Mind over Muscle

By all the surgical rules, he should have been dead. Yet, at a Toronto hospital last week, he was walking around--with the top of his brain sliced off.

Two years ago in England, Flight Officer M. W. ("Larry") Doyle, 24, an R.C.A.F. bomber pilot, was hit by his plane's whirling propeller. It gouged out a part of the motor and the sensory areas of his brain. He was rushed to a hospital and operated on in 15 minutes, mostly to stop the blood flow.

Four days later Larry Doyle woke up. He could not remember the accident, but otherwise he was clearheaded. "[The doctor] told me my right arm, my entire right side and both legs were paralyzed because of damage to my brain. Then he pumped enthusiasm into me. He told me I could get back their use if I really wanted to."

For weeks Doyle could not turn in bed. First, he concentrated on trying to move his fingers. After many days he managed to move his right thumb, then the index finger, then the whole hand. When he tried to bend his elbow, he found that he had lost coordination: instead of tightening one muscle and relaxing its opposite, he tightened both. One day, in answer to a nurse's question, he tried to shrug his shoulders, was startled because only one shoulder shrugged. But he learned to shrug both shoulders, to bend his arm, and (after practicing daily in a tub of water) to wiggle his toes.

In learning to walk, he had to substitute his visual sense for the injured sensory center. Supported by two nurses (he could not hold a crutch), he placed his feet on steps painted on the hospital floor, thus conditioned himself to the right length of stride. Now he walks (depending on his sight, rather than sense of touch) by watching his step out of the corner of his eye. He cannot walk with his eyes closed or in the dark. But in daylight he can walk a mile unaided.

Says Doyle: "I walked with a cane off the hospital ship when I came back from England. I swore I wouldn't get off unless I walked, and I did it. . . ." Soon Larry Doyle will go home to St. Louis, without a cane.

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