CHAPTER 26

I checked into Maguire Veterans’ Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and decided hopefully that perhaps if I started with a clean slate of doctors I could do better. I told them of my complaints and was forced to undergo the same procedures which I had at Kingsbridge. When Doctor Florez the ward surgeon received my reports back from the laboratories he informed me to my surprise and bewilderment that what I had been told by the doctors in New York was not true. There was nothing wrong with my pancreas. In one way I was elated, but in another I was troubled, for now I had a pain which I couldn’t prove.
Doctor Florez was one of the most intelligent doctors I have ever met in the Veterans’ Hospitals, and despite his South American accent; it was a pleasure to converse with him. Regardless of how highly I felt about this doctor I still had my pain, and not wishing to make enemies of the people in this hospital without good cause I decided to try the men of the outside medical world for help. I went from doctor to doctor while still trying to pursue the answer to why the pain at all. I found myself spending the few dollars that I had saved quite freely, but to no avail.
I was at a loss for what to do next when to my delight the pain eased a little. The only genuine symptom that I could display was the strange pimples that I started breaking out with in the springtime, and none of the doctors was paying any attention to them. By this time I had worked my way back to New York and living at a friend’s home, but my short-lived freedom was not without its price. The scar which I had developed as a result of a burn that I had received from a convertible car seat while visiting Florida the summer before had broken open, and I was once again in need of hospital care. Not wishing to re-cross my bridges I checked into the Paraplegic Center at West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
It had been a long time since I had bedded down into a large open ward, but I was in no condition to worry about the fact that two television sets were playing on different channels, or that there were two hot card games going at the far end of the room. I was too deeply withdrawn and concerned about being forced to check into a hospital to notice, but the chain of good looking nurses with which I had been blessed in the past at all previous establishments for health had been broken.
When I finally became interested in what the world around me was doing I learned that this ward of card players had been denied the presence of a pretty face. I was setting about to try and determine if such an exclusion had been the result of petty female jealousy or poor thinking on the part of the chief nurse when the trouble which had caused my emigration to the Bay State reasserted itself. Doctor Isherwood to whom I had been assigned was an old friend of mine from Tennessee, and it was easy to relax and pour out my gripes to him. He was the sort of person who put human feelings above materialistic things, and had himself turned down an opportunity for promotion in Kennedy, so that he could transfer to Massachusetts and be near his family.
Despite his being popular with all who knew him he was still only human, and could offer me nothing but a repeat of all the tests which I had received at the two previous hospitals. When dealing with the wild and wooly men of medicine it is not overwise to build up one’s expectations, and that series of examinations proved to be no exception. Though going through the same ritual did nothing but bore me; it served one purpose with its results. It re-affirmed that the diagnosis, which the doctors in Maguire had made that the Bronx doctors were terribly at error, was true. Doctor Isherwood said that he felt that my aliment stemmed from my intestinal spasms becoming acutely active, and that there was nothing which could be done about it.
I informed my Guardian Angel in Washington of this latest development to which he seemed pleased, but he like the rest of the lay population didn’t know that antispasmodic medicines don’t work very well, and the only cure which the medical profession can offer for muscular spasm is surgery, and no one dares guarantee that. Not having the desire to undergo a knife again unless it was an emergency I stoically made up my mind to grin and bear it while in the back of my mind I was trying to think of the next place to go in my quest for better medicine. In the interim I had to divert my thinking from myself and escape to the amusing little world around me which the occupants of this ward made up.
We had a low level injury on the service who was well liked by everyone because of his soft heart and willingness to run errands for any and all who may have asked him. His chore that day was to come to the window which was in my corner, and look out of it to ascertain if the latest sandwich runner had returned to the parking lot with the load of food and goodies that the boys had sent him for. This checking on the food bearer he did of course when he wasn’t coming to the same window just to see if the man from the garage had come to take his car away for repairs. By having a good share of control of his lower organs it was no problem for him to stand on his braces as he pursued his investigations.
He made these little sojourns so frequently that no one any longer paid him any heed. I too took no interest until the day Dave Thomas the quadriplegic on my right yelled, “Hey, Joe, look at Navy Roth!” I knew that Davy Thomas was a great one for teasing, but I gave in and peeked a little. Peeked and teasing were the right words all right, but Davy Roth had no way of knowing it. His lack of sensation in his lower limbs had caused him to fail to notice that his pants had fallen to the floor as he stood there peeping out of the window. Though it was not the type of peep show the boys would have preferred because of its principal character being of the wrong gender it still was a source of laughter. Needless to note it took a red-faced Davy Roth a few days to live this incident down.
By this time the word of my presence there had reached all the non-service connected patients who had been forced to transfer to Cushing’s Veterans’ Hospital when Halloran was closed in fifty-one. With the later closing of Cushing they faced their second forced exodus, and thus their presence at West Roxbury. In normal walks of life when people who haven’t seen each other for a long time suddenly meet the usual conversation pertains to their and their family’s health, but with us we don’t expect too bright health reports, so we concentrate on bringing each other up on the latest doings of the old gang.
There was a great deal of memory refreshing to be done, for ten years had elapsed since our last meeting, and a great many wheelchairs has rolled over the bridge. Instead of the healthy idle gossip of well people such as the latest statistics on marriage, birth, divorces, and confirmations, ours runs into a morbid vein which consists of bringing each other up on the whys and wherefores of the deaths of many of our friends. It may sound terribly odd to an outsider, but after the initial greetings these encounters fall into a trite rut during which each of the participants counters the other’s question by repeating and saying, “Say, did you know so and so died?” Then of course there follows the strong debates on the cause between a group of the best qualified amateur medical men in the world.
We may have joked about our status as expert quacks, but it didn’t take much to convince us that some of the professionals belonged on our side of the fence. Always being one who took a day’s interest in the defense and well-being of his health I soon found myself making an oral effort to protect it. I didn’t realize it then, but I had committed my first error in protocol on that ward. Mrs. McGovern the charge nurse was dressing a newly discovered bedsore on my left thigh when I politely interrupted her and said, “That looks kind of dirty. Don’t you think you ought to clean it up by putting it on Dakins solution?” Her rather benign looking features turned sour as she snapped back, “Don’t you tell me what to do!” This was an introduction to a new type of nursing personality, for she was determined to maintain the autonomy of her job even if it meant costing me my leg.
When the doctors made their weekly rounds the following Monday I made it a point to ask them to have a look at the sore. This of course I did while the charge nurse was standing at my bedside, and though it widened the rift between us I felt no remorse, for my doctor prescribed the Dakins solution treatment, as I knew he would. With their leaving one of the boys who slept in a neighboring bed and who had witnessed both incidents rolled over and said, “Boy, you’re in real trouble.” I hardly knew the fellow, and told him that I was in no mood for cheap humor. To that he replied as he started to retreat from my cool reception, “Just wait until she starts to give you the business when you least expect it; then you’ll know if I’m joking.”
There was no point in worrying about him, for every patient has his gripes, and his naturally was against our charge nurse. Besides there were other things which were more visibly annoying to me such as the paraplegic who was also a double leg amputee, and who was to spend the remainder of his days lying on a litter watching Popeye and other television cartoons with no respite during the day except at meal times. This was his way of escape while Khrushchev was busy haranguing the United Nations and giving the world twenty-four hours to get out.
If his stomping of his shoe on his desk didn’t provide any thrill I could always roll into the latrine and listen to the aides and porters discuss wage scales. The big bitch seemed to be that while the painters carried a wage board rating of seven; the attendants who worked in the operating room were only given a four. During all this heated debate which took place in this den reserved for bull sessions and latrine lawyers never once did the subject of skill enter into the argument. Our aides just couldn’t seem to inject the subject of ability into their rebuttal. Money was the only thought which entered their minds, but to those of us who were sitting on the sidelines the thought that the hospital management could offer the operating room aides such small compensation and still have them accept their positions made us think if a trip to the operating room were not a certain journey to death. I was slowly learning, and there were to be many other monetary discriminations on the part of the manager before I would be able to depart from his little bureaucratic empire.
While Mr. Sheehan the only lay manager in the Veteran’s Hospital network was busily feathering his nest by not using the large sums of money he had access to (namely the U.S. Treasury) there was an orderly who worked evenings and who persisted in attempts to do otherwise. He in most probability was not wise enough like the manager to realize that being frugal with the government coin also could mean a promotion, but while he was wasting the taxpayers’ hard-earned wealth with his slipshod handling of their purchases he devised a system of lining his own coffers. Whenever he noticed that a patient had left some change on his bedside stand he would slowly work his way up to saying to him after having completed some very minor chore, “Could I have this change? I’m teaching my little son to save.” This may have been rendered in gentle tones, but it may as well have been an ultimatum, for the implication was all too clear. A refusal on my part would have been the same as saying, “To hell with you, and your little bastard,” for the next time around when I put on my call light for a little assistance I’d find myself waiting as if I didn’t exist.
The payola had to be made the first time in order not to risk becoming another one of those forgotten men, but all future sums left on those tables were quickly put out of sight and out of mind. The boys who had quite a few years seniority in that place must have gone through the same shakedown routine when they joined the West Roxbury wheelchair club, for whenever they had a gripe about too little or too much money they made it a point to be certain that he was not within ear range. It may sound incongruous to someone in the healthy world to hear of a complaint about too much money, but every once in awhile Bill Perrin the ruggedly built paraplegic with the longshoreman’s voice who had been laid up for a year with a bedsore would wail out, “This is a hellova life. I’ve got five pension checks in this drawer and nothing to spend them on.” He shouldn’t have complained, for there was a double amputee who after sixteen years of continuous hospitalization died right after discovering that he was eligible to receive Social Security also.
While the perplexing problems of money and the best apparent means of disposing of it were tying up the thoughts of some of those around me I was still in my hackneyed rut having trouble with my swallowing as per usual. My introducing the personnel to this fact was not received too happily, for it meant that I was presenting them with a little more work. At first the growling wasn’t apparent as I was given the benefit of the doubt because of my newness on the scene. Once the ice was broken I was the recipient of the old familiar remarks such as the one made by an aide who after working up enough nerve commented, “You’re too skinny; you don’t eat enough.” It took a great deal of patience to be tolerant and to repeat to him the same miserable story of my throat as I had done so many times before. Once I completed recanting the tale I was fairly certain that he was on my side.
It was then that I discovered to my amazement and delight that in addition to the pains in my stomach easing up I was having fewer spasms in my esophagus. For the first time in fifteen years I began to feel genuine hunger and an interest in food. With this feeling of well-being I gained confidence at mealtimes and attempted to take in more and more food at each meal. I soon started breaking all my previous consumption records and even asked for second helpings. This in addition to creating extra trips to the mess hall for the aides also had me asking for a second pitcher of water, for naturally I could still not swallow except by forcefully washing the food down with large drinks of water. These extra treks caused the aide who was so worried about my being undernourished to comment, “You eat too much.”
I was growing tired of conversing with my self-appointed doctors and their useless gems of wisdom, and so I decided to pick up with the writing of this story where I’d left off three years before. Though I hadn’t realized it during my first efforts I had accumulated over three hundred pages of handwritten notes. The time had arrived to transfer them to legible typewritten pages, and so purely by accident I secured the services of a typist who couldn’t have been much over twenty years old. She sat at my bedside working at the typewriter that had been placed on a card table as I deciphered to her my very illegible handwriting.
We seemed to be progressing quite well, and I never paid any heed to the large group of chairs which had assembled at the far end of the ward to watch television. The only time that I actually turned my eyes away from the pretty creature or my work to look at them was when I watched her gracefully saunter past them to find her way to the ward exit. It was then that I noticed that their stares wandered away from the television screen and focused their attention to her. I thought to myself, “These characters are certainly fickle, for all day they play cards, and now suddenly they have taken an interest in television.” Even the best that television has to offer can’t compete with a live young chick like that, so the turning of all eyes and heads was to be expected.
The next day my comely secretary informed me that she wouldn’t be able to come any more, so that afternoon I said good-bye. The following day when the time arrived for her usual session she didn’t appear, and I noticed that the television crowd had depleted in size. After a few hours passed and she still hadn’t shown up one of the boys worked up enough nerve to roll to my bed to ask me the details about her absence. It was then that I learned that the boys weren’t really interested in television, but had taken up that position because without anyone noticing it they could stare at my secretary’s legs as she crossed them so beautifully under the card table.
With the ending of this good deal I found myself in the proverbial dog house for a few days as it took that long to convince those sex-hungry men that I hadn’t insulted the girl, or had been the cause of her leaving. While believing that the departure of this sweet thing may have caused a few days of unhappiness; it was in reality about then that we suffered our greatest lost of all. The dearest and grandest lady the disabled veteran has ever known departed from this earth to a well-earned rest in heaven, and we who knew and appreciated her efforts on our behalf were to realize how deeply her death was going to affect us for many years to come. We would have to wait years to find someone to approach the stature of Edith Nourse Rogers.
With the coming of cold weather a flaw in the original construction of the hospital began to assert itself. The ward in which we were sleeping was inadequately equipped with convector radiators needing at least another half of the number more. We heard all sorts of rumors, and we were fed all kinds of stories, but it was for the manager himself to realize after visiting our ward that if he persisted in saving money, and held back on the sorely needed radiators as the weather worsened he was going to find himself with a ward full of seriously ill patients. The thing that finally swayed him to our side and made him approve the needed work order was his seeing many of us lying in bed in two sweatshirts and under three blankets both day and night.
Though it took him long enough to drag his stingy arse around to doing what he should have done at least two months before; the plumber who was assigned to make the installations was not very enthusiastic and set about to prove his autonomy. The fact that we were freezing and shaking from cold didn’t seem to perturb him, for the work was making him sweat or so he claimed. We knew damned well that he was either lying or crazy, but our thoughts didn’t bother him. He made it a point not to strain himself by going to the canteen for a coffee break after the installation of each unit. He could even be heard complaining to his civil service buddies when they took unauthorized absences from their duties to the sidewalk superintend him as to how the hospital was overtaxing him by taking advantage of his good nature. We were soon saved from listening to his crocodile tears by the noise of jackhammers. To be certain that lazy bastard wasn’t making the sounds, for they emitted from the labors of the civilian contractor’s men who were busily at work on the roof above us preparing it for the installation of two new stories and a research lab.
With that cacophony roaring above me I found it a bit more than difficult working with my typist, and so I had a choice of either listening to the ex-Red Sox baseball player as he recited filthy stories to his female visitors, or listening to the charge nurse as she rattled off her gripes about the lack of cooperation she was receiving from the doctors when it came to obtaining needed supplies and equipment. Her latest complaint was about the oscillating bed at the far end of the room opposite mine. The damned thing was always going out of order, and the patient who occupied it; a polio quadriplegic depended on its rocking motion to keep alive.
Repair problems were always being hampered by government red tape, for the bed for some unknown and strange reason was Red Cross property. The patient was well aware of the dilemma which he was constantly facing, and in an effort to protect himself though unable to move about under his own power did his best to learn the mechanics of the damned thing.
His brain may have been doing quite well at keeping him alive, but his body like many bulbar polios would not cooperate, so his breathing would fail. On one such an evening the nurse on duty became worried over his condition, and wanted to have him transferred to an iron lung. The doctor who was Officer of the Day that night and whom I had nicknamed Doctor Couch disagreed with her concern, and told her that the lung would not be necessary. In the morning as I glanced down the hall at the oscillating bed I could see that it had stopped running. The patient didn’t need it or the iron lung anymore; his breathing had also stopped.
The grapevine quickly confirmed what I had suspected, and I like so many others had another loss of faith in the men on whom we depended for our very existence. The urge to get up and run for cover began to exert itself. This hadn’t been the first time I had felt misgivings about entering the place, for several weeks prior I learned that the ear, nose, and throat man only came to the hospital once a week. With my many throat complications I would have felt a great deal safer had the hospital had a permanent throat service.
This business of being a nomad in my own country for my health’s sake would have continued to set my morale back still further had not a turn in the political events in the nation given it what I had hoped to be a much needed boost. With the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency the years of building up friendships and acquaintances in the nation’s political circles had strengthened the Great White Father’s hand tremendously. He was in what I believed a position to carry our cause for spinal cord research directly to the White House. History in its own fickle way had almost played events in our favor. As bitter as was the irony; what was the president’s poison was also our meat.
He as was common knowledge also suffered from a back injury, but it was fortunately of a nature lesser than that of paraplegia. An overstrain on his part or an error in judgment on the part of his doctors might very well put him into a wheelchair. With this thought in mind I composed a letter of plea which I forwarded to my friend in Washington in the hope that he would be able to re-forward it to the powers that be. With my plea in the mail and on its way to Washington I realized that there was very little which I could do to add impetus to my cause, so I permitted my thoughts to wander back to my wheelchair world.
It wasn’t much of a world for the building project had made quite a bit of progress, and its workingmen found their labors taking them directly into our ward. For a while it seemed as if the entertainment problem had been solved as I could while away the days lying in bed as the indoor counterpart of a sidewalk superintendent. It wasn’t any Broadway show, but to a mechanically minded person such as myself the sight of the ceiling being torn down while hundreds of pipes in a complicated network were hung in its place was more than enough to hold my interest. No one dared say that our ward any longer resembled that of a hospital, but then again who cared?
We thought at first that we didn’t care, but as the destruction that preceded the construction advanced we began to realize the error of our judgment. The razing produced new air leaks, and the frigid temperatures that had been overcome by the installation of the extra heating units again made themselves felt. With the effect of the new heating units neutralized and the work pace accelerating all around us it became obvious to the hospital manager that it was time to evacuate all the patients in our wing. The grand exodus that should have been accomplished before the construction began finally became a reality. It was another government paradox. Kingsbridge Hospital had been cold because it was of practically ancient construction while West Roxbury was freezing because it was practically all new.
We were in the process of completing our eviction and everything and everybody was in a well run bedlam. As I sat in the hallway watching the parade of hospital furniture roll past Mr. Sheehan also strode by. He was his usual friendly self; making it a point to give me a jolly smile and hello. Believing that I had caught him at the right psychological moment I asked him to step into the shower room as I wanted to show him something. Once inside I approached him about the need for having shower hoses installed in the shower booths. I went on to explain how it was an absolute necessity for patients to have the hoses in order to do a decent job of washing their backs and crotches while completing their baths in chairs. He smiled in approval and said “I’ve got a few men standing around doing nothing; I’ll cut them or it right away.”
The civilian workmen were making great strides in my old wing, but the weeks rolled by, and still no sight of any civil service laborers. I told my friend in Washington that the manager was beginning to stall in the same manner as Doctor Brunner had in the Bronx to which he replied, “Be patient. I have something big on the fire for you, and I don’t want to waste any efforts on a government leech at this time.” Orders were orders, and though I saw Mr. Sheehan many times after that I said nothing of it to him.
The government habit of procrastination is catching, for the next day as I sat in the corridor the barber who was better known for his bowling than his haircuts strode by loudly muttering to himse1f. His jabbering was clear enough for me to hear him say, “Where could they have put McCormack’s bed?” I cou1dn’t help but to take a deep interest in what he was saying when he added, “Where could they have possibly put that thing? It was right in the center of the room last time that I was here. They make it hard for a poor man to earn a living around here. Oh! Why did I ever take this stinking job?” At this point I could no longer help but to butt in, and so I let curiosity get the better of me by saying, “What in the world are you going to do with an oscillating bed in the barbershop?” Obviously annoyed he gazed back and said, “I’m in no mood for jokes; I came here to give Mac a haircut; not to waste time horsing around with you.”
That answer started my temper boiling, and angrily I snapped back, “Where did the dumb bastard who made the call phone from; the morgue?” He thought it was his turn to become angry and stared piercingly back at me but said nothing. I continued. “He should have; Mac’s been dead for at least three weeks.” Upon hearing my words he apologized claiming that the error was really his, for the call from the nurse had been properly placed with plenty of time left to treat a live man to a haircut, but he hadn’t been able to get away from his shop. I don’t know whether it was analogous to the story of the escaped horse and the barn door, but it made me wonder still further about the West Roxbury Veterans’ Administration’s hospital.
In fifteen years of paraplegia I found it rather difficult to sleep on the floor, and so I followed the parade of furniture around the corner of the narrow wing of the ward where I found my new quarters. From the crowded spaces within the room I began to get the feeling that perhaps it would have been better had they been called eighths, but at least we didn’t have to worry about a government inspector dropping down on our heads when he hung from a thirty-four hundred test pound ceiling pipe hanger, and suddenly discovered that it failed to meet specifications. After these uninvited plunges in the old wing he would turn his wrath on the plumbers, but he was never able to stir up the degrees of unhappiness which our charge nurse could produce.
She treated me to a glimpse inside her personality one afternoon when she and the loquacious idiot in the bed on my right decided to take stern measures toward the religious attitude of one of the patients. It seems that when he was convalescing from a bedsore closure operation he made it a point to request a litter and a volunteer pusher, so that he could attend church services even though he was in no condition to sit up. Having successfully healed his operation and again able to sit up in his chair to be on his own his interest in religion waned. As she unfolded this tale of what she termed blasphemy the idiot’s mouth drooled in anticipation of what misery the crone was planning for the independent thinker. In a speech to him, which I could not help but overhear, she unfolded her plans for making the free thinker’s life as miserable as possible. Thoughts about the evolution and improvement in freedom of religion in this nation passed quickly through my mind, but her standing there and ranting as she did quickly diverted my thoughts to a black page in New England history. “The Salem witches and their burning.”
Her sadism may have been at its heights when it came to religious persecution, but that idiot on my right prided himself in going her one better. I hadn’t been in the room but a few days when he introduced me to the “Mr. Hyde” side of his personality. So that he would be able to sleep without the light from my bed lamp disturbing him he called the nurse over and asked her to draw the curtain which separated our two beds. A second after she started to comply with his request I realized that if the curtain were completely drawn it would block out my view of the television program which I was so intently watching. When I felt that she had pushed the curtain far enough to satisfy his needs and still permit me to continue enjoying my program I asked her to stop. Suddenly the idiot whose name happened to be John sat up in his bed, peered around the curtain, waved his fist at me, and said, “The next damn time you try to tell me what to do with my curtain I’ll jam my fist down your throat.” The nurse who also happened to be in the first evacuation of Bataan was inured to this sort of display of histrionics quietly walked away. Taking my cue from her I ignored the senile old bastard.
The next morning as he sat between our two beds the urology orderly whose name also happened to be John presented me with the opportunity to squelch my moronic friend permanently. “John” I very loudly said. “Do you know why this is the fanciest room in the hospital?” “No” he replied in a normal unsuspecting tone. “It’s very obvious” I went on. “It’s the only room which has two ‘Johns’ in it.” He stood there gazing at me, and I could see from his face that he couldn’t make up his mind whether to laugh or to become angry. What he did didn’t really matter, but the half muffled growl which emanated from the other John was the proof needed to tell me that I had delivered my vituperative remark well.
It became easy for me to understand why the boys didn’t start the mornings as in the other hospitals by saying, “Who’s on today?”, for they knew in advance that they were not in for a cute or pleasant surprise, but there was always an aide by the name of Ray to provide a remark which would set the morning off with a bang. After he started his day by making certain that he told everyone within ear range that the manager had personally greeted him that morning, and told him how glad he was that he had been able to make it work he would respond to the first patient who called him by saying, “Go fry your arse.” This didn’t faze any of us, for we knew that the story about he and the manager was a lie, but we couldn’t help but wonder how he had developed the art of cussing us out. We had before us a man who had actually attended divinity school, but found to his dismay that the brothers who ran it didn’t approve of his playing with girls and gin on the sly.
His fallout with religion was none of our business, but one thing that we did know for certain about him was to never loan him more than a dollar and a half at a time, or else he would be out sick the next day curing the hangover which the money had caused. A strange thing had happened after one of his binges, and though we were positive that it had nothing to do with him, because of it he caught hell for quite a few days after it happened. Some men came in dressed as Christian brothers, and sold quite a number of the patients religious literature. When the Catholic chaplain was consulted about those sales it was discovered that these men were frauds and didn’t represent any real church organization. It was then that we decided to pick on the orderly, and blame him for the hoax by saying that he had sent in the men to sell the books to us, so that they could bring the proceeds to him to use as whiskey money.
Every time something out of the ordinary would happen Davy Thomas who upon being transferred to the ward was placed in the bed on my left would utter a bit of his own homespun philosophy. His comment on this latest act of blasphemy was, “Joe; how many people would be out of work if nobody did anything wrong?” His was a well posed question, for he realized in his young mind that a world without wrongs or ills would find itself suffering from mass unemployment.
Davy’s gripes weren’t always on such a high plane. One evening after returning from pass with but a few minutes to spare till curfew I could hear him muttering to himself, “That chicken bastard ‘Jumbo’; he treats us all like a bunch of kids.” At that I couldn’t resist teasing him, and so I chimed back‚ “What’s the matter little man; somebody steal your lollypop?” That was all he needed to make him forget that some of the fellows were already sleeping, and he lit into me at the top of his voice to tell me what was bothering him. Jumbo was the nickname of the man who ran the recreation department; and he had taken some of the boys on the wheelchair bus to attend a party. The people who had sponsored the affair were good hearted, and went to great efforts to see that the boys were given a pleasant affair and a good time.
To be certain; they wanted the boys to leave the party feeling mellow, and that was where Jumbo had to open his big mouth. He made it a point to inform the hosts that they should ration the spirits which they handed out to his patients, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. No one who wished to have any friends left among the paraplegics when he returned to the hospital spoke to Jumbo on the bus ride back. Needless to say all couldn’t stay angry at Jumbo for long, for the petty autocrat held the keys to all future outings and parties.
Enough of those wild tales of adventure I thought to myself, so back under my pillow I put my head for a good night’s sleep. The next morning as per usual into the shower stall for my daily bath I went. Not expecting any parade of beauties or anything else to appear I turned on the faucet and started to scrub away. I hardly had a chance to increase the water bill when into the next stall rolled one of the boys. He was a new recruit; being hurt only a year, and not even entitled to wartime benefits, but this didn’t fret him, for he could feel all the way to his knees. His was the type of injury which made all of us higher level injuries envious, but that day we were equals. He may have been healthier than I, but I caught him just as he was about to turn on the water and in time to inform him that he had forgotten to take his new shoes off his sensationless feet.
My perspective couldn’t remain focused on the trivial things in life as could the younger members of our wheelchair family, for it was about then that I received the first opening in my efforts to establish a sound spinal cord regeneration program. Governor Ribicoff, then Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, sent me a letter in response to the one which I had mailed to my Great White Father. It was encouraging but not an excuse to become complacent, for there were many steps yet to be made to realize our goal.
Call it irony, luck, or whatever you wish, but the only thing that has kept me alive has been meeting an intelligent doctor when I needed him most. Doctor Isherwood resigned about then, and his replacement was a not too badly looking woman. I had been treated by female doctors before, but she was the first of her sex to be my ward physician. She had come to work on our service after giving birth to a daughter, and she was soon to prove to all that her sex was in no way a deterrent to the practice of good medicine.
She didn’t take to any of the previous diagnosis of my complaints, and promptly set about giving me all sorts of tests. Her efforts brought her to believe that my trouble was gastritis, and she quickly set about to remedy it by giving me iron injections. To my surprise and elation the severe intestinal cramps about which I had been complaining for two years began to disappear. Like the rest of her patients, I quickly became one of Doctor Leidendorf’s ardent admirers.
With the conclusive proof that Doctor Leidendorf’s diagnosis was correct I began to entertain high hopes that I would enjoy a real respite from misery, but the definition of disease cannot always be limited to those troubles caused by germs. The day that patient had warned me to be wary of our charge nurse I should have heeded his words obediently, so as to have been prepared to meet the next incident of hypocrisy, arbitrary thinking, and dangerous malpractice that I was about to encounter, and, which happens so frequently and dangerously in our American hospitals.
Every time a doctor prescribes a medicine or treatment it is because of a scientifically based belief that it will aid his patient, but he naturally cannot be present to supervise the obedience of his orders. That is where nursing personnel such as that woman who cared more for the ward’s floors than its patients can become very dangerous.
On that occasion and many another she gave myself or other patients the wrong dosage or pills, but I like every long time hospitalized vet had long before learned to remember the medicines and their color codings, so as to be prepared for errors such as hers at any future dosing time. By now we are more than wary to this danger, but what happens to a newly admitted patient who is a greenhorn in the mystifying world of petty medical bureaucrats and pill pushers is nothing short of pathetic.
That sadistically natured nurse may have failed to frighten me as she would a rookie or you people of the two legged outside world, but strange as it may seem there is a problem over which she has no control, but which I know vexes us all. I once remarked to my mother during a visit when she asked me if the hospital had mice. “Mom,” I replied sarcastically “how can there be; there just isn’t enough room for those little rats.” I may add on this page that they face the same problem as do the patients when they entertain visitors. For some strange reason the majority of our American hospitals have been constructed without enough room to provide a semblance of privacy to patients and their families. There is a sorrowful lack of space allotted, so that an ill person and his loved ones can have a good cry on each other’s shoulders. I could go on to illustrate the misery and discomfort which are caused by this type of crowding, but what everybody and his brother know will do very little or nothing to add to the impetus needed to correct this wrong, for this is not only an architectural oversight, but a need caused by the same old demon the money supply, or the lack of it.
I have upon more than one occasion mused over in my mind ideas to atone for the architectural shortcomings of our nation’s hospitals, but as happened many times previously I soon found my thoughts turning to something which was giving me great personal concern, for I could not understand, and could find no one to supply me with a rational explanation as to why they were erupting. I could not keep my attention and mind from those flat pimples that I had noticed the year before, and which had slowly but finally begun to disappear. Doctor Leidendorf had told me that the factor which had contributed most largely to my gastritis was my being anemic, but pimples are the result of the body throwing out foreign substances which it finds dangerous. I had hundreds of those strange sores all over my body indicating what seemed to be a major infection excepting that there was no temperature, and then a thought hit me. Could my fighting my way past Doctor Weiss, his fellow voodooist, and on up to Doctor Colson’s clinic, so that he could prescribe that vaccine for me those many years before be finally bearing fruit?
A broad grin over my face, but I quickly smothered it, for there is nothing that stings harder than the pain of an ancient wrong reasserting itself, and it was with the disappearance of those pimples and the improvement in my swallowing that I realized that Doctor Colson had been my doctor ten years too late. If his treatment had been rendered to me at least soon after if not when it was discovered that my esophageal troubles were not psychosomatic there is no doubt in my mind that ninety percent of my misery would have been avoided, and though to date with the final disappearances from my body of the last vestiges of that ancient infection there has been an improvement in my swallowing; permanent damage has been inflicted, but because of the stupidity of men such as my Kingsbridge Hospital paraplegic service ward doctors. In addition to my paraplegia I shall always be plagued by esophageal difficulties.
I’ve taken you with me on a trip through a world of misery and pain, and have even permitted your curiosity to get the better of you by allowing you to peak in where you didn’t or didn’t want to belong. For those of you who are overly squeamish I’ve added the ruse of a few laughs to drag you through these pages, but the objective was the same. By having taken you this far I’ve succeeded in educating you to the hell which is paraplegia.
It is my hope that I frightened you enough to have produced in you a deep concern about the lethargy and lack of sincere interest within the majority of the medical profession towards the problem of spinal cord regeneration, for the average doctor turns away his head and shrugs his shoulders when approached about the subject of growing a new spinal cord. The putting of an invalid back on his feet and returning him to society is a subject too steeped in hard work with no rewards to merit the interest of but a few of the stouter-hearted members of the medical world.
It is fortunate for humanity that this negative attitude was never shared by Doctor Jonas Salk and the other courageous men of science who preceded him in the war against disease and pain, or today we would still find our hospitals quartered in caves. Despite the valiant efforts of these fearless pioneers of medical science for the betterment of mankind that which is nearest and dearest to man’s heart namely his health has failed to keep pace with his many other scientific achievements.
When we of the lay world find ourselves confronted with this paradox, and learn to our disillusionment that our leaders in the medical world have failed to pick up the torch of mankind’s hopes for a fuller life which was handed down to them by the farsighted men of their profession; it is for us to press the rekindling of that flame. Though we do not possess the needed knowledge; we laymen in this free land of ours have the power to redress our cause. It is for each of you who has scanned through these pages and learned his lesson to now promise to himself that there should never be a repetition of this horrendous tale upon himself or a member of his family.
It is too late is rectify the hurt which has been inflicted upon myself and my fellow paraplegics both military and civilian, but by spreading the knowledge which you have gained here and supporting every effort which will be made towards this end; you will have paid the first premium on the insurance needed to prevent yourself and your loved ones from chancing a life such as mine.
The initial premium of this insurance will consist of pressing all the powers that be to set about to activate a vigorous program to see that man’s most baffling health problem, the regeneration of injuries to the central nervous system, is undertaken. No authority is too high to be immune from this constant danger which speed and the atomic age have brought to us. All must be urged to take a dynamically fearless interest in this effort. The polio foundation is the organization best equipped to handle this monumental task. The President of these United States is the logical person to give this project its initial impetus, but it is for you the common man to see that he does so by putting the word into his ear.

THE END OR IS IT?