Robert Dallek, The Medical Ordeals of JFK theatlantic.com
[ This just came up online, and it's painful to read. I don't know if JFK should be considered heroic or nuts, I guess both probably. Clip: ]
One thing in particular remained unknown until the Travell records were opened this year: from May of 1955 until October of 1957, as he tried to get the 1956 vice-presidential nomination and then began organizing his presidential campaign, Kennedy was hospitalized nine times, for a total of forty-five days, including one nineteen-day stretch and two week-long stays. The record of these two and a half years reads like the ordeal of an old man, not one in his late thirties, in the prime of life.
All Kennedy's confinements at this time were at New York Hospital, except for one in July of 1955, at New England Baptist. Terrible back pain triggered an eight-day hospitalization beginning on May 26, 1955. General work-ups from this period noted continuing back miseries, with a chronic abscess at the site of his 1954-1955 surgeries; repeated bouts of colitis with abdominal pain, diarrhea, and dehydration; and prostatitis marked by pain on urination and ejaculation, along with urinary-tract infections. On July 3 he spent one day at New England Baptist being treated for severe diarrhea. Eleven days later he entered New York Hospital for a week to relieve his back pain and treat another attack of diarrhea.
On January 11, 1956, he spent three days in the hospital, where he received large doses of antibiotics to counter respiratory and urinary-tract infections. When nausea, vomiting, dehydration, and continuing urinary discomfort occurred at the end of January 1957, he spent two more days in the hospital. In July abdominal cramps put him in the hospital again for forty-eight hours. Fevers of unknown origin, severe abdominal discomfort, weight loss, throat and urinary-tract infections, a recurrence of his back abscess (which was surgically drained), and his all too familiar acute back pain and spasms resulted in three hospitalizations for a total of twenty-two miserable days in September and October.
During this time Kennedy had zero flexion and extension of his back, meaning that he could not bend forward or backward at all; only with great difficulty could he turn over in bed, sit in a low chair, or reach across a table to pull papers toward him. He also had problems bending his right knee and from a sitting position could raise his left leg to only 25 percent of what was considered normal height. There was "exquisite tenderness" in his back, and he was suffering from arthritis. Yet he managed to hide all this from everyone but his doctors and intimates.
In 1955 Kennedy had consulted Janet Travell about muscle spasms in his left lower back, which radiated to his left leg and made him unable to "put weight on it without intense pain." He asked her repeatedly about the origin of his back troubles, but she found it impossible "to reconstruct by hindsight what might have happened to him over the years." It was clear to her, however, that Kennedy "resented" the back surgeries, which had brought him no relief and "seemed to only make him worse." He might have done better, of course, to blame the steroids that weakened his bones.
According to the Travell records, the treatments for his various ailments included ingested and implanted DOCA for the Addison's, and large doses of penicillin and other antibiotics to combat the prostatitis and the abscess. He also received injections of procaine at "trigger points" to relieve back pain; anti-spasmodics—principally Lomotil and trasentine—to control the colitis; testosterone to keep up his weight (which fell with each bout of colitis and diarrhea); and Nembutal to help him sleep. He had terribly elevated cholesterol, 410 in one testing, apparently aggravated by the testosterone, which may have added to his stomach and prostate troubles. |
