VERN’S NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

At four years old I became ill with plural pneumonia (both lungs) and nearly died. 1934 was before the development of sulfa drugs and penicillin, so there essentially was no treatment or cure. Perhaps it resulted from an evening of sledding on a frozen pond outside of Beloit, Kansas. Dr Vallett started coming to our home every other day with a large hollow extraction needle. By inserting the needle between the ribs into the lungs he could evacuate the fluid. I can still feel that in my back!

Shortly that was not sufficiently handling the fluid (pus) build-up. I therefore was taken on a “nice ride” to the hospital. I had overheard their frightened discussions, so wasn’t fooled. There a rubber tube was inserted into the lung through my back by spreading the ribs and left in permanently; and, I suppose, clamped shut. Every other day reportedly more than a pint of fluid was drained off. Actually the pressure was sufficient that it spurted some distance according to my mother, who was at my bedside and praying “non-stop”. I vividly remember how it hurt when they were manipulating the tube!

On the plus side I recall a jovial nurse and having a balloon tied to the foot of the bed.

During the ordeal my ear drum had burst, but it was of little notice or concern. I had had ear drainage for about twenty years when the drainage stopped and the hole closed up, probably due to a modern drug. I was prevented from swimming during those years as the drainage would flare up whenever I got my head under water in trying to learn to swim.

On returning home from the hospital I was too weak to walk and for a couple of years my legs ached so badly at night that my mother would give my legs an alcohol rubdown. My dad, a chemist, rigged up some glass bottles and tubes so that I could blow the water from one bottle to the other; and at times used litmus that caused the water to change color from red to blue as it changed bottles. Also, he had played the trumpet and had me start to further build up my lungs.

However, to this day I have always been short of breath compared to others. In high school my parents didn’t want me involved in contact sports because a knee in the back might rupture the lung, which they believed was probably weaker at the spot where the tube was. Want to see the scar?

Foolishly, I smoked from age 14 to 23, surely to the detriment of my lungs. Nowadays they can’t cure a cold but pneumonia isn’t much of a problem.

I recall Dad commenting on paying on the hospital and doctor bills for several years.