| John Kennedy was sick
from age 13 on. In 1930, when he was 13, he developed abdominal
pain. By 1934 he was sent to the Mayo Clinic where they diagnosed
colitis or it was called colitis. By 1940 his back started hurting
him, by 1944 he had his first back operation, by 1947 he was
officially diagnosed as having Addison's Disease Addison's Disease
is adrenal insufficiency. The adrenal gland makes cortico steroids
and other hormones that are used for salt metabolism, response to
stress, response to inflammation. In '47 he was officially diagnosed
in England, as being adrenally insufficient, and from that point on,
at least that point on, he was being treated with daily cortico
steroids of some form or another. There is some evidence he was
actually being treated earlier, with a form of doka implanted under
his skin. But at from '47 he had to receive daily steroids to
survive. The steroids themselves have side effects, including
susceptibility to infection. Kennedy needed multiple courses of
antibiotics, he had urinary infections, skin infections, he had
respiratory infections. And he was basically sick from then on
through the rest of his life. He had two back operations, in '54 and
'55, which failed. And he needed chronic pain medication from '55
through his White House years, until he died in Dallas. He was never
healthy. I mean, the image you get of vigor and progressive health
wasn't true. He was playing through pain most of the presidency.
By the time he was President, he was on ten, twelve
medications a day. He was on anti-spasmodics for his bowel,
paregoric, lamodal transatine, he was on muscle relaxant,
Phenobarbital, Librium, Meprobomate, he was on pain medications,
Codeine, Demerol, Methadone, he was on oral cortisone; he was on
injected cortisone, he was on testosterone, he was on Nembutal for
sleep. And on top of that he was getting injected sometimes six
times a day, six places on his back, by the White House physician,
with Novocain, Procaine, just to enable him to face the day.
Hiding the Pain
Excerpt from Suffering in Camelot
Hiding the Pain
But
Kennedy and his closest circle took great pains to hide his health
problems from the public, fearing it would impair his political
career. JFK was particularly fearful that revelations about his
health problems would hurt him in the neck-and-neck presidential
race with Richard Nixon in 1960.
He
was so terrified of his medical conditions being known that in the
1960 fight for the Democratic nomination, Lyndon Johnson aides aired
the fact that Kennedy had Addison's disease, and the Kennedy
campaign flatly denied it, Dallek said. His doctors later published
a letter saying his health was excellent.
As
amazing as the list of drugs Kennedy took is the fact that it was
kept mostly secret. To this day, his closest aides don't know or
won't admit the extent of his ailments.
"He
was a man in very good health," said Kennedy adviser Ted Sorenson
told ABCNEWS. "There is no doubt about the fact that he had a bad
back, as millions of men do, sometimes it hurt worse than others."
His
aides attributed any visible problem to a war injury. When the
president rode a cherry picker to board Air Force One, it was just
because of a sore back, not the fact he couldn't climb a stair.
In
the book, Dallek speculates that the corset Kennedy wore for his
back trouble may have made him a sitting target for his assassin,
Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy's back was ramrod straight, making his
head and neck perfect targets when the second bullet — believed to
be the one that killed him — struck.
"Of
course we'll never know, but if he had toppled over when the first
bullet hit, he might have been saved," Dallek said.
Read the entire article
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WASHINGTON
The first thorough examination of President John F. Kennedy's
medical records, conducted by an independent presidential historian
with a medical consultant, has found that Kennedy suffered from more
ailments, was in far greater pain and was taking many more
medications than the public knew at the time or biographers have
since described.
As
president, Kennedy was famous for having a bad back, and since his
death, biographers have pieced together details of other illnesses,
including persistent digestive problems and Addison's disease, a
life-threatening lack of adrenal function.
But
newly disclosed medical files covering the last eight years of
Kennedy's life, including X-rays and prescription records, show that
he took painkillers, anti-anxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping
pills, as well as hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in
times of stress.
At
times the president took as many as eight medications a day, says
the historian, Robert Dallek. A committee of three longtime Kennedy
family associates, who for decades refused all requests to look at
the records, granted Dallek's request, in part because of his
"tremendous reputation," said one of them, Theodore Sorensen, who
was the president's special counsel.
Dallek is writing a biography, "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy,
1917-1963," to be published next year by Little, Brown. He was
allowed to examine the records over two days last spring in the
company of a physician, Jeffrey Kelman, and to make notes but not
photocopies. Their findings appear in the December issue of The
Atlantic magazine, and they discussed them in interviews with The
New York Times.
The
new information shows how far Kennedy went to conceal his ailments
and shatters the image he projected as the most vigorous of men. It
is a remarkable example of a phenomenon that has been seen many
times, notably in the case of Franklin Roosevelt.
Yet
for all of Kennedy's suffering, the ailments did not incapacitate
him, Dallek concluded. In fact, he said, while Kennedy sometimes
complained of grogginess, detailed transcripts of tape-recorded
conversations during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and other
times show the president as lucid and in firm command.
By
the time of the missile crisis, Kennedy was taking anti-spasmodics
to control colitis; antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, and
increased amounts of hydrocortisone and testosterone, along with
salt tablets, to control his adrenal insufficiency and increase his
energy.
The
records show that Kennedy was hospitalized for back and intestinal
ailments in New York and Boston on nine previously undisclosed
occasions from 1955 to 1957, when he was a senator from
Massachusetts, campaigning unsuccessfully for the 1956 Democratic
vice-presidential nomination - and quietly planning his 1960
presidential bid.
In
December 1962, after Jacqueline Kennedy complained that he seemed
"depressed" from taking antihistamines for food allergies, he took a
prescribed anti-anxiety drug, Stelazine, for two days. At other
times he took similar medications regularly.
The
records show that Kennedy variously took codeine, Demerol and
methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; meprobamate and librium
for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep; thyroid hormone, and injections
of a blood derivative, gamma globulin, presumably for infections.
In
the White House, Kennedy received "seven to eight injections of
procaine in his back in the same sitting" before news conferences
and other events, Kelman said. The president had so much pain from
three fractured vertebrae from osteoporosis that he could not put a
sock or shoe on his left foot unaided, the records reveal. He
sometimes reported waking before dawn with severe abdominal cramps.
In
August 1961, the records show, Jacqueline Kennedy rushed in from
another room when he screamed in pain as the White House physician,
Janet Travell, injected procaine deep into his back muscles to numb
them.
While not a complete record of Kennedy's lifetime medical history,
much of which remains sealed in private hospitals, the disclosures
provide a broad, authoritative view.
In
The Atlantic, Dallek writes that while Kennedy's secrecy can be
taken as "another stain on his oft-criticized character," the
records also reveal the "quiet stoicism of a man struggling to
endure extraordinary pain and distress."
The
records are largely from Travell, a specialist in internal medicine
and pain management who treated Kennedy for years before ultimately
being eased aside after bitter arguments with other doctors about
his care. She gathered files from before and after he became
president in 1961. Kennedy's widow and brothers, Robert and Edward,
donated them in 1965 to the Kennedy Library, Deborah Leff, the
library's director, said, and a half-dozen scholars who sought
permission to see them over the years were rebuffed.
Senator Edward Kennedy said his family had abided by the committee's
decision to make all judgments like releasing the medical records.
"While not aware of the exact details of my brother's medical
condition," he said, "I did see the great courage he exhibited
throughout his life in triumphing over illness and pain."
Kelman, a specialist in internal medicine and physiology in
Collington, Maryland, said, "The most remarkable thing was the
extent to which Kennedy was in pain every day of his presidency."
The
records say nothing about treatment by Max Jacobson, a New York
physician who later lost his medical license for prescribing
amphetamines to Kennedy and others. The Times detailed his
involvement years ago, but the files said "nothing, nil," about
Jacobson Dallek said.
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