CHAPTER 15

Hospital news travels swiftly within the government network, and it was about then that I heard that Colonel Kimbrough had been retired by a special act of Congress at full pay. There was a real lead for up and coming young medics as being a good doctor had truly paid off.
Doctor Hughes was no slouch either, and soon after released a report of an operation he had completed the month before. During the secret surgery he had to work on a human heart outside the body. He had waited the month out before releasing the story to the public, so as to be absolutely certain that it was a success. Hearing of this exciting news I cornered the doctor and said, “Hell doc, if you can cut a heart out and put it back; fixing my throat should be quite simple.” With that he jumped around me, and as he started to run away said, “Seventy percent of the people who take the operation you want die, and with your chest complications I guarantee you’ll die on the table.”
That night I felt set back more than usual, for my hopes of a permanent cure had fallen from greater heights. My mind didn’t linger on the subject too long when one of the boys who had been in a drunken mood began to pitch anything and everything he could possibly reach through the window that was used to view the ward from the nurses’ office. It was his first throw that broke the window and brought me out of my doldrums. Our nurses are accustomed to fits of temper from the boys, but that one made the nurses’ notes. When he ran out of all the ammunition that was available at his bedside including water pitchers, drinking glasses, metal urinals and a gallon jug filled with water, sympathetic instigators rolled up, and tossed him the likes from their bedside equipment. The poor nurses hid under the desk, but managed to phone for help between the flying missiles. Like all good things in life that too had to end, for in came the officer of the day who promptly breached he barrage, and pushed the thrower’s bed into a private room. To make the wound even deeper the doctor locked the doors, and the poor slob could do nothing but rant and rave all night until he fell asleep.
I was later to wish that he had raised hell all night, for when I was soundly asleep one of our nimble footed aides stole into my room, and robbed my wallet from the utility bag that was hanging at the head of my bed. I most certainly was not strong enough to stop him had I been awake, but I would have made a good mental picture of his face.
Positive that I had learned my lesson I promptly purchased a small metal box complete with lock and key, and placed the same in the drawer in my bedside table. All went well until one windy afternoon when I started to take a comely nurse for a ride in my shiny new Oldsmobile. I had pulled my chair but half way into the car when I remembered that I had forgotten my wallet. I asked my lady friend to return to my room to retrieve it from the drawer. A few minutes later she came slowly back, but with no wallet. The nimble-fingered raffles had struck again. Thirty-five dollars must be my unlucky number, for each stolen purse contained the same sum. The next day the bank and I become good friends as I promptly opened a checking account. That nurse was pretty and she looked honest, but so did Eve.
With no money with which to enrich the local merchants I was forced to spend the rest of the month lounging on the ward relying on the Veterans’ Administration for my amusement. It was terribly dull until the afternoon that Joey Brown walked into my room with the new hospital manager and his dog. He drawled T-H-E B-R-O-N-X back at me after I told him where I was from. He didn’t look too happy, but it was common knowledge that the war had been no kinder to him than it had to thousands of other Gold Star Fathers throughout the nation.
The display of informality by the manager was not confined to celebrities and special occasions, but was common practice by all the hospital brass. I had grown to know the chief nurse when she took those evening strolls with the previous manager, but was certain that I had taxed her friendship as one evening she dropped into my room and said “Silver, I understand that you keep sardines in your room.” Positive that I was about to have my source of destroying the monotony of the hospital diet confiscated I unhappily replied, “Yes”. She then continued, “Will you please loan me a can? I’ll pay you back as soon as I can go to town and shop.” I was overwhelmingly, but happily surprised. Quickly I replied, “Take as many as you please with no strings attached.” Still remaining the lady she had always been she took one can, thanked me, and graciously left.
The foods that I was taking into my system were wonderful, but the price was growing heavier and heavier day-by-day. The residency program at esophagoscopy had become a cruel farce. Every three months a new joker of a doctor was learning the “Plumber” method of dilation, and I was the dog. In an extra edifying mood Doctor Hughes permitted the nurse to perform a dilation on me so that she could “get the feel of it.” I never knew what her private life was, but I’m positive that she could have received a more pleasant sensation from a rod other than the one that she was jamming down my beaten-up esophagus.
The doctor may have thought that he was putting something over on me, but I’ve read enough to know that in medical schools dogs are used for this purpose despite the many newspapers across the country that are campaigning against vivisection in the belief that a dog is more valuable than a boy who is old enough to die for his country, but not old enough to vote. They yell for their stinking freedom of the press, but they’re too darn backwards to pay for it. It’s too late for me, but the only chance for survival for the new generation lies in today’s scientifically controlled vivisection experiments. Are these people demented enough to hate their children, and wish upon them the hell that is paraplegia?
My treatments soon began to show their worth when my throat was opened enough to permit me to swallow with extra effort a dozen hors d’oeuvres. They were part of a batch that had been donated by one of the local society people who found herself overloaded with a surplus from one of her soirées, as the guests hadn’t been too hungry. I wouldn’t have made such a glutton of myself except that I was the only patient who wasn’t afraid to eat them. For some unknown reason the ward was full of country boys, and everyone was afraid to touch those “funny looking things.”
Being country boys didn’t keep them from having big hearts. With spring in the air the boys jumped into their cars, and headed for the local orphanage where they treated the children to rides in the country and ice cream cones. This was a common practice; not reserved for special occasions or holidays. They were having fun while I was catching hell from my sister in New York for making too many long-distance phone calls. Women always create difficulties.
It wasn’t my job to interfere with the hospital administration, so I minded my own business. In order to keep the few gains that I had made in my health this wasn’t always the wisest approach. The proof of that pudding was shown on the day I was lying on a litter in front of the esophagoscopy room waiting for my dilation. There was a harmless-looking chap sitting on the waiting bench not too far from my head. Making conversation doesn’t come hard to patients awaiting treatments in a hospital, but we hadn’t exchanged more than a few words when he started to cough all over me. “Hell buddy,” I said “you’ve got a bad cough; you ought to do something about it.” He was very annoyed, but replied and to this I can swear, “I ain’t got a cold; I got TB.” Sitting up damn fast I yelled “God damn it where in the hell is your mask?” He meekly answered, “The Doc’s got it.” To this I roared, “What in the hell is he doing with it?” Bewilderedly he added, “They took it from me when I was in that room, and they were looking down my throat into my lungs.” Noticing one of the doctors who had just stepped out of the room I shouted “Hey Doc what’s going on here?” Bothered, he replied, “Relax, there’s nothing to worry about,” and walked away. I took one look at that son of a bitch and thought to myself, “That lousy bastard has a plastic shield and a cloth mask over his face, a sterile gown covering his body, gloves on his hands, and he tells me not to worry.” Worry I did until my next chest X-ray when my fears were finally allayed. The time had arrived for me to break the chains that were binding me to Kennedy, and he unwittingly had been the official starter.
The thought of going near those dangerously active tuberculosis cases continued to bother me, but there was always someone with a little tale to help me temporarily forget. Miss Spinks, our beautiful charge nurse, came into my room one day, and said, “Joe I’ve got a confession to make; I want you to be the first to know it.” My ears started to perk up; for I was certain that I was about to hear a tale of an American Mata Hari or at least an Edith Cavelle. She smiled and continued; “Joe, I’m not really
a blond.” She then stooped low and closely to my bed, so that I could see the roots of her hair. Sensing my surprise she smiled and added, “It’s alright. I’m going to enlist in the army, and I want everything to be natural again by the time my papers clear.” She was a lucky girl, and passed her physical with flying colors. She gambled and won, for she would have been a terribly red faced but luscious tomato, if she had flunked that test, and had been forced to stay on with us with her secret out.
I didn’t travel as much as I would have liked to in my wheelchair during those days, but I did manage to roll around enough to meet most of the fellows from the ward personally. An aide had wheeled an elderly man on a litter by the name of King to the nurses’ office, which was next door to my room, and parked him so that I could see all but his head. Having noticed whom it was as they went by I called to him and asked how he felt. He didn’t reply, so I raised my voice a bit and tried again. He still didn’t answer. Thinking it over I decided that he was in one of his usual touchy moods, and I let the case drop. A few minutes later as the aide started to roll him from the ward I noticed that the sheet was covering his head. Well, they say, “If you ask a stupid question you receive a stupid answer.”
Not everyone on that ward was dead; in fact, many lived with the hope that science would find the road back from paraplegia. The National Paraplegia Foundation for Spinal Cord Regeneration Research was established in the belief that someday the answer had to be found, if not for this generation of Americans than for the next.
One other cure that is needed but which never will be found is for the miserable doctor who blames you for his having to pay the Government time for the four years it gave him as a present through medical school. We had a host of these jokers who sincerely believed that if it hadn’t been for us they would have been discharged from the military services much sooner. It wasn’t much longer when I realized that I disliked many more things about Kennedy than I liked. It was a sad change of heart, but it had actually happened. The time had arrived for me to return home. The reports about the Bronx were still bad, so back to Halloran I decided to go with time to spare as it had gone over to the Veterans’ Administration the year before.
Being a loyal member of the Paralyzed Veterans Association I called my family, and asked it to phone the PVA president Bob Moss to ask him to intercede in my behalf with the Halloran manager, and to arrange for my transfer. Before taking this step I received a letter from “Silent Dick” advising me with strong adjectives that the opinions of Base Eighty One, alias the Bronx Veterans’ Administration Hospital hadn’t changed, and it would be best for me is to return to Staten Island.
The net result of my call to my family was an extra pornographic letter from my bemedaled and battle-scarred brother-in-law stating that if he ever met the president of the Eastern Paralyzed Association again he was going to knock his teeth out, cripple or no cripple.
A week later the ward physician walked into my room, and notified me that my request for transfer had been approved but I would have to pay all the necessary expenses myself. A wretch who had also tried to befriend my sister when she was staying with me had found the telegram in my records stating that I was entitled to but one transfer at government expense, and the one that I had received at the time of my discharge from Percy Jones was it. Leave it to your friends to give you the dirty road.
I was more than elated by the good news because the cost of the trip placed in its proper perspective meant very little to me. I called New York that evening to relay what I had heard. I should have saved my phone money, as no one was surprised. My entire family had heard the story before me. It seems that my Pop had gone to see Doctor Upshur Halloran’s manager, and requested that he should transfer me to his hospital. Doctor Upshur’s reply to Pop was that he had asked an impossibility as the hospital was all filled up. To this, my Pop said, “Never mind, I’ll take him to my house.” Taken back a bit, Doctor Upshur added, “but your son is in no condition to live at home.” Pop retorted, “Parents are supposed to care for their children no matter what.” Upon hearing Pop’s words Doctor Upshur reached for the phone, and gave orders to the hospital registrar to effect my transfer. Pop broke into a smile, thanked him, shook his hand, and went home.
I soon found that what had appeared to be a simple journey involved logistics. The first problem was my car, for I was going home by train. My sister and her husband took care of that by flying down to Memphis, and returning back home by motor as part of a vacation trip. I was shocked when my brother-in-law walked into my room and opened his mouth. He had a genuine New York City brogue, which was something I had forgotten ever existed.
I managed to secure one of the attendants to aid me in what turned out to be half-luxurious, half-miserable journey. We started in the train ride in a bedroom with its bed of rocks, and finished in a room where I was even able to put my portable radio to use. I didn’t have to worry about a lack of company, for my wheelchair made me the focus of everyone’s attention. The first to notice it was the porter who gave me hell for having such a fine new chair when his daughter who had arthritis needed it much more than I. My visitors weren’t restricted to the train’s personnel, for the next day a member of the American Legion’s Ladies Auxiliary walked in complete with her uniform. She spent a half hour telling me of the wonderful things she was doing for the boys in the hospitals, and asked me if I knew a half a dozen names I had never heard of. When I gave her a negative answer she disappointedly wished me a pleasant journey and left.
Despite my differences with the porter dinner was extra good, and the dining car purser being in an extra generous mood saw that my stomach was well-filled. The railroad made no profits that day. Merrily we rolled along, on, up and over the Mason-Dixon line, and on to New York. Doctor Upshur had kept his word. There was an ambulance waiting at Pennsylvania station though Pop was also there just as a precautionary measure. Two years had been murdered before I was once again taking that long ride from the guard house at the gate to the paraplegic service. Someone must have warned them, for when we checked in at the registrar’s office and asked to be assigned to building number twenty-seven as before, I was promptly sent to building number twenty-five.
Building number twenty-five was the exact same as number twenty-seven save for one thing; I hardly knew anyone there. It hadn’t occurred to me that an absence of over two years might have had a slight affect on its population. All that I could think of was that feeling that once again I was entering a strange hospital for the first time. I spent an uneasy first few hours in the bed in which I had been placed when the chap in the one next to mine who had been napping pulled the sheet from over his head, and yelled, “Hey, it’s Joe Silver!” It was Carl Selleck, an old-timer, and an expert at using a rubber band to hit nurses in the behind with vitamin pills. There had been a lot of hell raised by Carl’s extracurricular activities, but no one could ever say he didn’t use his vitamins.
From then on it didn’t take too long to fall back into the old grind; in fact, I even heard one of the boys ask Carl who I was. He replied, “You mean you don’t know him? He’s Joe Silver; he’s got two pretty sisters.” That did it and I automatically became one of the gang. That once again proved the old axiom that it’s not what you know, but whom you know; even if they are your relatives.
I arrived in New York in May forty-eight, which was during the height of the Paralyzed Veterans Association’s campaign to obtain a government grant as an assist toward our building prosthetic homes for ourselves. “Newsweek” magazine gave us a big boost by printing stories about us, which helped put our case before the American public. It even went as far as to put a picture of one of the boys uniformed and in his chair as he was about to toss a basketball on its front page. (No one ever knew that when he posed for that picture the basketball had been scotch taped to his hand.) At the bottom of the page was the caption “Paraplegia, the conquest of unconquerable odds.” There was also a direction to the readers as to what page our story began.
Public law number 702, which was the bill that gave only the service connected some financial assistance toward the construction of our homes was introduced by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy who was then, fortunately for us, not the controversial figure that he later became famous for. The boys still tell the story of how when they went to Washington and spoke to him about introducing the bill they asked him if he knew what the greatest thrill in the world was. He gave them a politician’s answer that sounded like a pleasant evening of sexual intercourse. They gathered up their courage, quickly corrected him, and said, “No, Senator, it’s not as you think; it’s to sit on a john under your own power, and have a good healthy bowel movement for yourself.”
By the time supper was finished, I had been brought up to date on all the good and bad back gossip, including the news that we were going to make a nationwide appeal that evening for support for our bill on radio, which was a very popular medium in those days. I soon found myself with nothing to do and rolled out of the building to help pass the time until our great radio hour came. I had decided to take a refresher course in New York Air, and sat by the parking lot watching the paraplegics driving their cars in and out. I hadn’t been there but a few minutes when one of the cars stopped, and its driver shouted, “Hey fella want to go for a ride?” “Yes,” I excitedly shouted back, and jumped into the car.
We weren’t on the road too long when I found myself crossing the bridge over the Bayonne River into New Jersey. Once across I was completely lost, but depended on my new friend’s good graces to take me wherever he was going alive. After an hour or so of steady driving we pulled to a stop, and he said, “Come on let’s jump out.” I was going to ask why when I noticed quite a few of the fellows from the hospital had parked there also. That was too much for my curiosity, and I had to ask, “What’s up?” That ride was a stroke of state; I had really become one of the boys. It turned out to be quite a party with the host passing around fifths of whiskey as he said, “Remember fellows you’ve got to drive back.”
The next morning the Doctor at his rounds inquired if I had had a pleasant evening out. I looked at him and thought to myself, “How in the hell did he find out?” With a knowing smile he continued, “Don’t look so worried; the boys always tell me if they have a good thing on the fire. You’re a new patient. You’ve only been here a day. At least before you go out again to raise hell give me a chance to give you your formal entrance examination.”/ He made an effort to look at me sternly, and then strolled on to the next bed. The doctor was basically right, but what the hell that movie which we had seen was really different than any of those Hollywood pictures they showed at the hospital recreation hall. Fun was fun, but whether I liked it or not I had to return to the old dilation routine. Doctor Bickle was the throat doctor’s name, and he was an alright guy. My Hurst treatments were reduced to once a week, and I only took an occasional trip to the operating room to have a Bouge dilation to re-enforce the others.
Once I completed all my medical tests I was a peer of the realm except for one thing; I wasn’t permitted to drive an automobile in New York State. For some strange reason there was no reciprocity between New York and Tennessee, making my driver’s license useless. I was forced to rely upon my old childhood buddies to chauffeur me about whenever I cared or dared to go somewhere. To say that I was imposing upon them was the understatement of nineteen forty-eight. When my little jaunts were completed, and I arrived back at Halloran at two or three in the morning depending on how well the evenings went; my chauffeur had to return to the Bronx with another buddy who had followed in his car.
It didn’t take too long before my late evenings out turned into four-day weekend passes as the summer gave me no excuse to stay in bed except when the doctor deemed it absolutely necessary. During one of those weekend passes as I was being aided into bed at three in the morning by my Dad, we accidentally yanked out my Foley urethral catheter. When Pop saw blood gushing all over the bed, he became terribly excited, and he yelled for Mom to rush upstairs and awaken the doctor who had an office in the apartment house.
The Foley catheter is a combination rubber tube within a rubber tube with a balloon surrounding its tip. The balloon is inflated after the catheter has been inserted into the bladder. When the doctor came in to my room half-awake, he said, “What’s your problem?” I pointed to the catheter, which was lying on the windowsill where my Pop had flung it. The balloon, which, on its way out, had torn the mucus membrane and caused the hemorrhage, was naturally still inflated. The doctor analyzed the situation and pensively said, “I have to put a catheter into you, but I can’t use this one; it has a bump on it. It will never fit.” It was the doctor’s good fortune that my mother was within ear range as I was all set to give him hell plus a little more. Trying to keep my poise and still letting him know my contempt for his ignorance I gave him a thirty-second course on how to deflate a Foley catheter. He sterilized the dam thing, and then finally reinserted it. After he left our apartment, my sister informed me that before leaving, he had asked my mother for five dollars, and she had given it to him. There was no peace or sleep for anyone in that house that night until I had extracted a promise from my parents to get rid of that moron, and find a real doctor for their future needs.
Aside from that unfortunate incident, it was a happy, carefree summer with my two chauffeur buddies serving out their last terms at college, and learning nothing better than to spend their spare time with me. There was one item of business, though, that kept me at the hospital one weekend. It was for the formation of the paraplegic flying club. Arthur Godfrey, being the aviation enthusiast that he is, through his broadcasts raised enough money to purchase an Ercoupe for the boys at Halloran. Once the plane was delivered to Staten Island it was the sole responsibility of the flying club, and neither Godfrey nor the hospital was to be burdened by its responsibilities from that day forward.
There’s a catch to everything, for as the weather began to cool, so did my activities, but it wasn’t really the weatherman’s fault. My gay evening jaunts had overtaken me. The ward doctor took one look at my behind and said, “The Stryker frame for you.” The thought of lying on a Stryker frame no longer frightened me, but the idea of being forced to remain on it did. Fortunately the boys at Halloran were more than one step ahead of the rest of the paralyzed world when it came to this vexing problem. With a saw and the bit of ingenuity that is required by every “stiff” (a term we sarcastically used to describe paraplegics) in order to remain alive we converted two regular crutches into short ones which would fit each individual’s requirements, so that he could push the frame about the building under his own power whenever he happened to be lying on his stomach.
Paraplegia forced the individual to employ his brainpower, but ironically it did not always apply to paraplegics. In those days the boys at Halloran had organized wheelchair basketball tournaments with ambulatory teams as well as with teams from the nearby paraplegic centers around the metropolitan areas. When you take a big strong healthy college kid, and sit him in a wheelchair to play basketball he becomes almost as helpless as an idiot, or a Chinaman with a knife and fork in his hands although he has been rated an all-American by all the national sports editors. The outcome of his game is simply short, and for him horribly embarrassing. The final score of such games usually runs from between thirty to fifty points in favor of the wheelchair-conditioned invalids.
Among these teams there was the Army team made up of GIs from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The Halloran team met these boys, and trounced them according to schedule as with all teams of their class, but Halloran did not reckon with Army discipline or Esprit de Corps. The Major who was in command of recreation at the fort remembered his lesson well. He borrowed wheelchairs from the post hospital, and
set up a rigid basic training course in wheelchair basketball for his team. This of course was all done under a cloak of semi-top secrecy with no word permitted to leak out to the paraplegics at Halloran. The next time the two teams met, the game seemed to start as it should have when the Major pulled the strings good and hard, and turned loose his wheelchair cavalry. After a few minutes of this new type of playing the scorekeeper threw away his card, and started locking for an adding machine. Casey at the bat may have been a disgrace at Mudville, but not as badly as the Halloran five.
The time came finally when I had to stop listening to the boys reciting Ha1loran’s tales of defeat and concentrate on my own troubles. It was strange though New York was my home state, and though it should have been stricter in its driving requirements it wasn’t; giving it no reciprocity with many southern states including Tennessee as to 1icensing, so naturally I had to start my driving lessons all over again. I didn’t mind it too much because my lessons were being conducted in my own car even though I was not permitted to drive it to the Bronx for the actual road test. I was forced to ask the Red Cross to provide the transportation to the testing site. I may have chanced endangering my skin my going on that long ride to the Bronx, but I was amply rewarded for my troubles by passing the test on the first day.
It took over a month for me to receive my license, but it was only because one of the ward comedians had stolen it out of the mailbox in the nurses’ office, and kept it hidden until he saw me preparing a letter of inquiry for the State Bureau of motor vehicles. He then rolled over to me and asked, “Do you know what these funny-looking little envelopes are for?” It was then that I realized too late that he was the obvious suspect, for on a previous occasion he pulled off the same stunt with food from my makeshift pantry. Wondering all the time where that license had been made me forget one night to go to the ward movie, and it turned out all for the better. They had snuck in “Up in Mable’s Room” again.