The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political Part 62

F. K. L.

To friends who had telegraphed and written urgently for news

May 11, 1921

It is Wednesday afternoon and I am now sitting up in bed talking to my good friend, Cotter. Until yesterday I did not clearly visualize any one thing in this room and did not know that it had a window, except that there was a place that noise came through, but I did know that it had a yellow oak door that stared at me with its great, big, square eye, all day and all night.

Last Friday, you see, about ten in the morning, I took the step that I should have taken months, yes, years ago. I was stretched on a stiff, hard table, my arms were clamped down and in three- quarters of an hour I had my appendix and my gall bladder removed, which latter was a stone quarry and the former a cesspool. Today, most tentatively, I crawled on to a chair and ate my first mouthful of solid food. But four days ago I managed to shave myself, and I am regarded as pretty spry.

I have seen death come to men in various ways, some rather novel and western. I once saw a man hanged. And I have seen several men shot, and came very near going out that way myself two or three times, but always the other fellow aimed poorly. I was being shot at because I was a newspaper man, and I should have been shot at.

There must be public concern in what is printed, as well as its truth, to justify it. That is something that newspapers should get to know in this country. After the earthquake in San Francisco, I saw walls topple out upon a man. And I have had more intimate glimpses still of the picturesque and of the prosaic ways by which men come to their taking off.

But never before have I been called upon deliberately to walk into the Valley of the Shadow and, say what you will, it is a great act. I have said, during the past months of endless examination, that a man with little curiosity and little humor and a little money who was not in too great pain could enjoy himself studying the ways of doctors and nurses, as he journeyed the invalid's path. It was indeed made a flowery path for me, as much as any path could be in which a man suffered more humiliation and distress and thwarting and frustration, on the whole, than he did pain.

But here was a path, the end of which I could not see. I was not compelled to take it. My very latest doctor advised me against taking it. I could live some time without taking it. It was a bet on the high card with a chance to win, and I took it.

I undressed myself with my boy's help, in one of the hospital rooms, and then arraying myself in my best suit of pajamas and an antique samurai robe which I use as a dressing gown, submitted myself to being given a dose of dazing opiate, which was to do its work in about fifteen minutes. I then mounted a chair and was wheeled along the corridor to the elevator, stopping meantime to say "adieu" to my dear ones, who would somehow or other insist upon saying "good-bye," which is a different word. I was not to be given the usual anesthetic, because my heart had been cutting up some didos, so I must take a local anesthetic which Was to be administered by a very celebrated Frenchman. I need not tell you that this whole performance was managed with considerable eclat, and Doctor Will Mayo, probably the first surgeon of the world, was to use the knife; and in the gallery looking on were Doctor Finney, of Johns Hopkins, Doctor Billings, of Chicago, Doctor Vaughan of the Michigan University, and others. On the whole, it was what the society reporter would call a recherche affair. The local anesthetic consists of morphine and scopolamin. It is administered directly by needle to the nerves that lead to those particular parts which are to be affected by the operation. This I watched myself with the profoundest interest. It was painful, somewhat, but it was done with the niceness and precision that make this new method of anesthesia a real work of art. I should think that the j.a.panese, with their very rare power at embroidery, might come to be past masters in this work. There were some insertions very superficial and some extremely deep. Over the operator's head, there were a half dozen heads peering intently at each move he made, while the patient himself was free to lift his head and look down and see just what was being done. I did not test myself, as I should have, to see whether I was paralyzed in any part.

Just when this performance came to a head, Doctor Mayo came in and said, "Well, I am going in for something." I said, "That's right, and I hope you will get it."

His statement did not conclusively prove confidence that he would find the cause of my trouble by going in. ... I knew there could be no such definiteness, but I said to myself, "He will get it, if it's there."

For two days I had had knowledge that this operation was to take place at this time, and my nerves had not been just as good as they should have been. Those men who sleep twelve hours perfectly before being electrocuted have evidently led more tranquil lives than I have, or have less concern as to the future. Ah, now I was to know the great secret! For forty years I had been wondering, wondering. Often I had said to myself that I should summon to my mind when this moment came, some words that would be somewhat a synthesis of my philosophy. Socrates said to those who stood by, after he had drunk the hemlock, "No evil can befall a good man, whether he be alive or dead." I don't know how far from that we have gone in these twenty-four hundred years. The apothegm, however, was not apposite to me, because it involved a declaration that I was a good man, and I don't know anyone who has the right so to appreciate himself. And I had come to the conclusion that perhaps the best statement of my creed could be fitted into the words, "I accept," which to me meant that if in the law of nature my individual spirit was to go back into the great Ocean of Spirits, my one duty was to conform. "Lead Kindly Light" was all the gospel I had. I accepted. I made pretense to put out my hand in submission and lay there.

"All through, doctor?"

"Yes, doctor."

"Very well, we will proceed."

And I was gradually pushed through the hall into the operating room. The process there was lightning-like. I was in torture.

"Lift me up, lift me up."

"What for?"

"I have one of those angina pains and I must ease it by getting up and taking some nitro."

That had been my practice, but I did not reason that never before had the pain come on my right side.

"Give him a whiff of ether." The tenderest arms stole around my head and the softest possible voice--Ulysses must have heard it long ago--"Now do take a deep breath." I resisted. I had been told that I would see the performance.

"Please do, breathe very deeply--just one good deep breath." That pain was burning the side out of me. I tried to get my hand up to my side. Of course it was tied down. I swore.

"Oh Christ! This is terrible."

"It will stop if you will reach for a big breath,"--and I resigned myself. Men who are given the third degree have no stronger will than mine. I knew I was helpless. I must go through. I must surrender to that Circean voice.

I heard the doctor in a commonplace monotone say, "This is an unusual case--"--the rest of this sentence I never heard.

There was a long ray of gray light leading from my bed to my door.

I had opened my eyes. "I had not died." I had come through the Valley.

"I wonder what he got."

In the broad part of the ray was my wife smiling, and stretching out to that unreachable door were others whom I recognized, all smiling. Things were dim, but my mind seemed definite.

"What did he get?" I had expected eternal mysteries to be unraveled. Either I would know, or not know, and I would not know that I would not know.

"He got a gall-bladder filled with stones and a bad appendix, and now you are to lie still."

Then to this the drama had come, the drama beyond all dramas--a handful of brownish secretions and a couple of pieces of morbid flesh!! Ah me!

I am doing well, cared for well, as happy as can be; have had none of my angina pains since the operation. And as I lie here, I contemplate [making] a frieze--a procession of doctors and nurses and internes, of diagnosticians and technicians and experts and mechanics and servitors and cooks--all, the great and the small, in profile. They are to look like those who have made their pretenses before me during the past year;--the solemn and the stupid; the kindly, the reckless; the offhand; the erudite, the practical; the many men with tubes and the many men with electrical machines. Old Esculapius must begin the procession but the Man with the Knife, regnant, heroic size, must end it.

What a great thing, what a pride, to have the two men of greatest constructive imagination and courage in surgery in the world as Americans, Dr. Charles and Dr. Will Mayo.

To Alexander Vogelsang

Rochester, Minnesota, May 14, [1921]

This is a line by my own hand, dear Aleck, just to show you that I am still this much master of myself. ...

I am going through much pain. Inside I am a great boil. But Nature is doing all she can, and I am helping. They think me a right model sort of patient, for I made a showing of exceptional recovery. When T.R. shaved the day after, I said, "Hip Hip!" Well, I done it too! I guess as how I haven't been so very bad a boy all these fifty-seven years or I couldn't play as good as "par" at this game, and they say they have no better record than mine on the books.

The National Geographic Society did a nice thing. Today I got a resolution of the most sympathetic kind from them. Some gentlemen still alive, eh?

I dictated a bit of a thing about my experience the other day to Cotter--something to send off to the chaps who wrote or wired--and sent you one. I hope it wasn't soft or s...o...b... Did you think it was all right to come from a sick bed?

It will be three weeks or more yet of hospital, and then much of recuperation. But I have no complaint. I feel a faith growing in me, and I may yet draw my sword in some good fight.

Affectionately,

FRANK

To John W. Hallowell

Rochester, Minnesota, May 14, 1921

DEAR JACK,--I've been down into the Valley since I heard from you, but I'm up once more and with new light in my eye, new faith in my heart, more sense of the things that count and those that don't.

And affection, love for the good thing of any kind; loyalty, even mistaken loyalty, these are the things that the G.o.ds treasure.

They live longest. So I turn to give you my hand, dear boy,