Page 10 - DFCS News Magazine Summer 2014

By Joseph P. Blank, Readers Digest Magazine 12/70”
“You ought to go home,” the Army neurosurgeon told Kathy
Meade.
there, having fought depression and emo onal withdrawal, were more capable of helping Jim than all the hospital’s doctors and nurs-
es.
“Help Us.” First Lieutenant Carole Burke, head nurse on the ward, told its occupants only that a young chopper pilot with a head injury,
“There’s no point in your con nuing to live here at the hospi-
Ward 13 was his only chance, although a remote one.”
and there’s no sign that The doctor’s frank appraisal stunned young Kathy, who was four
tal.
he will
If your husband ever wakes from his coma
–
–
I doubt that he’ll ever be able to func on as a human being.”
who could neither talk nor respond, was being admi ed.
She asked She knew they had a great respect for these pilots;
months pregnant.
Madigan General Hospital, Tacoma, WA, where her husband, Chief War-
nothing of them.
each, in fact, had been carried from the ba lefield to a hospital by Army helicopter.
She returned in a daze to the intensive
-
A cast covered his en re
care room at
rant Officer, James P. Meade, Jr., 20, lay dying. trunk and badly fractured, deeply infected le leg.
The men glanced up casually as Jim was wheeled into the
His fractured right One side of his head was indented from loss of bone
ward.
then posted themselves on either side of his bed.
ankle was in a cast.
and showed two burr holes where Army surgeons in South Vietnam had
Two nurses removed the towel restraints from his raw wrists, In a few minutes a
His weight had plunged from 145 pounds to an To Kathy, it seemed impossible that this pathe c figure was her hus-
Soon two During the next 24 hours
drilled explora vely. emaciated 80.
pa ent in a cast hobbled over.
other pa ents dri ed by and began a conversa on; although Jim
seemed oblivious to it, he was included.
the men lounged around Jim’s bed, spoon
radio, bantered, kidded with the nurses.
“I’ll stay with him,” he said.
-
All the while Jim was treat-
band.
to reach Vietnam.
had enlisted a er a year at the University of Oregon, where he had been a brilliant student and president of the freshman honor society.
“I can’t go on with school while men are dying out there,” he had told
fed him meals, played the aware, par cipa ng.
Only 16 weeks earlier, he had been in perfect health
–
major in the Army, he
and eager
The son of a career sergeant
ed as if he were “there”
A er a few days, Jim’s hyperac vity
-
–
the bi ng and writhing
It may have been
When he grew restless in bed, nurses and pa ents moved him into a wheelchair and pushed him into the semicircle of amputees around
–
He took long naps, curled like a fetus.
–
Kathy in their frequent talks about the war.
save lives, and the best way is for me to become a helicopter pilot.”
subsided.
that he was preparing to be “born” again, Major Palmer surmised, as hitherto unused cells in the right side of the brain were being ac vat- ed to take over the func ons of the destroyed cells in the le side.
“I’ve got to do something to Jim and Kathy were married shortly before he went to South Vietnam,
where he immediately saw combat.
than four months was shot down three mes.
dri ed his falling ship into trees at an angle that exposed himself to the
He flew day and night, and in less On the third crash he
the television set.
response. “Want some ice cream, Jim?”
“Want to watch a ball game, Jim?” one asked. No response.
greatest danger and his three crewmen to the least.
No One day, when Nurse Burke was helping him into a wheelchair, Jim
broken but s ll
At impact, the spinning rotor blades smashed through the cockpit, tore
-
his helmet to bits, gouged out part of his skull and ba ered his
swing his forearm sharply against her head. movement, perhaps to express impa ence.
“I
ly watched Jim for any sign of change. Nurse Burke, “I think he looked at me.
It seemed a deliberate
brain.
He was the only one injured.
trying to understand you.
“Jim,” she said, “we’re No response.
Fi een days a er the crash Jim was wheeled into
Help us.”
More than a month went by while the men eager-
Trapped Animal.
Madigan General, where a medical team headed by Major George Palm-
–
Love
–
You.”
er (not his real name) quickly went to work.
ba ered body, fed him nutrients intravenously, got his blood chemistry
Then one day a veteran told For just a flash.”
They made repairs on his But they could do nothing about the brain damage that
into balance.
caused his strange coma.
remained unfocused and expressionless.
Gradually Jim’s eyes began to focus, to look at things, at peo-
be ed to the bed with towels. from his throat.
Incomprehensible animal sounds came
And now, as he began emerging from his coma, puzzlement Neither he nor the doc-
A er a few days his eyes opened, but they Frene cally ac ve, he had to
ple.
replaced the empty, unseeing expression.
tors realized at this me that the chopper blade had destroyed a
por on of his brain’s memory cells. a world he couldn’t recognize.
Like an infant, Jim was looking at
Kathy and Jim’s mother were at his bedside throughout the day, trying to break through the coma by giving him every possible expression of
He couldn’t talk, The pain in his le leg was deep and searing, but he
love.
tried to throw himself out of bed, bi ng, snarling, growling.
express himself like a human being, he behaved like a trapped animal.
Actually he was more helpless than an infant.
Periodically, they removed his arm restraints.
And each me he Unable to
laugh or cry.
had no way to express it.
gence returned, he became convinced that his inability to communi-
As the days passed, and a part of his intelli- He sank into deep depression.
Major Palmer could offer no hope.
“and I had the feeling that he wanted to go. that life was unbearable.”
cate meant he was dying.
But Ward 13 would have none of it.
-
“We were losing him,” he recalls, He had been so cruelly hurt
Prodding, cajoling, they forced He learned to nod or shake his head in answer to
room nurse in a civilian hospital, also recognized
him into ac on.
Jim’s mother, a surgery
He learned to eat on his own power
by reaching erra -
ques ons.
cally for the food and throwing it toward his mouth.
–
He wanted to
that her son was sinking.
talk.
words simply wouldn’t come out.
“You and I know that he is dying,” she told “Can’t you try something else?”
Major Palmer.
The major had concluded that Jim remained alive only because of the
But the Nurse Burke entered Ward
He worked his mouth, grimaced, pushed, fought.
loving a en on of his wife and mother.
coma, he thought, would be the addi onal care and concern of oth-
Then, early one Monday, it happened.
13 with a cheery “Good morning, gentlemen.”
wheelchair she thought she heard him answer, “Goo’ moorn’.”
What might help to li the
As she passed Jim’s Was
ers.
Ward 13, which housed some of the Vietnam war’s most seriously disa- bled amputees.
Perhaps the answer could be found in the hospital’s orthopedic
it wishful hearing?
That same day, he greeted Kathy with three barely understandable
His eyes told her that he
had
“Ward 13 had a fine spirit,” Major Palmer later explained.
“The men
love
and obviously rehearsed words.
–
made the sounds. you,” he said.
“I
She repeated the words to him.
–
“Baby,” she said.
Summer 2014 Issue
Page 10
Her heart jumped.
pointed to her expanding middle.
Then she
He tried furious-