameras for the indiscriminate use of the patients.
I hadn’t quite mastered all the complicated and uncomplicated buttons that had to be mashed to take a picture when I almost dropped the camera that had been loaned to me, for walking into the ward and directly towards me was a girl of about eighteen with both of her breasts exposed. In her arms she held a baby who was sucking at one of them. I would have taken her picture, but I had no film yet alone the technical knowledge. The nurses turned redder than red, while the boys cover smirks but not their eyes behind their hands. She wasn’t a lost soul who had unwittingly wandered onto the ward, but only the wife of a newly admitted paraplegic from the hills. The plain mountain folk didn’t care to put on airs or pretenses about the facts of life. We who were in a modern hospital where the facts of life were treated couldn’t forget the definition of sin as we had been taught by the civilization outside its doors.
It had nothing to do with that hill girl being there when soon after Doctor Mierowsky who was later to become world famous for his work with paraplegics in the Korean conflict decided to turn our half of the ward into a neurosurgical unit restricted to paraplegia and its problems.
Everyone was having big ideas around that time including Doctor Hughes who introduced me to a new dilation. As soon as Miss Spinks, our charge nurse, received wind of what Doctor Hughes had in store for me she promptly ordered me moved into a private room. Miss Spinks had been a model before going into nursing, and wasn’t quite hardened to the new and extra adversary that I was about to face. I was up against a long thick rubber tube which had its leading end weighted by being filled with mercury and sectioned off. Doctor Hughes’ prescription was to have the “Hurst” dilator, as it called, passed through my stricture daily in addition to my routine sorties to the bronchoscopy room for my “plumber” treatments.
I fought and argued against the idea, but finally gave in to a compromise of one “Hurst” treatment every other day. My only consolation during these treatments was that the charge nurse who was a very pretty girl held my hand, but even she couldn’t stop me from automatically reaching for the emeses basin into which I nauseated a mouth of saliva. It was during those retchings that I always thought of that bastard of a doctor who was also a paraplegic, and swore that we paraplegics had no pains.