"I Could write a book"

I guess the first symptoms I remember hearing about occured in the late 1960's.

Jean was invited to a family wedding in New York. I did not attend. I saw her off at the airport in Walla Walla.

Later, I received a call from those who were to meet her at the other end. "Where is she?". I tried calling the airline and they would share no information with me.

Her later report was that she was first told her flight would be departing late and then the passengengers were herded into a van and shuttled to Boeing field where again they waited for an aircraft to appear.

Dragging her carry-on luggage and sitting on hard benches triggered excruiating back pain. This pain continued off and on in milder form for some months.

Eventually the pain settled in the neck resulting in muscle spasms that pulled her head to one
side.

A regimen of tranquilizers and daily sessions of a counterweight attached to a pulley were of little help.

It is unbeleivable today to say there was no CAT scan no MRI available in the Northwest at that time. X-ray series could give a sort of steriopticon view approximateing was later would be much more apparent through a scan.

A neurosurgeon in the Tri-Cities revued the films. He found no apparent cause for th problem.

He did note a an unusual bone formation at the rear of the skull.

I could write a book.........

My late wife, Jeannie, spent twenty lousy years in and out of hospitals. I think after 13 procedures we went almost a year hospital free.

Each time she would say I have another chapter for the book I am going to write. Unfortunately she never recorded her experiences.

Somewhere in the history of medicine there has developed a Nurse Cratchet syndrome that assumes that once you have signed in to a hospital you have forfeited all rights as a citizen and as a human,

Let's start at the very beginning. In her first visit to the hospital she was experiencing contnued and almost unbearable pain. She found that laying her head off the mattress eased the pain. The nurses were aghast. We don't want you falling out of bed, honey!

I had a major tantrum when I came into the room and saw her wrists tied to the bedrail.

(To be continued)