November 16, 2002

In Kennedy File, a Portrait of Illness and Pain

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.
[...]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, antianxiety agents, stimulants and sleeping pills, as well as hormones to keep him alive, with extra doses in times of stress.
[...]
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 to combat infections.

Good Lord! Marilyn, Elvis and Judy Garland had nothing on this man!
This is so typical of the over-medicating and overtreatment that was so prevalent in the '60's (...and maybe still is?).
JFK was such a mess, it's almost tempting to believe that an assassin's bullet merely hastened the inevitable.
As with Jimmy Carter's scary public behavior which now reveals his deeply Anti-American feelings and how it undoubtedly affected his actions as President--and what possible bullets we dodged as a country while he was in office...this report made me shudder when I thought about the President--who was not much better than a pillhead with a Harvard degree--almost bringing America to the point of nuclear annihilation by the Russians while he tried to cope with the Cuban Missile Crisis with the help of chemicals and Dr. Feelgood's ministrations.
God has already blessed America, we just have never known how much!
One of the authors, Robert Dallek, also has an article on this same subject in this month's Atlantic Review and he discusses other Presidents who have hidden or lied about their precarious physical conditions, including FDR, but yet Dallek never mentions that Bill Clinton was the latest and most egregious offender in this group and that the American public has yet to hear of a complete physical check-up on ex-President 42.
Nor does Dallek commend President Bush for eagerly disclosing his health status, including the recent widely reported colonoscopy the Commander-in-Chief just endured. (Yet Dallek tries to accuse the late Richard Nixon, Kennedy's opponent for President in 1960, of his "dirty tricks" in an attempt to find and uncover Kennedy's frail physical state as proof that JFK was too ill to be President. Which he probably was.)

*This is also a great opportunity for me to reveal that I have been a bit under the weather for the past week.
Apparently, the change of seasons plus the strain of last week's events--the Election and the UN resolution--proved to be a little too much for me.
I suffered from a bout with tuberculosis from late 1985-mid 1987 and my health and my strength haven't been the same since, so while I try to give Life, and especially my blog, all my enthusiasm and my energy, I end up paying dearly and have to rest and recuperate afterwards for a long time.
So I apologize that I haven't been posting as much and I hope you'll understand.
The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is "weak." Sigh.