Medical School 2 (missed year)
Having passed the laboratory portion, the summer session I took in physiology was only about 8 weeks; there was a different instructor teaching it making the part I failed easier to pass. I was ready to advance to the campus in Indianapolis and since there was so little time to get any summer job, I went to Chicago to visit a friend. While there I received a call from my mother that my grandfather (Papa) had died. This was not expected and was a sad time for me since we were so close. I returned to Evansville for his funeral and got ready for the 2nd year. The courses were still basic science, the major ones being microbiology, biochemistry and pathology all 3 quarters long and a few 1 quarter things like physical diagnosis and statistics. I now was on the IUSM campus and housed in Winona Village, a group of Quonset huts converted into dorms. Eight of us Black students who lived on campus were all in one unit.
Starting the second year was hectic with registration, buying books and orientation to the Indianapolis campus.
A routine chest x-ray was required at the start of each year and around the third week of September 1954 I got a call to come in to the student health service. I will never forget that day until the day I die. Dr Jenna the director told me that I had a suspicious spot on my x-ray and needed to get some toilet articles and pajamas and report to the hospital that day. I had planned to go to Bloomington that weekend to an IU football game and see my lady friend.
That admission to the hospital marked one of the most devastating events in my life. Over the next week they did daily sputum samples and some more sophisticated x-ray images along with the usual lab work for diagnosing tuberculosis.
On Monday of the next week a group of doctors came in to see me and as they ringed my bed they said I had tuberculosis with a cavity in the upper lobe of my left lung and I would have to drop out of school. The news was so crushing that I really couldn’t process it all. I was 22yrs old and had three uncles and a cousin who all has died of TB in their 20’s and 30’s.
This was like telling someone today that they had HIV/AIDS.
The week before this I was on my way to a football game and now I’m headed to an early grave. My parents didn’t even know I was in the hospital since I had no clue to the seriousness of why I was admitted.
I had no one to talk to, no close friends to share this with and the thought of school became the least of my worries. I couldn’t stop the tears and a student nurse that was assigned to give me a back rub that night asked why and I poured out my feelings. And I remember she said maybe they can do something, every body doesn’t die. I said I doubt if I would be so lucky.
No doctors saw me for a couple of days and I still couldn’t bring myself to call my mother knowing Papa’s death was so fresh in her mind.
Early one morning the Chief of Thoracic surgery and the Chief of Cardiovascular surgery along with the Chief of Pulmonary diseases came in to see me. They said that they had examined my X-rays and that they thought that I might be a candidate for a radically new operation for treating a solitary cavity lesion………a segmental upper lobectomy., The usual treatment was collapsing the lobe either with ping pong balls or the chest by removing ribs.
I asked if this would allow me to return to school if it worked and to my prayerful hope they said yes. I said how long and they said about a year; but I would have to be isolated in a hospital and take medication and be on bed rest for 6 months before any surgery could be performed
Everything they said after that kind of flew right by me, because I was focused on getting well and back in school. I didn’t know how depressing the preparation for surgery would turn out to be.
The recovery plan was as follows; since I lived in Evansville I would be confined to a sanitarium there for 3 months and in January I would be transferred back to one in Indianapolis and 3 months later I would have surgery if all my sputum test were negative. Finally I would recover for 3 more months in Indianapolis and be released home to return to school the following September 1955.
I called my parents and a long painful ordeal began, starting with confinement in Boehne Hospital, a sanitarium in Evansville. I was segregated in a basement room along with three young Black women down the corridor. My memory of this dungeon is vivid to this day a chipped white hospital bed in the corner of a green painted room with two small windows that looked out to window wells……no view, only light could be seen. Here I would spend my days and nights with no occupational therapy, no visitors, a dimly lit ceiling light to read by and the only human contact was the nurse with meds and food and shouting down the hall to the women. The only time I was taken out of my room was for x-rays once a month and be examined by the doctor. The doctor never came down to the basement, ever! I guess if you died, they would take you upstairs to be pronounced.
One of the most memorable things that lifted my spirits was a letter I received from a very attractive young southern lady I met in Bloomington. I had written her of my illness and my despondence and she wrote me words of encouragement and sent a pin up picture, that I indeed put on the wall above my bed. My mother was so impressed with her concern for me she kept that letter in her personal papers. Some how it was lost, but I never forgot the lady, her name was Lauree a name I never forgot and over the years I tried to find out what had become of her. Recently, our paths serendipitously crossed and I reconnected with her.
My plan was to read the text books of the courses I would be taking once back in school, but the surroundings were so depressing I couldn’t concentrate and finally gave up. The only way I could pass the time was to sketch. Unfortunately, over the years I have lost all of these drawings. I wish I could analyze them now to see what I drew back then.
Just before Christmas they released me to go home and be transferred to Sunnyside TB Hospital in Indianapolis.
This hospital was in the northeastern portion of Marion county and was on a beautiful portion of wooded land. Unfortunately, I was segregated here and isolated in a private room. Having little human contact was as if I was in prison for a crime. They kept me isolated here until January of 1955 and then placed me in a unit called the pavilion where I had a large sunny window filled room over looking the woods. They had a library cart that came around weekly and I read every and any thing.
I had a nurse all of them were white who would come see me and sit and talk and provide me with much needed human contact. Sometimes her supervisor would scold her for the attention she gave me but she ignored her and kept coming by until I was transferred to another building for surgery.
My surgery was scheduled around the middle of March 1955 to be performed by two of the best thoracic surgeons at IU. One of my class mates a white friend agreed to special nurse me post op. He did the cut down for my IV and maintained my chest tubes while I was in recovery. All went well and I now was on the road to recovery that entailed 3 TB medications for the next year. The surgery was successful and I recovered completely and have had no problem with TB since.
Once I was post op, I was taken out of isolation for the first time after being in isolation for 6 months. I could have visitors now and several young women would come see me on weekends. This is how I met the woman I eventually married.
In June of 1955, I was discharge and allowed to go home to Evansville with the plan that I was to be reinstated to the 2nd year class with the provision that I could not take a full course load. I would have to take either Microbiology or Biochemistry in summer school, I chose to take Micro at University of Michigan the summer of 1956. That is another story. My spirits were gradually returning but I had a fatalistic view of life.
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