Where Angel’s Fear To Tread — Aches, Pains and Un-listened to Admonition

I’m now 77. Getting up each morning is an adventure. I’m not complaining, at least I’m getting up, but the number of aches and pains, and the sites where they surface increase with time. Memories of how and where the many injuries occurred, causing the zings are vivid and readily recalled, most times with a smile. It’s also a living journal of decisions made, good, bad and some plain disastrous!

By the middle of the spring term at Andover my sophomore year, I had logged about as much time in the Isham Infirmary as allowed, without moving in permanently. Dr. Roswell Gallagher, the head doctor and keeper of the “Inn,” was a top pediatrician by trade, part psychologist, part pill dispenser and part father.

Among my maladies were two concussions, one from hockey and one from a well-aimed snowball with a rock at its center; a separated left elbow from football; a severed tendon in my left wrist, from horsing around in my dorm, dousing a roommate with water from a milk bottle that shattered (the tendon was reconnected surgically in Boston); and stomach and head cold ailments too numerous to mention.

Dr. Gallagher characterized my travails in a letter to my housemaster:

“George rushes in where angels fear to tread.”

My housemaster in turn incorporated Dr. Gallagher’s comments in his term-end assessment of my progress, along with comments on my grades and comportment in the dorm, altogether a rather grim picture.

Dad and Mother wasted no time implementing new disciplines and instilling a new attitude. The weekend after receiving the housemaster’s report, they appeared on campus for meetings with the headmaster, school administrators, teachers and me. Impulses were to be harnessed, and responsibility was to become my new credo, or else!

My overnights at the infirmary became less frequent, my grades improved and the only other major injury was a torn cartilage, senior year, the result of a clip in the Tufts Freshman football game.

The new regimen produced the desired results. I graduated and arrived in New Haven the fall of 1955 to begin my freshman year at Yale.

May, and another mishap (nobody’s perfect), this time a deep bruise in my left thigh, the result of a check in lacrosse. The injury plus the treatment — numerous injections of an anti-coagulant, painfully administered, in the area just above the knee, extending to my hip- bone – hobbled me. I was walking with a cane.

Spring burst on New Haven. There was no transition from winter. The attendant giddiness was tempered by the fact that Yale was not yet co-ed. No bras as triumphant banners hanging from dorm windows and no panty raids. However, there were other means of expression…

I had just completed a two-hour chemistry lab and was headed back to my room on the freshman campus. The closer I got, the louder the noise. A huge crowd had gathered in the park on the east side of the gated quadrangle. The main gate was locked. I spotted a familiar face, stopped and asked him what was going on.

Two crowds had joined. One had viewed Mayor Cellentano’s incarceration in a revolving door at the Taft Hotel. Several enterprising undergraduates had wedged the door from either side, with tapered wooden pegs, so tightly that His Honor was more than a little late for lunch.

The second group, much larger than the first, had just witnessed democracy in action. The street- corner from which Humpty-Dumpty’s ice- cream truck had been selling for a long time, had been invaded by the corporate giant Good Humor. That morning the Good Humor truck had arrived first. A shouting match ensued between the drivers. What better time and place to debate the “Evils of Bigness.” The confrontation drew hordes of students. The rhetoric grew heated. There was pushing and shoving. More than one law school student was seen taking notes!

Enter New Haven’s finest, in no mood for niceties on a hot May afternoon. They dispersed the now angry crowd with the occasional thrust of a billy-club. The second     crowd merged with the first.

By this time, I had involuntarily become part of the crowd, bum leg, cane, thick blue lab- book and all. The police received their share of verbal abuse. The crowd continued to swell. For once, I was merely a spectator.

The police strategy changed from containment to dispersal. A wedge of policeman, some on horseback, separated the crowd. Half were driven deeper into the park. The other half was herded toward the one small open gate to the freshman campus. Fearing for my leg in the funneling that was occurring, I tried to stay on the outer edge of the crowd. The gate was small. The inevitable pile-up began. I was stalled. I had no place to go. The police began to flail away with their night- sticks. I moved up the two steps before the gate and was hit on my aching thigh. I lost it and decked the cop who hit me.

The next thing I remember, I was waking-up on the grass inside the gate. I was told later that I had knocked the policeman to the ground. A second one hit me with a black- jack, and the police and my classmates played tug of war with my body. We won!

I spent several nights in the infirmary. Early in the morning after the confrontation, the infirmary phone rang. Mother had heard on the morning news about the Ice Cream Riot at Yale the day before and the five students who had been hospitalized. She immediately assumed the worst and was checking to see if I was a patient. The nurse handed me the phone. Even Mom may not have been the first to utter those now famous words “There you go again,”- followed quickly by,  “Are you all right? What happened?” The explanation was short. My head ached. Mother arrived unannounced the next day to check on me.

Life Magazine featured an article on “The Spring Riot” in the next issue, highlighting the struggle between the large, evil corporation and the smaller, more vulnerable competitor, and the zeal with which the debate had been conducted. No mention was made of the stick-swinging police.

The only other medical incident during my four years in New Haven occurred the summer of my sophomore year. The cartilage in my right knee was removed, and a tuck taken in the lateral collateral ligament.

But the real fun started after graduation in 1955, when I began Destroyer duty for the Navy.  I loved every second of it.  I wanted to make it my career, and I probably would have except for – you guessed it – another medical calamity.

This one was caused by stubbing my toe on an Alp – the Parsonz – in Davos, Switzerland, with boards unfamiliar to me, strapped to either foot.

My total elapsed time on skis on that fateful afternoon was under two minutes. A binding I had tightened after my third Beck’s didn’t release. The result was a fracture dislocation of the right ankle and a busted fibula.

Why did I go skiing? Why did I get into any of these scrapes? It seemed like a good idea at the time. Up to this point I was taking life in big swigs, the art of sipping to be honed at a later date. My ship the, U.S.S. Abbot, was in Naples for replenishment and R&R after an extended deployment, 31 days at sea, most of it patrolling in the Eastern Mediterranean. We had been scheduled to stop at Palma, Majorca, after entering the Med. And then on to Cannes, east through the Suez and down around Africa, with a stop in England.

On the way over from Newport, Nasser blew up several ships in the Suez. The urgency of our deployment intensified, no stop in Palma. We steamed directly to the Eastern Med, joining our sister ship, the U.S.S. Hale and two British Destroyers already on station.

Mission complete. We were relieved by two Destroyers from our Squadron and proceeded to Naples. Moored next to us when we finally arrived was a small fleet tanker, (AOG). Much to my amazement, a college roommate was aboard. I hadn’t seen him since graduation. The first night ashore, John showed me the sights. Naples was his homeport.

Viewing historic places and other cultural pursuits were not high on my list. John and I had a lot of catching up to do, and there were other more pressing concerns!

The next day John made arrangements. We had decided the night before to go skiing. A flight to Zurich, a train to Davos and accommodations at a villa in Davos Dorf, Cook’s Travel had done their job.

Hockey had always been my favorite sport. My Taks (skates) made the trip from Newport. At breakfast the first morning, John decided to go shopping. I took off in search of the Davos Resort hockey team. We decided to meet for lunch and then ski in the afternoon.

The day was bright and cold. The snow made a crunchy sound when I walked. You could see your breath and feel the breeze on your cheeks. I found the team practicing at an outdoor rink close by and asked to meet their coach, Jackie McLeod, a former Canadian Olympian. He invited me to work-out and later, after practice, to suit-up the next night for a game against Arosa.

I met John for lunch. We shopped for ski outfits. Daughter Jenny still wears the sweater I bought. I wanted to look good. After all, it would be my first time on skis.

John suggested that we skip the beginners’ slope and go straight to the top. It was getting late in the day. I should have known better, he was a Texan. We rented skis and boarded the tram to the top of the mountain. On the way up, we engaged two exquisite, pink- cheeked British lasses in conversation and invited them to partake of several bubbly beverages before my first descent.

God, I remember thinking, it looked so steep! I tightened the bindings, another mistake, and was the first to start down the mountain. I went about 300 yards, and was heading straight for a ski school of young kids. I tried to stop to avoid running through them. I fell and rolled over awkwardly, catching the toe of my right ski. I wound up on my bottom looking up, my foot still in the binding, the ski pointing straight down, the tip caught in the snow.

John skied by stopped, horrified, then took off seeking help. The girls stopped and waited for the help to arrive. Shortly, a ski patrol member appeared and undid the binding. My foot flopped off to the right side. I had no control of it. He handed me several pills and held a flask of brandy for me to wash them down with. Another patrol member arrived and together they eased me on to a toboggan and strapped me in. John reappeared. He and the girls waved as the skiing medic took off for the base of the mountain, me in tow rattling behind. They followed at a distance.

The pills and the brandy kicked in. The pain was still there, but not quite as intense. My hands were strapped across my chest. I was looking back up the mountain. The toboggan was swaying back and forth, like a row- boat in tow. Sounds of scraping, bouncing over moguls, and the proximity to the snow exaggerated the sensation of speed. It dawned on me how much trouble I was in. I was scared!

Krankenhaus, Davos, was a very busy place that day, made even busier by the icy conditions on the slopes. I was taken directly to a waiting room and given a shot, probably morphine. My turn finally came after what seemed an eternity. I had received a major penalty from the head referee in the sky for “unnecessary stupidity.”

There were so many accidents more serious than mine, a time-consuming general anesthetic was ruled out.

The bottom of the tibia is notched to accommodate the foot. In order to repair my handiwork, the foot had to be relocated back in the notch. I was handed a piece of hard rubber the size of a harmonica and told to bite hard. Three times they pulled my foot down and over attempting to line it up in the notch. The third try was successful. I almost passed out after the second attempt. Complicating matters even more, no one in the OR spoke English. I squeezed a nurses’ hand so tightly, that I almost broke it.

Properly cast, the foot in place, the broken fibula aligned, I was wheeled to my room. What seemed like such a good idea during the wee hours two days before, seated at the bar of the El Sombrero Restaurant in Naples, irrevocably altered my course.

“Play the hand the way its dealt,” particularly if you’re the dealer, an oft quoted admonition. I added, “Don’t go into a high-stakes poker game without knowing at least some of the rules.”

My hospital roommate was a young Swiss banker, Mark Cunningham. He needed traction to set his broken tibia. Assisted by two nurses, a young doctor put a pin through his ankle without anesthetic, in his bed, as I looked on from mine. Pills and a shot were administered before the procedure.

We both rested. Several hours later an angel appeared, a uniformed nurse pushing a wine cart! We both accepted her fine offer. The wine plus the pills and shots worked. We slept through the night.

The next afternoon our beds were wheeled out onto the fourth floor covered porch, large windows open on the sides and end, overlooking the slopes. We were bundled-up with extra blankets and sweaters. The mountain air was crisp and clear. The “angel” with her wine cart stopped by occasionally. We spent the afternoon sipping and dozing, watching the skiers traversing the mountain. You could hear the sounds of their skis on the snow, echoing from the mountain, and sometimes their conversation. The second night was better than the first, and so it went for five days.

John returned to his ship before I was released from the hospital. The Brits stayed on. I checked out of the hospital and into a pension in downtown Davos, walking cast in place, cane in hand. I was not fit for sea duty. The Abbot sailed without me.

I was flat broke, and in need of a fast cash infusion. My parents were unaware of my accident, but used to my predicaments. I dreaded making the call. It had to be made, cash shortfall or not.

I picked up the phone and gave the transatlantic operator my home- number. The phone rang, ”Hi, Mom. It’s me, George.”

“Where are you, and why haven’t you written?”

“I’m in Davos, Switzerland.”

“Where? This is a bad connection – did you say Switzerland? WHAT did you break?” I told them my story. Both Mom and Dad were concerned and sympathetic to my plight. Dad wired me some money the next day. I wrote them a long letter that night. I wired the Naval Dispensary in Naples with my return date. They already had my records.

A cast and a cane were not about to stop me from seeing Davos and the Alps. The Brits were still around and together we sampled the food and the night- life. During the day I rode the lift up, joined them for lunch and rode back down, small consolation for my self- imposed inactivity.

It finally came time to leave for Naples. Five of my new friends accompanied me to the Zurich airport to see me off. We partied in the airport lounge a little too long. The plane loaded on the tarmac, a distance from the terminal. I was delivered to the plane by two Swiss Air employees, racing me to the boarding stairs atop a baggage-cart. my make- shift chariot. My friends cheered me on as I played the part of the noble charioteer.

All alone in Naples! The staff didn’t know what to do with me. The doctor running the dispensary was a pediatrician. There were no orthopedic doctors on staff.

I befriended several nurses and took advantage of the culture and the surroundings: Aida at the San Carlo, Swan Lake with the Saddler Wells ballet, drives on the Apian Way, dining at great restaurants. Once again a Bad Error in judgment! I spent a weekend on Capri. The second night, I was dancing the Samba, a little too enthusiastically. My walking cast split into three pieces, completely undoing the set of my ankle.

The ankle was again in need of repair, this time more serious. I was fast becoming a pain. The decision was made easy. The doctors in Naples immediately and enthusiastically cut orders for me to fly to the Army’s 98^th General Field Hospital in Neubruka, Germany, 30 miles outside Frankfurt. This time, I had lost my swagger and was more than a little concerned with the damage I had inflicted on myself.

The hospital was on a gentle hill, in an area cut out of deep woods. It was run with Military precision. Most of the doctors and nurses were U.S. Army, the balance German civilian and ex- German Army. They wasted no time X-raying my ankle.

I was prepped that night and an unsuccessful, closed reduction was performed the next morning. Assisting the Army surgeon was a brilliant, young German doctor who had served as a Panzer gunner with Rommel. He was captured in the Sahara and interned in North Carolina. He studied medicine in the U.S. after the war, became a doctor and agreed to serve with the U.S.Army. We became friends. Deeter played chess with me occasionally. He was a great piano player’ and often livened Happy Hour at the “O” club with his renditions.

Five weeks later, they operated on me again. This time the joint was secured with a monel pin through my ankle. I was placed in a full- leg cast. As I was being transported on a gurney from ICU to my room, heavily sedated, a comely German nurse appeared. I mustered what little German I knew and shouted, “Cummen ze here mit da hozen in da hand!”

In my stupor, I meant to say, “Cummen ze here mit da hands a- hoven! “Surrender! Come here with your hands up!” These were orders given to German POWS by capturing Yanks.

Instead, what came out was, “Come here with your pants in your hand!”

That story and another intemperate remark I made under duress and sedative made the rounds. I hadn’t voided in well over the prescribed time. In order to make me go, the nurses tried everything, warm water over the hands, verbal entreaties, nothing worked. Finally, as a last resort, they showed me a large catheter and said that if I didn’t start to produce, it would be inserted in the proper place.

I blurted out, “For Christ sake! That thing is bigger around than what I’ve got!” I immediately began peeing all over my bed. I became a staff favorite overnight, and would spend a total of four months at the 98^th.

The rehab was grueling. When the full leg cast was finally replaced with a walking cast, I got a look at my leg for the first time. It resembled a hairy swizzle stick. The hair was dark brown not red. The sight was a shock.

My roommate in Neubruka was another overzealous Navy Officer, two of us in an Army hospital. Ed had distinguished himself by trying to impress a lady friend at the Officers Club in Banoli, Naples, with his ability to do chin- ups. The problem occurred when he jumped up to grab a tree limb. He Jumped up AND out, unaware of the 10-foot drop to the street below. The limb snapped, he fell to the street on his left side, his elbow taking the brunt of the fall. The impact drove the elbow even with his wrist.

Ed’s surgery was sandwiched in between my two operations. Our convalescences coincided. Ed also became a staff favorite. As we began to mend our horizons brightened.

There were 70 nurses on staff. Our mobility returned, and with it, daily visits to the Officers Club, often frequented by our fine flock of Florence Nightingales. The club was an unpretentious one- story brick building, with a bar, piano, card tables, a dart- board and a juke- box. Our only competition for the “ladies in white” was a handful of older single officers, dull from age and long deployments, a couple of them probably of differing sexual orientation. We were in the right place at the right time, just what the nurses ordered. It was like pheasant hunting with an elephant gun!

February merged into March and April. We were no longer awakened for temps and vital signs during the night. Most days we slept in until 8:30 or 9 o’clock. Continental breakfast was saved for us. After showers and shaves, we headed for our daily exercises usually followed by lunch in neighboring towns sometimes accompanied, or sometimes in a car borrowed from one of the nurses. Eider- Oberstien was my favorite town, a small bistro with great views of the countryside, my favorite place. Snails washed down with Mosel wine or Beck’s beer, then back for a nap before Happy Hour at the “O” Club. We played a lot of bridge. Some nights we drove to Frankfurt with dates for dinner, sometimes the same girls, sometimes not. We paid occasional weekend visits to places like Holland for the Tulip festival, Berlin, and the Czech border. We spent Easter in Wiesbaden. Life had become a movable feast!

Ed left in April. I left two weeks later, the beginning of May. The staff gave me a going away party, my last night, an event to remember.

Early the next morning, two orderlies entered my room with a stretcher, much to my consternation. I had been walking with a cane on my short-leg cast for some time. I argued in vain, no match for my keepers.

I had shopped for the family the last two weeks of my stay: perfume and linen tablecloths for Mom, a special electric shaver for Gramp, lace handkerchiefs for his wife (my step-grandmother), large beer steins for my brother Ken and Dad, and three bottles of vintage brandy, also for Dad. All but the brandy was neatly packed with my gear.

When the orderlies left the room for coffee, I placed the brandy on the stretcher under the blanket. I lined the three bottles between my legs when they carried me to the waiting bus. Many of my new friends assembled to wave goodbye.

The bus trip to Rhine Mien airport took about an hour. We drove straight out on to the tarmac and were loaded one by one onto the four- engine MATS (Military Air Transport) plane. The stretchers were secured in place, three deep either side of the aisle. I hated flying and still do.

I was the middle stretcher in our threesome, Army non-com’s above and below. Two lung patients were located forward, just aft of the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the cabin. I could look out over the right wing and see the engines. We took off immediately after loading and climbed to cruising altitude. Twenty minutes into the flight, the cabin pressure dropped sharply. The lung patients breathing became labored. They were fighting for air. Our pilot put the plane into a steep dive to adjust the pressure. The bottles between my legs piled up in a very tender spot. It was like taking a Messier slap shot in the groin, without the benefit of a “tinny.” We circled once and landed.

A second plane was readied. We were loaded aboard the back- up, and took off again two hours later. This time we were airborne about an hour. I looked out at the right wing. The inboard prop slowed and stopped. I pulled at a flight nurse’s arm as she walked down the aisle:

“The – the –the – engine just stopped.” She bent down and looked out. The guy on the stretcher directly across from me hollered,

“Hey nurse, one of the engines over here just quit, too.” Any lingering discomfort from playing backstop for the brandy bottles on the previous flight disappeared, numbed by the reality that we had just lost two of our four engines.

The pilot turned the plane around and headed back. The return flight was nerve racking. We came straight in without incident. When we touched down the pilot was given a lying down “O.”

This time we stayed overnight. The officers were billeted in a building housing the Officers Club. Our baggage was left overnight on the bus that transported us from the plane.

Four of us decided that we had had enough for one day. We headed or hobbled, down the first floor hallway to a doorway marked “Entrance — Officers Club” and entered. The place was packed with uniformed revelers, male and female. Music was blaring from a juke- box. Most of the tables were taken. Smoke hung heavy and the decibel level was high. We were clad in our blue PJ’s and robes. We settled into a table near the door trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. A waiter arrived and took our order. So far so good, we ordered a second round. The adventures of the day began to fade. We were four total strangers, meeting for the first time. A tall gray haired colonel ambled up to our table. We thought we might be in trouble. He pulled up a chair, introduced himself, waved to the waiter and ordered drinks all around. Seated at his table were six officers, Majors and Colonels. Two of them turned out to be the pilot and co-pilot of our second flight. They made room for us at their table, and we spent a very enjoyable evening swapping stories about the flight.

The following afternoon, we were trussed-up again for the third time in two days, on another four- engine MATS transport. We took off again. I was beginning to get used to the takeoffs. We were headed for Gander, Newfoundland. I fell asleep about an hour out. Two and a half hours into the flight the intercom crackled:

“We’re having a bit of a problem with the automatic pilot and will be turning to spend the night at Lodges, in the Azores.” I was beginning to feel jinxed!

The flight resumed again early the next day. We refueled at Gander and set down at our destination, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, 50 hours plus after our original ETA.

My parents, particularly Mom, went through a nasty ordeal. Details of the delays, and numerous changes of ETA’s were hard to come by. They checked into a hotel near McGuire along with other parents and loved ones and fretted with them. As the plane made its final approach, fire trucks and ambulances raced to the far end of the runway, a normal precaution that Mom was not familiar with. This unnerved her even more.

At long last, we were unloaded. The stretchers were placed on the ground in a roped off area, the loved ones kept at a distance.

I spotted Dad, got up from my stretcher, grabbed the three brandy bottles (one mostly empty) and hobbled toward him as fast as I could go. Mom was right behind him. I was reminded once again, how fortunate I was to have such loving parents. The final rehab was still ahead, my future uncertain.

If anything can be learned from my escapades, it is that “Your body IS your temple.” and should be treated as such. Another thought, “It’s never too late to get religion,” also fits when it comes to caring for it.

With the advances in modern medicine, there are many remedies readily available when arthritis pays a visit or joints wear out. Take advantage of the spare parts bin and make sure you get the PSA checked. A colonoscopy is no fun, make sure they you get one when prescribed, anyway. Exercise!

One new hip and minus one prostate, lots of walking in the YMCA pool four times a week and lifting weights.  So far I’m still mobile, and there’s much more to come.

I no longer rush in where angels fear to tread.  I dip my toe first, then wade around awhile before I dive in under.  It took my three-quarters of a century and multiple surgeries to figure that out, but that’s the thing about getting older – it makes you wiser, whether you want to be or not!

George S.K. Rider